HOSTILE CONGRESSES.
Among the many means employed to attack the Pope were certain Congresses which were held successively at Turin, Florence, Naples, Milan, Genoa and Venice. These Congresses were calledscientific, and did actually treat of the natural sciences and economic studies; but their true purpose was to afford a forum for the expression of the views of Young Italy, and of hatred to the Holy See. Gregory XVI. perceived the real intent of these assemblies and forbade their holding in Rome, a refusal which excited the protestations of the conspirators who did not hesitate to proclaim him an enemy of progress and enlightenment.
ACCESSION OF PIUS IX.
Gregory XVI. died in 1846 and was succeeded by Cardinal Giovanni Mastai-Ferretti, Archbishop of Spoleto who took the name of Pius IX. The proclamation of the election was marked in Rome by indescribable enthusiasm. He was hailed as a savior from the severe rule of this predecessor, and even Young Italy pretended to see in him a fosterer of their republican intentions. The future indeed looked inviting to the young Pope, who nevertheless, could not but see the darkness that hid the horizon from view. The Revolution continued its work. Despite the ovations of his people, despite the plaudits of the nations and their governments, Pius IX. was made to feel that the storm was at hand. At the same time while he felt the obligation of defending the rights of the Church with courage, he determined to make all reasonable concessions, and to accord as much liberty as his conscience might permit. For a month he debated with himself and his councillors upon the advisability of granting an amnesty to prisoners confined during the reign of Gregory XVI. The cardinals with certain personal experiences to guide them refused to accede to the demand for such amnesty, but the Holy Father in his solicitude for peace, granted the request actuated by the revolutionaries. All the political prisoners and exiles were amnestied on the condition of recognizing the Supreme Pontiff as their legitimate king, and of serving him as loyal subjects. All signed the contract, some going so far in their protestations of affection and loyalty as to arouse suspicion in the minds of some very practical ecclesiastics. Popular satisfaction manifested itself in enthusiastic fetes and dithyrambic felicitations.
GENEROUS DISPOSITIONS OF THE HOLY FATHER.
The amnesty was followed by other marks of generosity on the part of the new Pope. On April 19, 1847, the Holy Father gave to Rome a strong municipal organization; the State had its two chambers, its civic guard, an electoral law, a juris-consult, and a council of ministers. According to the new order of things laymen were permitted to enter the Council of His Holiness.
GREGORY XVI.GREGORY XVI.
The whole world applauded; but the revolutionists were disappointed and prepared for a decisive blow. It looked for only one thing—the overthrow of the Papacy. Pius IX. had done much in reforming the administration, in laicising it to a reasonable degree, in providing forall the popular needs, in creating asylums for the afflicted, schools for the children, and retreats for the poor; but the fall of the Pope was decreed, and Rome began to fill up with members of the secret societies, evangelical societies, Bible societies, all of whom worked together with implacable perseverance. Inspired by the perfidious and meddlesome English agents, they clamored for a larger liberty of the press, and for a greater national representation. Full liberty of the press was accorded, March 15, 1847, and journalism began immediately its work of destruction.
EIGHTEEN HUNDRED AND FORTY-EIGHT.
The year 1848 came. The situation throughout all Southern Europe wore a foreboding aspect. The king of Naples was menaced by a revolution; Venice was in the midst of an insurrection; Piedmont was at war with Austria; Hungary had arisen and driven the Emperor Ferdinand from his capital; and the July Revolution was just beginning in Paris. It was then that Rome re-echoed with the sound of revolution. Demagoguesbesieged the Vatican, and mobs yelled for impossible demands, to all of which Pius IX. was forced to answer: "Non possumus." His minister Rossi was assassinated on the steps of the Assembly, and the gentle Mgr. Palma was shot as he stood near a window of the Quirinal Palace. The next day, November 16, the Quirinal was invaded; Rome was in the hands of the mob. Even the Holy Father yielded for the sake of peace, and signed the list of a new cabinet.
When Europe learned of this, it concluded that the Pope, deprived of his liberty had signed a document which was null. The Constituent Assembly at Paris reproached in severe terms the actions of the Roman mob.
FLIGHT OF THE POPE.
Finally on November 24, 1848, the Holy Father, realizing that he was a prisoner of an infuriated revolutionary crowd, determined to escape as soon as possible from Rome and seek asylum elsewhere. His release was effected through the strategy of the Duke of Harcourt. In company with Count de Spaur, the Bavarian ambassador, he contrived to ride incognito through the lines of sentinels around the Quirinal and about the city walls, and set out for Gaeta, where he arrived after some days. Here he was received with cordial welcome by the King of Naples, under whose filial care the Holy Father passed two years of exile.
In the meantime Mazzini had fastened his yoke upon the City of the Popes. Clubs were formed here and there. The Circolo Populare directed by Bonaparte Canino named a governmental junta, a sort of provisional government. Mazzini himself hid behind the scenes and directed the movements of the figures.
GARIBALDI.
At that time there arrived from South America a personage who was to play a serious part in the final spoliation of the Holy See. This was the infamous Giuseppe Garibaldi, who was born at Nice, July 4, 1807. He was a conspirator from the beginning. As a young man he had conducted a practice of piracy with the Moroccan savages, after which he went to South America. The European insurrections of 1848 awakened the old passion for turbulence and disorder in his brain, and he hastened back to Italy. He came to Rome in the very moment of republican triumph.
GARIBALDI.GARIBALDI.
On February 5, 1849, the Roman Parliament held a session in the Capitol. After a discourse pronouncedby Armelini, the Prince de Canino arose and cried out "Viva la Republica!" In a moment Garibaldi was on his feet and added: "We are losing time in vain ceremonies. Let us hasten our work." His words were repeated everywhere. By a decree of February 9, it was declared that the Papacy had actually and legally lost the government of the Roman States; that the Roman Pontiff, however, would have all the guarantees necessary for independence in the exercise of his spiritual power, that the form of government of the Roman State would be democratic pure and simple, and would be known as the Roman Republic.
Mazzini, the soul of the conspiracy, remained its dictator despite the nomination of a triumvirate. Garibaldi was charged by him to guard the Roman frontier against the operations of the Neapolitans. Rome itself was delivered up to all the horrors of anarchy. The European Powers intervened, and France sent under the walls of Rome, General Oudinot with a corps of the army.
During the first days of the siege Garibaldi gained over the French a slight advantage which gained for him the title of General.
One of the first acts of the exiled Pope at Gaeta was to issue a proclamation addressed to his subjects. Therein he expressed the hope that his misguided subjects would repent of their conduct toward him. But seeing that they were every day proceeding from one excess to another, he felt constrained to appeal against them to that supreme power of which he was the depository, and to arm himself with the spiritual sword which Jesus Christ had placed in the hand of His earthly Vicar. Therefore, he pronounced the decree of excommunication against all those who had taken an active part in the Revolution. Then, as if in sorrow for the righteous severity, to which he was obliged to have recourse, andof the just defence which he had to make for the rights of the Church, he promised mercy and pardon to all who should give evidence of repentance.
His words, however, fell upon deaf ears. Mazzini was still in power. Atrocities of the most horrible type disgraced the streets of Rome, Imola, Ancona and Loretto. The clergy were persecuted and some of them strangled. Indeed, the triumvirs made use of fallen priests to celebrate the sacred ceremonies. It was then that the Catholic nations began to attest their veneration for the exile of Gaeta. France sent pressing offers of hospitality. Spain, Portugal, Austria, Bavaria, even Prussia and Russia offered their aid towards his restoration.
ROME IS TAKEN BY PAPAL ALLIES.
It was finally to France that he owed the glory of his return. While the Austrians were advancing through the Legations, the French army under Oudinot, Duke of Reggio, entered Rome after a siege of twenty-six days. At the end of June, 1849, the city finally capitulated, and General Oudinot proclaimed the restoration of the Pontifical sovereignty. On April 12, 1850, the Holy Father took possession of the City. An amnesty was granted, but with certain exclusions, among them being the triumvirs, the military chiefs and the members of the provisional government.
On December 8, 1854, Pope Pius IX proclaimed the dogma of the Immaculate Conception, which was received in all Catholic lands with a concert of acclamations. But this triumph of Mary was only like a symbol of hope before the approaching storm whose mutterings could already be heard in the distance.
When Pius IX had returned from Gaeta, the secret societies made a solemn oath that they would yet obtain possession of Rome. Not content with wishing to deliverItaly from foreign domination, they held up before the Italian people the illusory hope of becoming, through the defeat of the Papacy, the first nation of Europe. To attain this end it was necessary not only that the States should unite in one solid confederation, but that they should constitute one kingdom the government of which should be confided to the princes of the House of Savoy, to be held at the discretion of the sectaries. Their method consisted in spreading broadcast calumnies against the Holy See, in discrediting in Austria the House of Hapsburg which had been the last in Europe to shield the Papacy with the sword of the Holy Roman Empire, and in assuring the hypocritical neutrality of Napoleon III., who had ascended the throne only to be their supple instrument. Then they would place the King of Piedmont and Sardinia, Victor Emmanuel, upon the conquered throne of United Italy, first in the North and South, and finally in the Eternal City itself.
CONSPIRACY AGAINST THE HOLY SEE.
In fact, the first attacks upon the temporal power of the Pope came from the sectaries abroad. In the Congress of Paris, just after the Crimean War, the ministers of France, Sardinia and England formulated against the Papal States certain accusations, which they hastened to make public. Therein they declared the government of the Pope to be the most retrograde and perverse of the age. The Minister of Piedmont, Cavour, already dreaming of the unification of Italy, placed in the hands of the French and English ministers a verbal note in which he outlined a scheme for the expropriation of the Papal States. The note had no immediate effect, but combining with other hostile expressions against the Holy See, it was the signal of the storm which was about to burst upon the Church.
POPE PIUS IX.POPE PIUS IX.
Piedmont had become a veritable hot-bed of liberalismand irreligion. The government had ceased to respect its concordats with the Holy See. It had violated the rights of the churches, and had established itself as absolute judge in matters purely religious. The Archbishopof Turin was banished and died in exile for having spoken in reproof of these unwarranted usurpations. The Bishop of Cagliari was obliged to leave his diocese. The encroachments of the civil government went from bad to worse; the property of the churches was confiscated, the religious orders persecuted, and a general reign of iniquity inaugurated.
In thus abandoning itself to the spirit of revolution, Piedmont went far in the way of iniquity. Under the pretext of working for the independence of Italy, its real design was to subjugate the whole land and make all its princes tributary. In fact, the history of the formation of the Kingdom of Italy is the history of all the treasons, corruptions, and turpitudes that one can imagine. The records of Europe contain nothing more high-handed or shameful. The Piedmontese Government, at once astute and brutal, secretly arousing the people by its paid emissaries, and then invading territories with violence; shamefully dissimulating the manoeuvres of its ambition, and their unmasking its projects with cynical audacity; scorning equally the rights of the people and the anathemas of the Church; recoiling before no means of corruption, and purchasing everything even military honor; insulting after its victories those whom it had surprised and defeated, not by the superiority of courage or skill, but by the aid of lying, treason, and the force of numbers; boasting of having yielded to the will of the peoples whose territory it was invading, and whose will it was forcing by the most odious of martial laws. It was the Piedmontese, Cialdini, who gave orders to shoot without mercy those peasants who were faithful to their King, the Pope, to religion and to country. It was Pinelli who said: "We must crush the sacerdotal Vampire, the vicar, not of Christ, but of Satan." It was he who called for fire and sword, an inexorable revenge against the Papacy and the Church. Other likesavages were Fantoni and Fumel, an Italian deputy speaking of them from the tribune said: "The proclamations of Cialdini and the other Piedmontese leaders are worthy of Tamerlane, Ghengeskhan and Attila."
In consequence of these barbarous orders, butchery was the order of the day. Priests, magistrates, women, mothers, were imprisoned and shot. On one occasion thirteen citizens were burned alive. Fourteen towns were set on fire and their inhabitants pursued and shot down. At Pontelandolfo thirty unhappy women who had taken refuge under the shelter of a cross were savagely massacred. Ancona was bombarded, and then Capua, and then Gaeta.
In that unholy war France hitherto the protectrix of the Church forgot her past. It is true she redeemed herself at Castelfidardo and at Mentana, giving to Pius IX her most generous blood; but she was powerless to prevent the consummation of the most perfidious and iniquitous acts of the nineteenth century.
Cavour recognized in Napoleon III., the French Emperor, a worthy accomplice. The two statesmen met at Plombieres and there decided to declare war against Austria. In the treaty of Zurich, concluded November 10, 1859, it was decided that Italy should be formed into one confederation under the honorary presidency of the Pope.
But hardly had the treaty been signed than Piedmont disregarded it by commencing a series of invasions, thanks to the silence of France and the influence of England. Pius IX protested in an allocution, reproving those acts of rebellion accomplished against the power and sovereignty of the Holy See.
HYPOCRISY OF NAPOLEON III.
In the midst of these events there appeared a pamphlet entitled: "The Pope and the Congress," which publicopinion attributed to Napoleon III. Therein, the author, posing as a pious and sincere Catholic, gave his adhesion to what had been done and counselled the separation of the province of Romagna. Napoleon finding that his trick was discovered wrote a hypocritical letter to the Holy Father.
At the same time Victor Emmanuel pursued his projects of annexation. After a vote manipulated by Cavour, Tuscany, Modena, Parma and the Romagnas were confiscated to the Piedmontese government. On March 26, 1860, Pius IX issued a Bull of excommunication against the usurpers and against all who had participated therein whether by counsel or by action. Without being named directly the King of Piedmont and Napoleon III. were the objects of the censure. The two accomplices thereupon threw aside all reserve and hastened to direct operations.
As the price of his complicity Napoleon III. obtained Nice and Savoy, in March, 1860. Only two States of Italy remained to be conquered, those of Naples (Italy) and the Holy See. The Revolution intoxicated with success, set to work to gain these two prizes. A revolt in Sicily served as a pretext. An Italian bandit, Garibaldi, favored by England, obtained control of Sicily; then Naples was delivered to the cause of Victor Emmanuel by treason and sacrilege. Francis II., its King, was forced to shut himself up in Gaeta. At the same time Cialdini, a creature of Victor Emmanuel, invaded the Papal territory, and brought his Piedmontese army against the forces of the Pontifical troupes, commanded by the gallant Lamoriciere. This brutal aggression aroused such indignation in France and in Europe, that the French government felt itself bound to remonstrate with Piedmont. The latter government, however, paid no attention to the remonstrance, butcontinued its invasion. All the Catholic countries of Europe sent to the Holy Father the elite of their young men, and a gallant army of Papal Zouaves was soon under arms, ready to shed its blood for the cause of the Church.
Piedmont, under the silent and inactive eye of France, crushed that army on September 18, 1860. A few days later Ancona capitulated, and the Marches and Umbria were lost to the Holy See. In the South, Francis II. was still enclosed in Gaeta; Cialdini hastened thither and laid siege to the town. The King defended himself bravely, but at length, February 13, 1861, was obliged to yield and retired to Rome.
USURPATIONS OF VICTOR EMMANUEL.
At length, through robbery and brigandage, Victor Emmanuel, in February, 1861, took the title of King of Italy, which Europe had the weakness to recognize. The moment seemed propitious to make the Rome of the Popes the capital of the new kingdom; Garibaldi tried to effect it, but was shamefully defeated at Aspromonte and forced to retreat. On September 15, 1864, took place the famous Convention, whereby Piedmont agreed to respect what remained of the Pontifical Kingdom, while France withdrew her forces from the Papal States.
The promise of Piedmont was illusory, and deceived no one. Garibaldi marched almost immediately on Rome with six thousand revolutionaries. Happily he was overtaken by Captain Costes, who commanded 388 horsemen, and this delay, although only twenty-six hours, saved the city for that time. The bands of Garibaldians were again defeated by the troops of Saussier and de Charette, at Mentana, November 3, 1867.
From that time until 1870, the power of France maintained the Pope on his throne. But when the Prussianwar broke out, Napoleon recalled his troops to the number of 5000; he needed them, he said, for the defence of France in her danger. Nothing now could oppose the Piedmontese. The Court of Florence at once sent 60,000 men, commanded by a renegade, General Caderna, who arrived before Rome in September. The whole Papal force amounted to scarcely 10,000, so that resistance became practically impossible. The Holy Father, nevertheless, went through the form of resistance. The enemy was obliged to force its way through a breach in the wall at Porta Pia, and entered Rome thus on September 20, 1870.
FALL OF ROME.
The same evening Cardinal Antonelli, the Papal Secretary of State, sent a circular of protest to all the civilized governments. It met, however, with silence, except in one instance. The Republic of Equador, through its President, the heroic Garcia Moreno, sent a message of sympathy, so full of courage and loyalty as to call forth the admiration and affection of Pius IX.
In order to give an appearance of decency to his usurpation, and to throw dust into the eyes of the European governments, Victor Emmanuel caused a plebiscite to be taken at Rome. This pretence of a popular vote called out only 40,000 names, most of which belonged to soldiers of the invading army. A law of guarantees was also published, whereby the person of the Pope was declared sacred and inviolable; the honors of sovereignty were to be maintained by him; he was to possess the Vatican Palace, the Lateran, and the country palace at Castel Gandolfo, besides an annual indemnity of 3,225,000 francs, which was naturally refused. There was also a guarantee of full liberty for future conclaves and ecumenical councils. Only one thing wascertain under all the guarantees: that the usurpers would have their way in any case.
After the taking of Rome by the Piedmontese, Pius IX shut himself up in the Vatican from which he was never to go forth alive. There he died, February 7, 1878. Victor Emmanuel, who had fixed his Court at the Quirinal, lived only until January 9, 1878.
ACCESSION OF LEO XIII.
The new Pope, Leo XIII., a native ofCarpinetti, of the family of the Pecci, was one fitted to guide the bark of Peter in the trying circumstances in which he found it. The law of guarantees apparently in force could be said to shield the person of the Holy Father only because he gave no opportunity for its infringement. As a prisoner in the Vatican he could not easily come into conflict with the radical elements of the City who would show him scant courtesy did he choose to appear in the public streets, notwithstanding the law of guarantees.
In fact the temper of the mob has betrayed itself on more than one occasion. On the night of July 12, 1881, as the remains of the late Pope Pius IX were being borne to their last resting place in the cemetery of San Lorenzo. The event was made the occasion of rowdyism unimpeded by any surveillance on the part of the government authorities. As the funeral cortege moved along, the chorus of mockery and insult was raised on all sides. The police did nothing to silence the disturbers. Encouraged by this tolerance the mob went still farther. Insults were succeeded by threats. Then followed violence; stones were hurled and blows rained upon the members of the cortege. The faithful followed piously chanting the Miserere or reciting the Rosary, while the enemy howled the Garibaldian song. In the Piazza dei Termi the crowd hurled showers ofstones. The attending prelates were insulted, threatened with death, and struck upon the face. The faithful gathered around the funeral car determined to resent the profanations of the savage mob. It was only when the Church of San Lorenzo was reached that the police at length thought fit to intervene. The danger was then over, and the funeral obsequies proceeded in comparative peace.
LEO XIII. AND LABOR.
The true genius of the prisoner of the Vatican began first to manifest itself in his attitude towards the Knights of Labor in the States of America and Canada. Cardinal Taschereau of Quebec, and the Canadian prelates, as well as some prelates of the extreme party in the United States had almost secured the condemnation of this great labor organization by the Sacred Congregation at Rome. This body, it was claimed, was constituted somewhat after the model of Freemasonry; it had its secrets hidden from the outside world, and it had likewise a code of signs and passwords known only to the initiated. Catholics numbered largely among its members, and for this reason it was considered that the characteristics of this organization were those of a secret society which brought it under the ban of the Church.
POPE LEO XIII.POPE LEO XIII.
But for the Pope the condemnation of the Knights of Labor by the Sacred Congregation would no doubt have been pronounced. Freemasonry, with its stupendous oaths and its invocations of dire and dreadful penalties in case of the violation of such oaths, with its liturgical services and elaborate ceremonial—not to mention Continental Freemasonry with its factional political policy and aims—was an altogether different thing from the constitution and workings of the society known as the Knights of Labor. The avowed object of the Knightsof Labor was the right of the laborer to a voice in determining the price at which he should part with his labor. It had no suggestion of anything revolutionary or anti-Christian. To have condemned this particular organization would have meant the condemnation of labor unionism everywhere.
Leo had already shown his sympathy for the workingman in many an expression of marked significance. His unconcealed admiration for much of what was characteristically American made him glad of the opportunity to pronounce officially in favor of this great organization of American workingmen.
The Encyclical which followed in 1891 made glad the sons of Labor throughout the world, and gave satisfaction to all democratic communities. Some of the sentences may well be quoted here: "The customs of working by contract, and the concentration of so many branches of trade in the hands of a few individuals, have brought about a condition of things by means of which a very small number of rich men have been able to lay upon the masses of the laboring poor a yoke little better than slavery itself.... Is it that the fruit of a man's own sweat and labor should be possessed by someone else?... If the workman has to accept harder conditions because the employer will not grant him better, he is the victim of force and injustice." Sentiments like these had been expressed by other writers and other teachers, but coming from such a quarter and at such a time, they powerfully influenced the minds of the working classes, and won a regard for the Pope which has not died with his death. Even so great an aristocrat as Dr. Moorehouse, the Protestant Bishop of Melbourne, later of Manchester, in speaking of the Pope's Encyclical, said: "He shows a spirit very vast, a great depth of knowledge and a foresight most sagacious." Barres, the celebratedFrench Socialist, said: "Let the Pope go on, and democracy will no longer see an enemy in the priest."
President Cleveland recognized the Pope's spirit by sending him a bound copy of the American Constitution, to which his Holiness graciously replied, and added these words: "In your country men enjoy liberty in the true sense of the word, guaranteed by that Constitution of which you have sent me a copy. The character of the President rouses my most genuine admiration." The Pope's recognition of the French Republic was part of his policy of conciliation, and gained for the Church many practical benefits in France.
Leo XIII. died peacefully on July 20, 1903. He was succeeded by Cardinal Joseph Sarto, patriarch of Venice, a native of Riese near Padua in Northern Italy, where he was born June 2, 1835. He was ordained to the priesthood September 18, 1858; was made Bishop of Mantua November 10, 1884; Cardinal and Patriarch of Venice in June, 1893; and finally Pope, taking the name of Pius X. on August 4, 1903.
ACCESSION OF PIUS X.
Pope Pius X. came to his inheritance in a time of fearful storm and stress. The war on religion was already far advanced in France, and its mutterings were beginning to be heard in other States. But the new Pope, putting his trust in Him Whose Vicar he was, placed before himself the sublime mission of restoring all things in Christ.
His reign of seven years has already been signalized by an extraordinary virility, and a care for all in the Church. His encyclicals are marked by their timeliness and practical character. In 1906, his eyes as they surveyed the new direction of anti-Christianism, that modern refinement of error, detected its features in the movement to which he gave the name of Modernism. This systemcondemned by him as the synthesis of all heresies, is the destruction of the idea of Christian doctrine by the theoretical or practical subordination of Catholicism to the modern spirit. The modern world, with its ideas, its customs, its needs, Modernism tells us, is an imposing fact; no power, not even the Church, can arrest its progress; it is therefore necessary to prevent the Church, intimately allied as it is with the life of modern society, from falling into ruin; it must transform its doctrines, and make them harmonize with the needs of a new age. The ideas of the Catholic faith ought to progress like the ideas of philosophy and the profane sciences. Such is the contention of the Modernists.
MODERNISM.
They forget that the Catholic also can have modern ideas and can draw profit for himself from all that is commendable in modern progress. But at the same time the Church is actually in possession of a deposit of faith infinitely true and intangible, coming as it does from divine Truth itself, and being true it cannot undergo such changes as are signified by the word evolution. But the adaptations which this modern spirit would demand of her are nothing more than an evolution, and would mean the abandonment of her Gospel, her dogmas, her supernatural life—in a word of herself.
The condemnation of Modernism naturally aroused the anger of its votaries. It had already gained to itself many men of prominence such as Schell in Germany, Fogazzaro in Italy, Loisy in France, and Tyrrell in England, all of whom made desperate endeavors to offset the effect of the Papal condemnation. But the efforts of the Holy Father were successful; Modernism has lost its prestige as a system, and men now that they are warned of its true character are quickly abandoning its influences.
THE METHODISTS IN ROME.
An incident which created considerable excitement both in Europe and America was the visit of ex-President Roosevelt to Rome in April, 1910. While Mr. Roosevelt was yet in Egypt on his way homeward, he sent a telegram to Mr. Leishman, the American Ambassador in Rome, requesting that official to arrange for an audience with the Holy Father. It was only shortly before that Mr. Fairbanks, the former Vice-President, had been refused an audience because of his expressed determination to visit and address the Methodist establishment in the Via Venti Settembre, an institution hostile and insulting to the Papacy and the Catholic Church.
Just as the desire of Mr. Roosevelt became known to the Vatican, it was also ascertained that strenuous efforts were being made by the Methodists to secure the presence of the ex-President at a public gathering. They had enlisted the services of Mr. Leishman to this end, and as Mr. Roosevelt had not declined the invitation, it became necessary to ascertain that he would not accept it before being invited to an audience at the Vatican. The arrangements for the audience were being made through Rt. Rev. Thomas F. Kennedy, D. D., titular bishop of Indianapolis and rector of the American College, but the ex-President refused to say that he would not accept the invitation of the Methodists, and thus the audience was cancelled. The incident was a sad reflection upon the good judgment of Mr. Roosevelt, who should have known the character of the Roman Methodist concern and what it meant to the Holy See; that it was an insult to the Holy Father, and to millions of his fellow-citizens.
SITUATION IN ROME TODAY.
On September 20 of last year, the fortieth anniversary of the breach of Porta Pia, an incident took place whichbetrayed the real character of Italian anti-clericalism. It was on that day forty years before that the Pope was deprived not only of his temporal dominions but even of his liberty. The Vatican became as a little rock, in the midst of a stormy sea whose waves lashed it incessantly. Since 1870 no Pope has ever left the Vatican alive. Even the dead remains of Pope Pius IX. could not be carried through the streets without molestations. This fact made it evident last year that the remains of Leo XIII. could not be brought safely from their temporary resting place to their tomb in St. John Lateran. To avoid all similar trouble Pius X. has chosen for his last resting place the crypt of St. Peter's.
In the beginning of the Piedmontese occupation excessive care was taken to show a good face before the world. The politicians and political measures of the new government were at least moderate. But as time went on the enemies of the Church became emboldened in their hostility. The confiscations of the early eighties encouraged the spirit of unbelief and outrage which was embedded by evil example in the minds of a new generation.
THE INSULT OF MAYOR NATHAN.
In 1889, the votaries of every manner of disorder, intellectual, religious, and social, celebrated the reign of anarchy by the unveiling, in the Campo dei Fiori, of a statue of Giordano Bruno, an apostate monk, who has thus become the patron of anti-Christianism in Rome. Every year thenceforth the anniversary of the taking of Rome has been made the occasion of insult and defamation against the Holy See and the Catholic religion. Last year, Nathan, the Jewish Mayor of Rome, carried effrontery to its extreme. In a speech delivered on the occasion of the 20th September he hurled abuse, calumny and insult upon the Holy See in a manner to call for protestsfrom even the anti-clerical forces of the City. The Holy Father himself uttered a vigorous protest, which met with responsive sympathy from every part of the Catholic world. In Montreal, especially, a mighty meeting of twenty thousand Catholics voiced their indignation in the name of that Catholic city. Its effectiveness is evident from the fact that it forced a speedy though very lame explanation from Nathan himself, whose letter showed both his ignorance and his lack of acquaintance with the elementary notions of good breeding.
POPE PIUS X.POPE PIUS X.
CHARACTER OF PIUS X.
Pius X. shines as an exemplar of indomitable Christian Faith, confronting the infidelity of a modern world. He has the faith of Leo I., which stopped the march of Attila against Rome; the unwavering courage of Gregory VII., who died in exile but triumphed after his death over his enemies. The crises which he faces are not new,and he meets them with the old weapons of supernatural manufacture which have proved to be the most effective against the enemies of the Church in all the ages which have passed. He is the true diplomat relying not on earthly defences, but on the promises of Christ to His Church.
The Latin statesmen who are opposed to him have found an impregnable barrier to their sinister designs. They may exult in a cheap, temporary triumph, but they have set loose to attain it the forces of disorder, and they will reap in time the deadly fruitage of their ill-advised plotting against the rights of the Church.
The Church ever triumphs. It is strange that these masters of a day do not learn a lesson from the history of the past. They are blinded by present power and position, and seek to accomplish what greater than they have failed to achieve.
Meanwhile, Pius X. serenely carries on the government of the Universal Church. He is unmoved by the clamors of politicians in high places, and quietly steers his course, unmindful of their threats, but calmly confident in the protection of a higher power.
He is an inspiration to the Catholics of the world. But especially to Americans, who like fair play and admire devotion to a high ideal. He is an exemplar whom they venerate and love. They admire his consistency and single-minded devotion to the interests of the Church which he guards. They are impressed by his courage and simple faith. In the face of the trying difficulties which beset him on every side they commend his calm faith in the ultimate triumph of right, and his serene confidence in the victory of justice.
The enemies opposed to him are powerful and resourceful; but the brave stand against them made by him and his Secretary of State elicit the sympathy of all trueAmericans who love the right and adhere to it despite the temporary prestige of those who are opposed to it.
The hope of all Catholics is that the reign of Pius X. may be prolonged until he may reap the reward of his labors for the independence and liberty of the Church. But in every event they feel assured that the blessed result will be attained, if not in the lifetime of the present illustrious Pontiff, at least in the years to come as a blessed heritage of the intrepid Pius X.
At present the position of the Church is one of great difficulty. Represented as Rome is in Parliament by deputies who are all hostile to the Church, she has little to expect in the way of courtesy or justice. The law of guarantees which holds the person and good name of the Sovereign Pontiff inviolable, offers in fact but little security in the time of need. There are, indeed, hopes that a better era is opening up; that the people are beginning to look clearly upon the illusory promises of men whose only interest is their own elevation and power. If this hope is realized the Church may again breathe more freely, and the Holy Father may hope for some little release from the worries that constantly assail him.
THE CAUSES.
Looking into the history of the times just preceding the Kulturkampf, and the nature of the events transpiring during its progress, among the causes may be enumerated the following: 1, the liberalism of the rationalists; 2, the liberalism of certain pseudo-Catholics; 3, the desire for Protestant ascendancy; 4, the hatred of ultramontainism as incarnated in the "Old Catholic" sect; and 5, the determination of Caesarism to reduce all religion in Germany to the domination of the State.
THE RATIONALISTS.
Emanuel Kant, and then Hegel and his disciples, had opened the way to unrestricted rationalism. They taught that religion was only an inferior form of "the idea," which "idea" formed its truth only in the "superior form" of philosophy. In 1833 Frederick Richter, a disciple of Hegel, denied the immortality of the soul, declaring the doctrine the cause of every evil. In 1835, another Hegelian, Strauss, denied the divinity of Christ. In 1837, Richard Rothe wrote a book to demonstrate that the Gospel would triumph only when all churches and religious societies were exterminated from the face of the earth.
This species of philosophy, by denying the immortality of the soul, the divinity of Christ, and the value of the Church, reduced all religion to a vague form without any fixed or determinate existence. But, after all, what did Hegel and his disciples mean by religion? It is difficult to give an answer when one examines his works, barbarous as they are in style, and more nebulous in their conceptions than these of any other German writer. Nevertheless out of his misty speculations one can thus formulate his conception of religion: "Religion is only a creation, a phantasm of the mind of man, who adores a god whom he himself has formed to his own image; so that divine nature is only human nature idealized, unconfined, and then considered as a real and personal being."
From this principle which denied God, by confounding Him with man, and reducing all religion to simple philanthropy, Feuerbach deduced the theory that all theology was founded upon anthropology; that God was man, and that the love of God meant merely the love of man. Thus German philosophy had arrived at mystical atheism and was turning rapidly to open paganism with its denial of Christianity. This doctrine was preached by Stirner and by Gaspar Schmidt, who esteemed egoism as something sacred, and began to advocate revolution and anarchy.
Side by side with the school of Hegel was that of Tubingen, the head and master of which was Ferdinand Christian Baur (died in 1860). Baur had written, in 1835, a work on Gnosticism, which suggested many of the errors of Renan, and ten years later another work on St. Paul, of which Renan made much use when after denying the divinity of Christ, he wished also to deny the sanctity of Paul. Baur had once attempted to answer Moehler's monumental work, that "Symbolism" which exposed the contradictions of Protestantism and the constant doctrine of the Church.
Under the leadership of Baur, the School of Tubingen rejected the Gospel of St. John, the whole theme of which is the divinity of Christ.
While the philosophers of Tubingen and other German universities were thus assailing the divine foundations of Christianity, another class of writers, Moleschott, Büchrer, Vogt, Löwenthal, and many Protestants, were turning to naturalism and atheistic materialism, the consequences of Hegelianism. The materialistic school, which was socialistic in politics, atheistic in religion, realistic in literature, had the impudence to present itself as the savior of society.
It would have mattered little had these various systems been compelled to rely upon their un-Christian apostles for support; but the pity was that men who pretended to believe in Christianity, in the Bible, in revelation only too often listened with favor to their teachings and applauded them. Thus it was that by the time of the French War of 1870, the Protestant mind of Germany was deeply infected with rationalistic ideas, so far at least as to render it unfit to understand even the primary principles of Christianity. Under such conditions it is easy to perceive how the teachings of Catholicity, resting firmly upon the Gospels and drawing their vigor from the divinity of its Founder, could prove a very eyesore to a misguided generation.
In Germany, in the course of the nineteenth century, until 1870, the Church suffered from a weak-kneed policy of many on whom she thought she could rely. The poison of Frebonianism was never quite eradicated, and made itself manifest from time to time in various wild disorders. Wessenberg and Dalberg strove to supplant the authority of the Holy See with a national church. Efforts were made to abolish clerical celibacy, to establish a new ritual, to inflate Catholic doctrine with a certainheretical mysticism, to destroy Catholic devotion and loyalty by means of Rongeism. These and a hundred similar movements were evidences of the continuing influence of old Frebonianism, suppressed in one place only to break out in another. And yet, if the disorders had merely confined themselves to such wild distortions of Catholic practices, it would have been only a matter of time to cause their ultimate disappearance. But it is a singular quality in such pseudo Catholic movements, that they lead their supporters insensibly to the region of absolute heresy. Indeed, as is the case with the Modernists of today, the votaries of these "advanced" Catholic notions are often actual pantheists and atheists, while proclaiming their loyalty to the Church and her teachings.
The liberal Catholic of Germany will have much to answer for when judged for his part in leading to the persecutions of the Church in that country. In the first part of the century his presence was noted everywhere, in the court, in the schools, and especially in the universities.