GREAT EVENTS OF THE PONTIFICATE.
GREAT EVENTS OF THE PONTIFICATE.
GREAT EVENTS OF THE PONTIFICATE.
The definition of two great dogmas marks the pontificate of Pius IX. and will make it memorable for ever in the annals of the church: the dogma of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mother, and of the Papal Infallibility. The last was a death-blow to schism and heresy. We do not mean that schism and heresy will die out because of it. But it roots them out of their holes; and henceforth they will know that over them hangs a voice, not often used, indeed, or idly, but which, once it has uttered its last and final and solemn decision, is irrevocable. The scenes that Rome witnessed in its last declining days as the city of the popes will dwell in the memory of men. The bishops of all the earth, in numbers unprecedented, flocking to what was vainly thought to be the rocking chair of Peter, was perhaps one of the most striking testimonies to a scoffing and unbelievingage of the immense vitality of the faith, of the vastness, the splendor, and renown of the Catholic Church. A more solemn testimony still was the joyful acceptance by the faithful of the dogma of Papal Infallibility, which, it was thought by those who knew not the Catholic faith, would rend the church asunder. The canonization of the martyrs of Japan, the thronging of the bishops and faithful to Rome on the occasion of the various jubilees, and the crowning event of last year, when all the Catholic world assisted at the celebration of the fiftieth episcopal jubilee of Pius IX., are other events that mark this great pontificate with significance and splendor. These last were as much personal tributes to the man as of respect to the supreme head of the church, and they showed, if aught were needed to show, that Pius, stripped of his dominions, bereft of his possessions, imprisoned in the Vatican, lived and reigned as, perhaps, no other pope lived and reigned in the hearts, not of a small section of his people, but of all the great church that covers the earth.
THE POPE’S PERSONAL CHARACTER.
THE POPE’S PERSONAL CHARACTER.
THE POPE’S PERSONAL CHARACTER.
One feature of all others marks the character of Pius IX. Personally the meekest and most yielding of men, he was always filled with the sense of his position and his sacred charge. We do not mean that as Pope he was proud, overbearing, intolerant. He was anything but that. But in all that touched the faith and the sacred prerogatives that had been placed in his pure hands he was simply inflexible. He would not yield a jot of them. He would not compromise. He would not temporize.A singularly open, honest, and frank character, ready to trust all men, he seemed to scent out danger from afar off when it threatened what was dearer to him than life—life was always a small matter in his eyes—the chair of Peter and the faith of Christ. The utterances of his bulls and encyclical letters, the speeches that he delivered, sometimes off-hand, on important subjects, bear all one tone, never contradict one another. They are resolute and bold and breathe authority throughout. He saw from the first the movement of the age, and that it was moving in a false direction. The movement was, in one word, towards a complete rejection of divine authority, of divine revelation, and consequently of the church as a divine institution, and of all authority save such as men choose to set up for themselves. From his first papal allocution to the Syllabus of Errors to be condemned, he always struck at this spirit, and this spirit recognized its vigilant foe and master. Hence the rage with which his utterances were received in the courts of Europe and by the infidel press. But he never swerved from his course. He was never weary of condemning what he knew to be wrong; and the state of public opinion to-day regarding rights that were once held as sacred even by large and powerful non-Catholic bodies is a sufficient vindication, if any were needed, of the pontiff’s course. Rights, natural and supernatural, are everywhere invaded. The cloister is desecrated. The home is threatened with disruption by divorce and an easy marriage that is no marriage. Innocent infants are no longer consecrated to God. “Free” thought finds its issue in “free” religion, and free religion meansno religion. The sense of right has yielded to the sense of force. Education is handed over to infidels. This is the larger growth of the conspiracy that swept away the States of the Church only by way of a beginning to a wider sweeping that was to desolate the earth.
All this was what Pius IX. felt coming on and resisted to his last breath. He guarded the church well, and, if human judgment be allowed to follow him, he goes before his divine Master with a clean heart and untroubled conscience, having done his work thoroughly. We shall miss that majestic figure from our busy scene. We shall miss the grand old man seated prophet-like on the now bare and barren rock of Peter, the storms of the earth roaring around and threatening to overwhelm him, and he calm and unmoved, his head lifted above them clear and lovely in the white light of heaven. We shall miss the face that we all know as we know and cherish the picture of a father: with its large, bright eyes, its sweet lips, and that smile that could only come from a heart free from guile and clear from constant communings with heaven. Set the men of the age beside him, and see how they dwarf and dwindle away. Set Cavour, Louis Napoleon, Bismarck, Thiers, Palmerston, those known as the greatest among the leaders of men, by Pius IX., and what a contrast! The story of the struggle that he waged is told in this. Ages stamp themselves in the men they deify. In brutal, debased, but “civilized” pagan Rome statues were set up to men like Nero and Domitian and Claudius and Diocletian; and these were the gods of the degenerate Romans. The gods of to-day, the idols ofthe people, are the men we have mentioned above and the lower brood of the Mazzinis, Garibaldis, Victor Emanuels, Gambettas. To the worshippers of these heroes Pius IX. was a despot and a ruler of a brood of despots, an enemy of the human race. The gown of the cleric has become the garb of ignominy and darkness; the blood-red cap of the revolutionist the beacon of liberty and light. The intellectual stream of Voltaire and the Voltairists, the men of “science” of to-day, filters down into the mud and blood of the rabble. These dainty gentlemen prepare the dynamite, leaving others more ignorant to fire it. This is the progress that Pius IX. stigmatized, and these the lights of the age whom he condemned. But his work has been effectual. He guarded the vineyard of the Lord. He made straight its paths. He weeded it well and watered it, if not with his heart’s blood, with the labors and sufferings of a long life that never knew rest or thought but of good to the whole human race. He has left to the world the example of a life of unspotted virtue, of large and wise charity, of undaunted courage and zeal, of meekness and childlike simplicity. He goes to his grave amid the tears and benedictions of the mightiest body on earth, followed by the sorrowing sympathy of all who esteem piety, honor integrity, and admire courage.
NEW PUBLICATIONS.
Morning Offices of Palm Sunday, Holy Thursday, and Good Friday.Together with a Magnificat for Holy Saturday and a few selections for the Tenebræ Function. Arranged and edited by Edwin F. MacGonigle, St. Charles’ Seminary, Overbrook, Pa.
The publication of this work is another comforting evidence of the reality of the revival of a better taste amongst church musicians, and of the demand of church people for a style of music at the divine offices which, at least, shall not outrage every sentiment of religious reverence and respect which they have for the house of God.
Although giving but few selections from the vast number of sentences, anthems, etc., enjoined to be sung during the great week, the choice made proves that there is a more general knowledge of the Rubrics than has hitherto prevailed amongst church musicians, and a consequent desire to produce the offices of the church in their entirety. It will also serve a purpose—to us a very desirable one—which is to turn the attention of choir-masters and organists to thesanctioned chant melodiesfor the Holy-Week services, which are, in our judgment, after long experience, quite unequalled by any musical melodies that were ever written.
We fail to see any possible reason for a harmonizedmorceau de musiqueto take the place of the cantor’s chanting of theRecordareat theTenebræfunction, nor can we discover any special merit in the composition itself. The works of Sig. Capocci seem to us to be better suited for exhibition at one of our “Vesper Series” concerts at Chickering and other halls than for practical usein chorobefore an altar—unless, indeed, the hearing of a musical concert is to be the proper and most edifying manner of satisfying the precept of hearing Mass devoutly, or of piously assisting at Vespers and Benediction.
Can the editor give any authority for the whiningFa# in the first member of the cadence of theBenedictus, No. 1, here treated asDo#? Sig. Capocci may have so written it; but then he ought to have known better.
Those who use concerted music fortheir church services, and who possess capable singers, will no doubt be pleased to add this publication to their collection of “church music.”
A Visit to the Roman Catacombs.By Rev. J. Spencer Northcote, D.D., canon of Birmingham. London: Burns and Oates. 1877. (For sale by The Catholic Publication Society Co.)
This book is another proof of the untiring attention that Canon Northcote continues to devote to the object of his special studies—the Roman Catacombs, to which, as he modestly tells us, he first applied himself in 1846. The length of time that he has devoted to the subject, his diligence, scholarship, and perfect orthodoxy, make him the standard authority among English-speaking Catholics on all matters connected with those wonderful subterranean cemeteries which are inexhaustible mines of treasure to students of Christian antiquities, and points of attraction to all really learned, as well as to some ignorant and conceited, visitors to Rome. The traveller to the Tiber and the Seven Hills who does not visit the Catacombs has not seen one of the three Romes, and returns with a very inadequate knowledge of the Eternal City. A study of the Roman Catacombs is as necessary to enable one to understand the manners and customs of the early Christians, and to appreciate the various stages of the doctrines and practices of the church from apostolic times to the period that followed the triumph of religion under Constantine, and its splendid development of ritual and of ceremonial during the middle ages, as the careful examination of the deeply-planted roots of a mighty oak is wanted to show the lover of nature how so noble a tree grows up the monarch of the forest, “and shooteth out great branches, so that the birds of the air may lodge under the shadow of it” (Mark iv. 32).
We are glad to learn from the preface of this short but interesting and instructiveVisit to the Roman Catacombsthat a second and enlarged edition of theRoma Sotteraneaof the same author, published in conjunction with Rev. W. R. Brownlow in 1869, and which will contain the substance of De Rossi’s recently-issued third volume, is in preparation. We shall heartily welcome it. The presentlittle book contains a great amount of information in a convenient, attractive, and well-written form.
Materialism: A Lecture by P. J. Smyth, M.P., M.R.I.A., Chev. Leg. d’Hon. Dublin: Joseph Dollard. 1877.
This is a strong and outspoken defence of Christianity by a layman from the lecture platform against the attacks of materialism on religion as addressed to popular assemblies under the cloak of science. The lecture reaffirms the primitive convictions of the soul and the common consent of mankind against the unsupported assertions of the modern materialist school. The Irish people have heroically withstood the assaults made against their religious faith—assaults more cruel and persistent than have been even charged upon the Spanish Inquisition—and that, too, from a nation which boasts of being the champion of religious liberty. It is a cheering sign to see that they are fully able to defend their faith with personal intelligent conviction against the materialism of the demagogues of science. Ireland has a class of thoroughly-educated laymen, and when religion is invaded from every quarter, as it is in our day, it is time that men who have deep and strong religious feelings should speak out in words which are fraught with the power of intelligent conviction and in tones which will make themselves heard. Mr. Smyth’s lecture is solid, manly, and eloquent, and we hope to hear from him again and often.
Records of a Quiet Life.By Augustus J. C. Hare, author ofWalks in Rome, etc. Revised for American readers by William L. Gage. Boston: Roberts Brothers. 1876.
The author of this volume, in presenting the picture of the Hare family, labored under the impression that he was revealing a model life to the public. Confined to non-Catholics, perhaps he and the writer of the American preface were not mistaken, and this class of readers will derive profit from its perusal. The Hares were Anglican clergymen, in charge of parishes, and with families. The volume furnishes pictures of the performance of their parochial duties, the life of their family circles,and the characteristics of their members. The Hares were above the common run of men of their class in intellectual gifts and scholarly attainments. They appear to have done their best to fulfil the duties of their position with the incoherent fragments of Christian truth which their sect teaches. A Catholic feels after reading this volume as if he had been passing through a picture-gallery of second-class artists. Our counsel to non-Catholic readers is: read theseRecords, and then take up theLife of the Curé of Ars, orThe Inner Life of Père Lacordaire, orA Sister’s Story, orThe Life of Madame Swetchine, and you will understand, if not fully appreciate, our meaning.
Is the Human Eye Changing its Form under the Influences of Modern Education?Edward G. Loring, M.D. New York. 1878.
This is a very cleverbrochureupon a very vexed question—namely, does compulsory education of the young under certain bad hygienic and dietetic conditions produce ocular deformity, and is such deformity hereditary? Dr. Loring produces certain eminent German oculists who state that myopia (near-sightedness) is certainly hereditary. The doctor only partially agrees with the Germansavantswhom he cites, and believes that no organ having reached its highest state of perfection, as has the human eye, can be changed by hereditary transmission, unless under conditions that affect the human organism as a whole, and that it would take ages to accomplish this under the most favorable conditions. The doctor explains why educated Germans as a rule are myopic by stating that the German forcing system for children under fifteen is radically wrong, and, moreover, that Germans as a nation are not fond of out-door sports. He further argues that their manner of cooking and sanitary arrangements are bad; all which, under certain conditions, will tend to produce hereditary myopia. Americans, it is stated, exhibit in some respects an inclination to follow the German plan rather than adhere to the traditional educational system of our ancestors of the English race.
Children, the doctor argues, must not be pushed in their studies until after fifteen, at which period the danger from over-use of the eye is diminished; and it is thus that watchmakers, type-setters, and other artisans who continuously use their eyes upon minute objects have better sight than the studious professional man or laborious scientific worker. We may sum up the article in a few lines when we say that nothing good, either physical or mental, can accrue from forcing young minds beyond a certain extent, and that we have reached, possibly passed, the ultimum in our present system of education. Encourage, as far as possible, out-door sports, and let the heavy mental work be done after fourteen. Give our children air and light, lest harm be done to the race.
An American Almanac and Treasury of Facts, Statistical, Financial, and Political, for the Year 1878.Edited by Ainsworth R. Spofford, Librarian of Congress. New York and Washington: The American News Company.
Few persons in this country are more competent to compile a volume such as this than the Librarian of Congress. Himself a practical bookseller, he brought years of the necessary experience to his aid. The results of this experience are manifest in the intelligently-arranged and trustworthy volume before us. It contains a vast amount of really useful information, on agriculture, politics, banks, finances, libraries, the census, chronology, commerce, the post-office, gold and silver coinage, education—in fact, on every practical subject about which persons need ready and accurate information. Its statistics can be relied on as trustworthy. It is preceded by a short “History of Almanacs,” in which Mr. Spofford enumerates several that have appeared of late years, though he has forgotten to mention theIllustrated Catholic Family Almanac, now in its tenth year. This, we presume, was an oversight; for, if we are not mistaken, it has been a guide to some of the statisticians in Washington with regard to the statistics of Catholic colleges and institutions of learning conducted by Catholics.