The revolutionary movement in Italy headed by Victor Emanuel has, step by step, trampled under foot every principle of religion, morality, and justice that stood between it and its goal. No pretext of the welfare of a people, even when based on truth, can ever make perfidy and treachery lawful, or furnish a covering of texture thick enough to hide from intelligent and upright minds so long and black a list of misdeeds as the Piedmontese subjugation of Southern Italy contains. “All iniquity of nations is execrable.” What is more, the catalogue of the crimes of this revolution is by no means filled, and, what is worse, the future forebodes others which, in their enormity, will cast those of its beginning into the shade. That the natural desire for unity among the Italian people might have been realized by proper and just means, had the religious, intelligent, and influential classes exerted themselves as they were in duty bound to do, there is little room for reasonable doubt. For it would be an unpleasant thing to admit that civilized society, after the action of nineteen centuries of Christianity, could find no way to satisfy a legitimate aspiration, except by a process involving the violation and subversion of those principles of justice, right, and religion for the maintenance and security of which human society is organized and established. It is indeed strange to see the Latin races, which accepted so thoroughly and for so long a period the true Christian faith, now everywhere subject to violent and revolutionary changes in their political condition. How is this to be reconciled with the fact that Christianity, in response to the primitive instincts of human nature, and in consonance with the laws which govern the whole universe, aims at, and actually brings about when followed, the greatest happiness of man upon earth while securing his perfect bliss hereafter? For so runs the promise of the divine Founder of Christianity: “A hundred-fold more in this life, and in the world to come life everlasting.”
What has beguiled so large a number of the people of Italy, once so profoundly Catholic, that now they should take up the false principles of revolution, should accept a pseudo-science, and unite with secret atheistical societies? How has it come to pass that a people who poured out their blood as freely as water in testimony and defence of the Catholic religion, whose history has given innumerable examples of the highest form of Christian heroism in ages past, now follows willingly, or at least submits tamely, to the dictation of leaders who are animated with hatred to the Catholic Church, and are bent on the extermination of the Christian faith, and with it of all religion?
Only those who can read in the seeds of time can tell whether such signs as these are to be interpreted as signifying the beginning of the apostasy of the Latin races from Christianity and the disintegration and ruin of Latin nations, or whether these events are to be looked upon as evidence of a latent capacity and a youthful but ill-regulated strength pointing out a transition to a new and better order of things in the future.
Judging from the antecedents of the men placed in political power by recent elections in Italy, and their destructive course of legislation, the former supposition, confining our thoughts to the immediate present, appears to be the more likely. It is not, therefore, a matter of surprise that Catholics of an active faith and a deep sense of personal responsibility feel uneasy at seeing things go from bad to worse in nations which they have been accustomed to look upon as pre-eminently Catholic. Nor is it in human nature for men of energetic wills and sincere feelings of patriotism to content themselves when they see the demagogues of liberty and the conspirators of atheistical secret societies coming to the front and aiming at the destruction of all that makes a country dear to honest men. Nowhere does the Catholic Church teach that the love of one’s country is antagonistic to the love of God; nor does the light of her faith allure to an ignoble repose, or her spirit render her members slaves or cowards.
Serious-minded men, before going into action, are wont to examine anew their first principles, in order to find out whether these be well grounded, clearly defined, and firm, and also whether there may not be some flaw in the deductions which they have been accustomed to draw from them. An examination of this kind is a healthy and invigorating exercise, and not to be feared when one has in his favor truth and honesty.
The idea of unity responds to one of the noblest aspirations of the soul, and wherever it exists free from all compulsion it gives birth to just hopes of true greatness. Would that the cry for unity were heard from the hearts of the inhabitants of the whole earth, and that the inward struggle which reigns in men’s bosoms, and the outward discord which prevails between man and man, between nations and nations, and between races and races, had for ever passed away!
Unity is the essence of the Godhead and the animating principle of God’s church; and wherever her spirit penetrates, there the natural desire for unity implanted in the human heart is intensified and universalized, and man seeks to give to it an adequate embodiment in every sphere of his activity. It was this natural instinct for unity guided by the genius of Catholicity that formed the scattered tribes of Europe of former days into nations, uniting them in a grand universal republic which was properly called Christendom. Who knows but, as there reigned, by the action of an overruling Providence, a political unity in the ancient world which paved the way for the introduction of Christianity, that so there may be in preparation a more perfect political unity of peoples and nations in the modern world to open the way for the universal triumph of Christianity?
But there is a wide difference between recognizing that political unity is favorable to the strength and greatness of nations and the spread and victory of Christianity, and the acceptance of the errors of a class of its promoters, the approval of their injustice, or a compromise with their crimes.
The actual question, therefore, is not concerning the union of the Italian people in one nation, or whether their present unity will be lasting, or revoked, or by internal weakness be dissolved, or shaped in some way for the better. But the actual and pressing question is, How can Italy be withdrawn from the designing men who have managed to get control over her political government under the cloak of Italian unity, and who are plainly leading her on towards a precipice like that of the French Revolution of 1789, to be followed by another of even more atrocious notoriety—that of 1871? He must be blind to the sure but stealthy march of events who does not see that, under the control of the present party at the head of the legislative power, Italy is rapidly approaching such a catastrophe. A few thousand frenzied men held and tyrannized over France in 1789; a greater number in Italy—which, like all Europe, is worm-eaten by secret societies—are only waiting for the spark to produce a more destructive explosion, when the character of their leaders and the more inflammable materials they have to work upon are considered.
There is running through all things, both good and evil, an unconquerable law of logic. What is liberalism on Sunday becomes license on Monday, revolutionism on Tuesday, internationalism on Wednesday, socialism on Thursday, communism on Friday, and anarchy on Saturday. He who only sees the battered stones made by the cannon fired against its walls when the Piedmontese soldiers entered into Rome by Porta Pia, sees naught. There are more notable signs than these to read for him who knows how to decipher them. In the invasion and seizure of the temporal principality of the head of Christ’s church, which had stood for centuries as the keystone of the Christian commonwealth, the independence of nations was overthrown, international law trampled under foot, and the sacred rights of religion sacrilegiously violated. It was then—let those who have ears to hear listen—that rights consecrated through long ages, and recognized by 200,000,000 of Catholics to-day, were broken in upon by the Piedmontese army; and yet men are found to wonder that the violation of these rights by the Italian revolutionary party should fire with indignation the souls of the faithful in all lands. But revolution will take its course; and so sure as the Piedmontese entered by Porta Pia into Rome and took possession, and held it until the present hour, so sure is it that the conspirators of the secret international societies will in turn get possession of Rome and do their fell work in the Eternal City. “They that sow wind, shall reap the whirlwind.”
Who foresaw, or anticipated, or even dreamed of the atrocities of the Commune in Paris of 1871? What happened at Paris in the reign of the Commune will pale in wickedness before the reign of the internationalists in Rome. As Paris represents the theatre of worldliness, so Rome is the visible sanctuary of religion. Corruptio optimi pessima.
Is there a man so simple or so ignorant of the temper and designs of the conspirators against civilized society in Europe, as well as in our own free country, who fancies that these desperate men will shrink from shaping their acts in accordance with their ulterior aims?
No one who witnessed the reception of Garibaldi in Rome in the winter of 1875 can doubt as to who holds the place of leader among the most numerous class of the population of Italy. The views of this man and the party to which he belongs are no secret. “The fall of the Commune,” he wrote in June, 1873, “is a misfortune for the whole universe and a defeat for ever to be regretted.... I belong to the internationals, and I declare that if I should see arise a society of demons having for its object to combat sovereigns and priests, I would enroll myself in their ranks.” It is only the well-officered, strictly disciplined, and large army of Victor Emanuel that hinders Garibaldi from hoisting the red flag of the Commune in Rome and declaring an agrarian republic in Italy. But how long will the Italian army, with the present radicals at the head of affairs, remain intact and free from demoralization?
The army is drawn from a population which the internationalists have penetrated and inoculated with their errors and designs, and their emissaries have been discovered tampering and fraternizing with the troops.
Who can tell how near is the hour when St. Peter’s will be officially declared the pantheon of red-republican Italy, and the statue of Garibaldi will be placed on the high altar where now stands the image of the Crucified God-Man? This will not be the end but the prelude to the final act of the present impending tragedy, when the black flag will be unfurled and the palaces of Rome, with St. Peter’s and the Vatican, and all their records of the past and centuries of heaped-up treasures of art, will be reduced by petroleum and dynamite to a shapeless heap of ruins. To those who can tell a hawk from a handsaw this is the hidden animus and the logical sequence of the entrance of the Piedmontese army into Rome. This is the real reading of the hand-writing on the walls of Porta Pia:
“Bloody instructions, which, being taught, return To plague the inventor. This even-handed justice Commends the ingredients of our poisoned chalice To our own lips.”
But is there not a sufficient number of conservatives in the present national party of Italy to stop the men now at the head of affairs before they reach their ultimate designs? Perhaps so; it would be pleasant to believe this. But the present aspect of affairs gives but little hope of this being true. These conservatives, who did not, or could not, or would not stop the spoliation of the property of the church and the trampling upon her sacred rights; these conservatives, who did not take measures to hinder the Italian radicals from possessing themselves of the legislative power of the present government and pursuing their criminal course—these are not the men to build one’s hopes upon in stemming the tide that is now sweeping Italy to her destruction. The dictates of common sense teach us to look to some other quarter for hopes of success.
How much of the present condition of the Latin peoples, politically, commercially, or socially considered, can be satisfactorily explained or accounted for on the score of climate, or on that of their characteristics as a race, or of the stage of their historical development, or of the change made in the channels of commerce in consequence of new discoveries, it is not our purpose to stop here to examine or attempt to estimate and decide. One declaration we have no hesitation in making at the outset, and that is: If the Latin nations are not in all respects at the present moment equal to others, it is due to one or more of the above-enumerated causes, and not owing, as some partisans and infidels would have the world believe, to the doctrines of their religious faith.
The Catholic Church affirms the natural order, upholds the value of human reason, and asserts the natural rights of man. Her doctrines teach that reason is at the basis of revelation, that human nature is the groundwork of divine grace, and that the aim of Christianity is not the repression or obliteration of the capacities and instincts of man, but their elevation, expansion, and deification.
The Catholic Church not only affirms the natural order, but affirms the natural order as divine. For she has ever held the Creator of the universe, of man, and the Author of revelation as one, and therefore welcomed cheerfully whatever was found to be true, good, and beautiful among all the different races, peoples, nations, and tribes of mankind. It is for this reason that she has merited from those who only see antagonism between God and man, between nature and grace, between revelation and science—who believe that “the heathen were devil-begotten and God-forsaken,” and “this world a howling wilderness”—the charge of being superstitious, idolatrous, and pagan.
The special mission of the people of Israel by no manner of means sets aside the idea of the directing care of divine Providence and the mission of other branches of the family of mankind. The heathens, so-called, were under, and are still under, the divine dispensation given to the patriarch Noe; and so that they live up to the light thus received, they are, if in good faith, in the way of salvation. The written law given by divine inspiration to Moses was the same as the unwritten law given to Noe and the patriarchs, and the patriarchal dispensation was the same as was received from God by Adam. There is no one rational being ever born of the human race who is not in some sort in the covenanted graces of God. It is the glory of the Catholic Church that she exists from the beginning, and embraces in her fold all the members of the human race; and of her alone it can be said with truth that she is Catholic—that is, universal both in time and space: replevit orbem terrarum.
Affirming the natural order and upholding it as divine, the Catholic Church did not hesitate to recognize the Roman Empire and the established governments of the world under paganism, and to inculcate the duty, “Render unto Cæsar the things that are Cæsar’s.” Hence she willingly accepted alliance with the Roman state when Constantine became a Christian, and approved, but with important ameliorations, the Roman code of laws; and of every form of government, whether monarchic or democratic, established among the Gentile nations of the past or by non-Christian peoples of the present, she acknowledges and maintains the divine right.
The great theologians of the church, after having eliminated the errors and supplied the deficiencies of the philosophy of Plato and Aristotle, accepted and employed their systems, and the labors of these “immortal heathens” have contributed no little to the glory of Christianity. It is to the labor of Christian monks that the world is indebted for what it possesses of the writings of the genius of the “heathen” poets, moralists, and other authors. It was the church’s custom to purify the heathen temples by her blessing, and transform their noble buildings, without altering their structure, into Christian temples. It was in the bosom of the Catholic populations of Italy that the revival of classical literature and art took its rise in modern Europe. Notwithstanding the extravagance of some of its votaries, which called forth the righteous indignation and condemnation of Savonarola, its refining influence, combined with the wealth due to industry and commerce, elevated the Italian cities to a height of civilization that has not been surpassed, if equalled, by the foremost nations of our day. When the ships of Spain covered every sea with commerce, and its activity broke through the confines of the known world and discovered, by the guiding genius of Columbus, a new continent; when it was said of Spain that the sun never set upon its realms; when Spain was most productive of great warriors, great statesmen, great artists, and great saints, it was then, and precisely because of it, that Spain was most profoundly and devoutly Catholic.
All the joys that spring from the highest intellectual and artistic culture, the happiness derived from man’s domestic and social affections, the gratification of the senses in the contemplation of the beauty of all creation, and the pleasure drawn from the fruits of industry and commerce—all these, when pure, are not only consistent with, but form a part of, the life and worship of the Catholic faith. The very last accusation for an intelligent man to make against the Catholic Church is that she teaches a “non-human” religion.
No political government, at least in modern times, has ventured to rely so far upon the natural ability of man to govern himself as that of the republic of the United States. It may be said that the government of this republic is founded upon man’s natural capacity to govern himself as a primary truth or maxim. It assumes the dignity of human nature, presupposes the value of man’s reason, and affirms his natural and inalienable rights.
These were declarations of no new truths, for they spring from right reason and the primitive instincts of human nature, and belong, therefore, to that natural order which had ever been asserted and defended by the great theologians and general councils of the Catholic Church. These truths underlie every form of political government founded in Catholic ages, correspond to the instincts of the people, and were only opposed by despots, Protestant theologians, and the erroneous doctrines concerning the natural order brought into vogue by the so-called Reformation.
Our American institutions, in the first place, we owe to God, who made us what we are, and in the next place to the Catholic Church, which maintained the natural order, man’s ability in that order, and his free will. Under God the founders of our institutions owed nothing to Englishmen or Dutchmen as Protestants, but owed all to the self-evident truths of reason, to man’s native instincts of liberty, to the noble traditions of the human race upheld by God’s church and strengthened by the conviction of these truths; their heroic bravery and their stout arms did the rest.
This is why Catholics from the beginning took an integral part in the foundation and permanent success of our republic. Among the most distinguished names attached to the document which first declared our national independence and affirmed the principles which underlie our institutions will be found one of the most intelligent, consistent, and fervent members of the Catholic Church. The priest who was first elevated to the episcopate of the Catholic hierarchy in the United States took an active part in its early struggles, and was the intimate friend of Benjamin Franklin and an associate of his on a mission to engage the Canadians to join in our efforts for independence.
The patriotism of Catholics will not suffer in comparison with their fellow-countrymen, as is witnessed by the public address of General Washington at Philadelphia immediately after the close of the war with England. And when they now come to our shores from other countries, it matters not what may have been the form of their native governments, they are at once at home and breathe freely the air of liberty.
Sincere Catholics are among our foremost patriotic citizens, and, whatever may befall our country, they will not be found among those who would divide her into factions, or who would contract her liberties, or seek to change the popular institutions inherited from our heroic forefathers. Catholic Americans have so learned their religion as to find in it a faithful ally and a firm support of both political and civil liberty.
Nowhere, on the other hand, does the Catholic Church reckon among her members more faithful, more fervent, and more devoted children than in the citizens of our republic. Everywhere the Catholic Church appears at the present moment under a cloud; there is only one spot in her horizon where there breaks through a bright ray of hope of a better future, and that is in the direction of our free and youthful country. What better test and proof of the Catholic Church’s sanction of the entire natural order can be asked than her unexampled prosperity in the American republic of the United States?
If the Latin peoples are backward in things relating to their political or material or social prosperity, or in any other respect, in the natural order, this is not to be laid to the charge of the Catholic faith. If the races are not wanting to her, the church will never be wanting to the races.
The force which is at work in the actual turmoil in Italy we are firmly convinced will renew the Catholic faith, and open up to its people—let us hope without their passing through a catastrophe feared by many, and not without grounds—a new and better future.
They are blind to the lesson which every page of the history of the Catholic Church teaches who indulge in the fancy that the Christ laden and guided bark of Peter will not ride safely through the present world-wide, threatening storm. As the fierce beating of the storm against the majestic oak fixes its roots more firmly in the soil and strengthens and expands its limbs, so by the attacks of calumny the militant church of Christ is made better known, by persecution she is strengthened, and the attempts at her overthrow prepare the way for new and more glorious triumphs.
The pages of history point out in other centuries dangers to the existence of the church equal to those of the present crisis, through which she passed with safety and renewed strength. A master-pen in word-painting has given a picture of one of those critical periods, all the more striking as the events which it portrays are within the memory of men still living, and also because the writer is famed for anything rather than Catholic leanings. “It is not strange,” he says, “that in the year 1799 even sagacious observers should have thought that at length the hour of the Church of Rome was come, an infidel power ascendant, the pope dying in captivity, the most illustrious prelates of France living in a foreign country on Protestant alms, the noblest edifices which the munificence of former ages have consecrated to the worship of God turned into temples of victory, or into banqueting houses for political societies, or into theophilanthropic chapels. Such signs might well be supposed to indicate the approaching end of that long domination. But the end was not yet. Again doomed to death, the milk-white hind was still fated not to die. Even before the funeral rites had been performed over the ashes of Pius VI. a great reaction had commenced, which, after the lapse of more than forty years, appears to be still in progress. Anarchy had had its day. A new order of things rose out of the confusion, new dynasties, new laws, new titles, and amidst them emerged the ancient religion. The Arabs have a fable that the Great Pyramid was built by antediluvian kings, and alone, of all the works of men, bore the weight of the Flood. Such as this was the fate of the Papacy: it had been buried under the great inundation, but its deep foundations had remained unshaken; and when the waters had abated it appeared alone amid the ruins of a world which had passed away. The republic of Holland was gone, the empire of Germany, and the great Council of Venice, and the old Helvetian League, and the house of Bourbon, and the parliaments and aristocracy of France. Europe was full of young creations—a French Empire, a kingdom of Italy, a Confederation of the Rhine. Nor had the late events affected only territorial limits and political institutions. The distribution of property, the composition and spirit of society, had, through great part of Catholic Europe, undergone a complete change. But the unchangeable church was still there.”[1]
Three centuries of protests against the idea of the church and of her divine authority have served to bring the question of the necessity of the church and the claims of her authority squarely before the minds of all men who think on religious subjects. So general was the belief in them before the rise of Protestantism that theological works, even the Sum of St. Thomas, did not contain what is now never omitted by theological writers: the “Tractatus de Ecclesia.” The violent protests of heresy, joined with the persecutions of the despotic power of the state, have ended in showing more clearly the divine institution of the church, and proving more conclusively her divine authority.
The idea of the church is a divine conception, and the existence of the church is a divine creation. The church as a divine idea lies hid in God, and was an essential part of his preconceived plan in the creation of the universe. Hence the error of those who consider the church as the creation of “an assembly of individual Christian believers”; or as the product of the state, as in Prussia, Russia, England, and other countries; or as the effort of a race, as Dean Milman maintains in his History of Latin Christianity; or as “the conscious organization of the moral and intellectual forces and resources of humanity for a higher life than that which the state requires.” Hence also the failure of all church-builders and inventors of new religions from the earliest ages down to the Luthers, Calvins, Henry VIIIs., Wesleys, Charles Foxes, Mother Ann Lees, Joe Smiths, Döllingers, and Loysons, et hoc genus omne. Poor weak-minded men! had they the slightest idea of what the church of God is, or had they not become blind to it, they would sooner pretend to create a new universe than invent a new religion or start a new church. The human is impotent to create the divine.
Christ alone could replace the Jewish Church by his own, and that because he was God. And this substitution was accomplished, not by the way of a revolutionary protest, but in the fulfilment of the types and figures of the Jewish Church and the realization of its divine prophecies and promises. The ideal church and the historical church which have existed upon earth from Adam until Noe, and from Noe until Moses, and from Moses until Christ, and from Christ until now, which is the actual Catholic Church, are divine in their idea, are divine in their institution, are divine in their action, and their continuity is one and unbroken. The church can suffer no breaks without annihilation.
God created man in his own image and likeness, and supplied from the instant of his creation all the means required for man to become one with himself. This was the end for which God called man into existence. This commerce and union between God and man, with the means needed to elevate man to this intercourse and to perpetuate and perfect these relations in an organic form, constitutes the church of God.
The great and unspeakable love of God for man led God, in the fulness of time, to become man, in order to make the elevation of man to union with himself easier and more perfect. To this end the God-Man, while upon earth, declared to his apostle Peter: “I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.”
This places beyond all doubt or dispute the fact that Christ built a church, and therefore its institution was divine. Moreover, it is clear by these words, not that his church should be free from the attacks of every species of error and wickedness which lead to hell—they rather imply the contrary—but that these attacks should never prevail against her, corrupt, overcome, or destroy her.
He added: “Lo! I am with you always, even to the consummation of the world!” This promise connects Christ’s presence with his church inseparably and perpetually. Hence once the church, always the church. The whole world may go to wreck and ruin sooner than Christ will desert his church. “Heaven and earth shall pass, but my words shall not pass.” Let, then, attacks come from any quarter, let revolutions shake the foundations of the world and conspirators overthrow human society, let anarchy reign and her foes fancy her destruction—the Catholic Church will stand with perfect faith upon this divine Magna Charta of her Founder as upon an adamantine rock.
Before Christ’s ascension he appointed the rulers in his church; he gave “some apostles, and some prophets, and other some evangelists, and other some pastors and doctors, for the perfecting of the saints, for the ministry, for the edifying the body of Christ.” He commanded them to tarry in Jerusalem until they should receive the Holy Ghost. When the days of Pentecost were accomplished, the Holy Ghost descended upon them visibly, “and they were all filled with the Holy Ghost.” That was the moment when the divine institution of the church was completed, and then began her divine action upon men and society that never was to cease while the world lasts. The past dispensations of God were all fulfilled in Christ, and his church, which was to embrace all mankind in her fold and guide humanity to its divine destination, was divinely established.
It is quite natural that those races which, by God’s providence, have been intimately connected with the church from her cradle should be inclined to think that the church is confined to their keeping and is inseparable from their existence. Christianity and the church are undoubtedly affected in their development by the peculiarities of the races through which they are transmitted, and it is natural that they should accentuate those truths and bring to the front those features of organization which commend themselves most to the genius, instincts, and wants of certain races. This is only stating a general law held as a maxim among philosophers: Whatever is received, is received according to the form of the recipient. Thus, the contact of the church with the intellectual gifts of the Greeks was the providential occasion of the explicit development and dogmatic definition of the sublimest mysteries of the Christian revelation. And through her connection with the Latins, whose genius runs in the direction of organization and law, the church perfected her hierarchy and brought forth those regulations necessary to her existence and well-being known under the name of “Canon Law.”
The objective point of Christianity, the church of Christ, is to embrace in her fold all mankind; but she is, in her origin, essence, and institution, independent of any human being, or race of men, or state, or nation.
The Italians, the Spaniards, the French, or any other nation or nations, may renounce the faith and abandon the church, as England and several nations did in the religious revolution of the sixteenth century, yet the church exists and is none the less really and essentially Catholic. The church has existed in all her divinity without including any one nationality or race, and, if it please God, can do so again. The sun would give forth its light the same though there were no objects within the reach of its rays, as when they are reflected from nature and display all their hidden beauty; so the divinity of the Catholic Church would exist in all its reality and power the same though there were no Christians to manifest it by their saintly lives, as at some future day when, after the victory over her enemies, she will unite in one the whole human race, and all her hidden glory will be displayed.
This law also holds good and is applicable to her visible head, the supreme pastor of the faithful. The pope, as pope, was no less the father of the faithful and exercised his jurisdiction when driven into the Catacombs, or violently taken by a despot and imprisoned at Fontainebleau, or, as at present, forced by the action of a desperate faction of Italians into retirement in the Vatican, than when his independence and authority were recognized and sustained by the armies of the Emperor Constantine or defended by the sword of Charlemagne, the crowned emperor of Christendom.
“The pope,” to adopt the words of Pius IX., “will always be the pope, no matter where he may be, in his state as he was, to-day in the Vatican, perhaps one day in prison.”
The perpetuity of the Catholic Church is placed above and beyond all dangers from any human or Satanic conspiracies or attacks in that Divinity which is inherently incorporated with her existence, and in that invincible strength of conviction which this divine Presence imparts to the souls of all her faithful children. It is this indwelling divine Presence of the Holy Spirit from the day of Pentecost which teaches and governs in her hierarchy, is communicated sacramentally to her members, and animates and pervades, in so far as not restricted by human defects, the whole church. Hawthorne caught a glimpse of this divine internal principle of life of the Catholic Church and embodied it in the following passage: “If there were,” he says, “but angels to work the Catholic Church instead of the very different class of engineers who now manage its cranks and safety-valves, the system would soon vindicate the dignity and holiness of its origin.”[2] This statement put in plain English would run thus: The Catholic Church is the church of God actualized upon earth so far as this is possible, human nature being what it is. The indwelling divine Presence is the key to the Catholic position, and they who cannot perceive and appreciate this, whatever may be their grasp of intellect or the extent of their knowledge, will find themselves baffled in attempting to explain her existence and history; their solution, whatever that may be, will tax the faculty of credulity of intelligent men beyond endurance; and at the end of all their efforts for her overthrow these words from her Founder will always stare them in the face: “Non prævalebunt”—“the gates of hell shall not prevail against her.” If this language be not understood, perhaps it may be in its poetical translation:
The radical party now in power in Italy may succeed in ruining their glorious country, but they may rest assured that this does not include, as her foes foolishly and stupidly imagine in every turn of her eventful history, the ruin of the Catholic Church. “What God has made will never be overturned by the hand of man.”
One of the principal offices of the Catholic Church is to witness, guard, and interpret the revealed truths, written and unwritten, which was imposed upon her by Christ when he said: “Go and teach all nations whatsoever I have commanded you.” This duty she has fulfilled from age to age, in spite of every hindrance and in face of all dangers, with uncompromising firmness and unswerving fidelity, principally by the action of her chief bishop, whom Christ charged to “feed his sheep and lambs” and “to confirm his brethren.” This Supreme Pastor, in watching over the sheep of Christ’s flock, has never failed to feed them with the truths of Christ, and, lest they should be led astray, he has pointed out and condemned the errors against these truths one by one as they arose.
Whatever some critics may have to say as to the form in which the Syllabus has been cast, or as to the technical language employed in its composition, this document nevertheless is all that it purports to be,—an authoritative and explicit condemnation of the most dangerous and subversive errors of our epoch.
Were the Syllabus the product of the private cogitations of an Italian citizen named John Mary Mastai Ferretti, promulgated and imposed upon the unwilling consciences of Catholics by his personal authority, Catholics would indeed have reason to resist and complain. But the violent opposition, the hostility and hatred, that the Syllabus has excited among so many non-Catholics and leading minds is a cause of no little surprise.
Suppose things were as they dream them to be, the attitude of that venerable Pontiff in the Vatican, powerless to do physical harm to any one, even if he would, standing up in the sole strength of his convictions, and, in spite of the clamors of fanatics, the rage of conspirators, and the threats of the prime ministers of powerful empires, proclaiming to them and the world that what they hold to be truth is a lie, what they maintain to be right is wrong, and what they desire as good is evil—this presents the most august and sublime figure the nineteenth century has witnessed. O noble old man! well dost thou merit to be placed among the great men of the holy church, and as chief pastor to be ranked on the pages of her history in the list of her heroic and saintly pontiffs, with her Leos and Gregories.
But read the Syllabus—and few of its opponents have done this; take the trouble to understand rightly what you have read—and fewer still have taken this pains—and if you have not lost sight of the prime truths of reason, and have any faith left in the revealed truths of Christianity, you must at least assent to its principal decisions and approve of its censures. For its condemnations are chiefly aimed against pantheism, atheism, materialism, internationalism, communism—these and similar errors subversive of man’s dignity, society, civilization, Christianity, and all religion. What boots it that these distinctive errors are cloaked with the high-sounding and popular catch-words, “intellectual culture,” “liberty of thought,” “modern civilization,” etc., etc.? They are none the less errors, and all the more dangerous on account of their attractive disguise.
The opposition of those who are not internationalists and atheists to the condemnation and censures contained in the Syllabus, can be explained, putting it in the mildest form, on the ground of their lack of the sense of the divine authority of the church and its office, and the misapprehension or misinterpretation in great part of its language. For at bottom the Syllabus is nothing else than the Christian thesis of the nineteenth century, as against its antithesis set up by modern sophists and conspirators, who openly put forth their programme as in religion atheism, in morals free-love, in philosophy materialism, in the state absolute democracy, in society common property.
This, then, is the significance and the cause of the rage which it has called forth: the Supreme Pastor of Christ’s flock, with his vigilant eye, has detected the plots of those who would overthrow the family, society, and all religion, and, conscious of the high obligations of his charge, would not in silence take his repose, but dared, in protection of his fold, to cry aloud and use his teeth upon these human wolves, and thus warn the faithful and the whole world of their impending danger. This is the secret of the outcry against the Syllabus and Pius IX. Herein is the Quare fremuerunt gentes. But does not the Syllabus declare that there can be no reconciliation between the Catholic Church and modern civilization? O blind and slow of heart! do you not know that modern civilization is the outcome of the Catholic Church? What was the answer of Christ to Satan when he offered to him “all the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them”? “Begone, Satan!” Which means, What you offer is already mine, and not yours to give; away, hypocrite and deceiver! So to-day, when the declared enemies of Christian civilization come in disguise to the Catholic Church and insist upon her reconciliation with modern civilization, she replies with Christ: Begone, Satan; modern civilization is the product of the Catholic Church, and not yours, and not under your protection or jurisdiction; away, hypocrites and conspirators!
Reconciliation with what these conspirators call “modern civilization”? Do men who have their wits about them know what this means? This means the overthrow of the great institutions of society, which have cost nineteen centuries of toil and struggle of the noblest men and women of the race. And for what? Only for the tyranny of a commune of declared atheists, the emancipation of the flesh, and the reign of Antichrist. Thank God! there is one man who cannot be bought by bribes, or won by flattery, or made to stoop by fear; who dares meet face to face the foes of Christ and the enemies of mankind, open his mouth and lift up his voice, and, in answer to these hypocritical invitations, speak out in tones that ring in the ears of the whole world and can never be forgotten: “Non possumus.”
The question is not whether the church will be reconciled with modern civilization. The real question is whether modern society will follow the principles of eternal justice and right, and reject these false teachers; whether it will legislate in accordance with the rules of right reason and the divine truths of Christianity, and turn its back upon revolution, anarchy, and atheism; whether it will act in harmony with God’s church in upholding modern civilization and in spreading God’s kingdom upon earth, or return to paganism, barbarism, and savagery. The question, the real question which in the course of human events has become at the present moment among the Latin race a national question, and particularly so in Italy, is this: “Christ or Barabbas?” “Now, Barabbas was a robber.”
It is because the Syllabus has placed this alternative in so clear and unmistakable a light that Satan has stirred up so spiteful and so wide-spread an opposition to it among his followers and those they can influence. Here is where the shoe pinches.
It is folly to attempt to interpret any society without having first discovered its animating principle and fairly studied the nature and bearings of its organization. How great, then, is the folly of those who seem not to have even a suspicion that the greatest and grandest and the most lasting of all societies and organizations that the world has ever known—the Catholic Church—can be fathomed by a hasty glance! Yet there are men well known, and reckoned worthy of repute, who bestow more time and pay closer attention to gain knowledge of the structure and habits of the meanest bug than they deem requisite before sitting in judgment on the church of the living God. There is in our day a great variety of demagogues, and their number is very great, but a truly scientific man is a rara avis.
There are also men standing high in the public estimation, and some of them deservedly so in other respects, who imagine that the decree of the Vatican Council defining the prerogatives of the successor of St. Peter has seriously altered the constitution of the Catholic Church, when it has done nothing more or less than make the common law of the church, whose binding force from universal usage and universal reception was admitted, a statute law.
Starting off from this serious mistake as their premise, they wax warm and become furious against the Vatican Council and its decree concerning the Roman Pontiff. And the new-born pity with which they are seized for benighted Catholics, would be worthy of all admiration, were there not good grounds to question their common sense or suspect their sincerity. They talk about “a pontifical Cæsar imposed upon the Catholic Church,” “priestly domination carried to its highest point of development,” “the personal infallibility of the pope,” “the Roman Church transformed into an enlarged house of the Jesuit Order,” “the incompatibility of the Catholic Church, with its new constitution, with the state,” etc., etc. Then follows a jeremiad over “the mental dependency of Catholics,” and so forth. All this and much more has, according to their opinion, been accomplished by a single decree of the Vatican Council. Apparently this class of men look upon the Catholic Church as a mere piece of mechanism, abandoned to the control and direction of a set of priests swayed by personal ambition and selfishness, and whose sole aim is to exercise an absolute tyranny over the consciences of their fellow-Christians; or as an institution still more absurd and vile, for heresy and infidelity have in some instances succeeded in so blinding men’s minds that they do not allow the good the church does as hers, and, stimulated by malice, heap upon her every conceivable vice and evil. Christ had to defend himself against the Jews, who accused him of being possessed by a devil; and is it a wonder that his church should have to defend herself against the charge of misbelievers and unbelievers as being the synagogue of Satan? The servant is not greater than his master.
Even Goethe, in spite of his anti-Christian, or rather his anti-Protestant, instincts, would have saved these men from their fanatical blindness and their gross errors by imparting to their minds, if they were willing to receive it, a true insight into the real character of the Catholic Church. “Look,” he says, after premising that “poems are like stained glasses—”