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FOOTNOTES:

[5] Serie VII, viii. p. 668.

CHAPTER II

The Encyclical Quanta Cura, December 8, 1864—Causes of Ruin of Modern Society: rejection of the "force" of the Church—Religious Equality—Pretensions of Civil Law and of Parents to Control Education—Laws of Mortmain—Remedies—Restoration of the Authority of the Church—Connecting Links between Encyclical and Syllabus—Retrospect of Evidences that all Society was in Ruins—The Movement for Reconstruction.

The tenth anniversary of the auspicious day of "The Immaculate" being now at hand, Pius IX had, as we have seen, chosen its fore-eve for setting in motion the preparations for his General Council. He reserved for the day itself the great deed of publishing the Encyclical Quanta Cura and its accompanying Syllabus of Errors. It is said that the inception of those documents dates back to a point not very long subsequent to the proclamation of the Immaculate Conception, and that the first Special Congregation named to prepare them spent more than five years without agreeing, after which it was dissolved by his Holiness, and a second named, which completed the task.

The keynote of the Encyclical is that of an alarm, in the martial sense; not a panic cry, accompanied by a throwing away of arms, but a note of danger, with a call to take them up.

The cause assigned for alarm is the ruinous condition of society—that word being used in its political, not its domestic sense. The very bases of society were shaken by evil principles, which had spread on all sides and raised a "horrible tempest." Before proceeding to the errors to be now condemned, the Pontiff is careful to connect with them those other "principal errors of our sad times" which he had already condemned in previous encyclicals, allocutions, and letters apostolic. He thus lays the logical foundation for the collection of them in the Syllabus. He first reminds the bishops how he had stirred them up to war against these errors, and how he had also commanded the children of the Church to abhor and shun them. Secondly, he enumerates certain additional errors, condemns them in turn, and commands his sons to shun them likewise. Condemnations pronounced in this formal manner are judicial and sovereign. The Pontiff does not speak as a mere teacher, but as the supreme tribunal of the Church. The judgments pronounced are not for the guidance of individuals merely, but are a rule for every officer of the Church. Every such sentence fixes the state of the law.

After many generalities, the first token of ruin in modern society particularized is the design manifested to check and set aside the salutary force[6] which ought always to be exercised by the Church, not only over individuals, but also over nations, both "peoples" and sovereigns. The second token of ruin is the prevalence of the error that the State may treat various religions on a footing of equality—the error that liberty of worship is in fact a personal right of every man, and that the citizen is entitled to make a free profession of his belief, orally or by the press, without fear of either civil or ecclesiastical power. This is condemned as being the "liberty of damnation." The next token of ruin is hostility to the religious orders, which were established by their founders only by the inspiration of God. Another token of ruin is the belief that all the rights of parents over their children arise out of civil law, especially the claim to control their education. The Pope would seem to think that this notion is the ground for denying the right of priests to take the control of education out of the hand of parents, or the ground for claiming the protection of civil law for the natural and Scriptural right of the parent against the alleged right of the priest. Such denial of the right of the priest is dilated upon as a further token of ruin. The existence of laws of mortmain is an additional token. After these civil and ecclesiastical matters, one theological point is adduced, with formal yet fervent language, as if it were some new plague, broken out in our own times—the denial of the divinity of our blessed Lord. This seems to be the only question in theology proper directly raised in the document. The errors now signalized are all condemned, and formally added to those previously condemned.

Just as the Emperor Nicholas of Russia, before undertaking the campaign that led to the Crimean war, found his sick man and pointed out his symptoms, so had Pius IX done. In the former case, the sick man was only one wide-spread but despotic empire. In the latter, it included everything that could be called, in the dialect of the Vatican, the Modern State.

Proceeding from his enumeration of the evils which mark the ruin of contemporary society to the remedies by which it is to be repaired, his Holiness once more wraps up much of what he may mean in generalities. When he does come to particulars, the hierarchy are directed to teach that kingdoms rest on the foundations of the faith; that kingly power is bestowed, not only for the government of the world, but still more for the protection of the Church; that nothing can be more glorious for rulers than to permit the Catholic Church to govern according to her own laws (i.e. canon law), not allowing any one to impede her free action, and not setting the regal will above that of the priests of Christ. Here is touched the great question in government. The Modern State had not only emancipated the throne from the supreme tribunal of the Church, that is, the Pope, but it had also emancipated the civil courts from the external tribunal of the Church, that is, the ecclesiastical court. The latter as well as the former evil must be redressed. To such prescriptions for the healing of society is added a proclamation of indulgences, and then follows an exhortation to pray both to God and to the Blessed Virgin, "who has destroyed all heresies throughout the world"—whatever that may mean in history, theology, or rhetoric. "She is gentle and full of mercy; … and standing at the right hand of her only Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, as queen, in gilded clothing, surrounded with variety, there is nothing which she cannot obtain from Him."

This curious document was a necessary introduction to the Syllabus. The external connecting link between the two was formed by a covering letter of Cardinal Antonelli conveying the Syllabus to the hierarchy by direct command of the Pope, "that they might have all the errors and the pernicious doctrines which have been condemned by him under their eyes."[7] The internal link lay in the title of the Syllabus, which recited the language of the Encyclical referring to the antecedent judgments of the Pontiff. It is not a syllabus of errors in general, nor of errors merely disapproved and abhorred by Pius IX in particular, nor of errors rebuked and denounced by him only in sermons, speeches, or briefs; but a syllabus of The Principal Errors of our Times, set forth by him in Consistorial Allocutions, Encyclicals, and other Letters Apostolic.

Before proceeding to consider the Syllabus as the new foundation laid for the reconstruction of society after its ruin, we may for a moment glance at the facts which might seem to prove to observers, looking from the Vatican, that it had been reduced to a ruinous condition.

Coming to the throne in 1846, Pius IX inherited the sovereignty of States which had long been in a condition of chronic disaffection. The state of things is described as follows by Monsignor Liverani, a learned but seemingly disappointed prelate, who wrote hoping to redeem the glory of the Papacy by the re-establishment of a Holy Roman Empire with an Italian head, after the example of that interval between the line of Charlemagne and that of Otho, when Guido of Spoleto, his brilliant son Lambert, and Berengarius wore the imperial title. "The people," says Liverani, "have spoken for forty years, groaning, agitating, shaking off the yoke by frequent revolutions, accompanied by crimes and continuous misfortunes, by slaughters, wars, bombardments, banishments, and desolations."[8]

Nevertheless, prelates from the north, coming to pay their homage to the new Pontiff, on reaching the last spurs of the Alps, might embrace in the glance of their mind all thence to Ætna, and say, Happy land! the throne of his Holiness in the centre, the faithful Bourbon on the south, the Hapsburg on the north, with Tuscany under a branch of the Hapsburgs, and Piedmont under the House of Savoy—what a spectacle of Catholic power! Holy land! not a heretic temple; not one teacher but in communion with Peter: blessed scene of Catholic unity!

A poor representative of the oft-extirpated Waldenses might say in silence—for such words durst not then disturb the Catholic unity of Italian air—You forget a few teachers in the valleys behind you, who never left the word of God to turn lords either of the earth or of the faith. Before you there is not a pulpit with the Bible, nor a man who ever drinks the cup of Christ, excepting priests alone; not a temple with God's commandments on its walls, but many a decalogue altered by the authority of a man who, making the law of God reformable, claims that his own shall be irreformable!

Beyond the limits of the Pope's temporal dominions soon arose commotions which spread over the principal seats of his spiritual power. In Switzerland the Jesuits provoked the war of the Sonderbund, and were foiled. Beyond the Atlantic a considerable portion of Mexico passed into the hands of the Protestant United States. Portugal was plagued with revolt. A famine thinned and dispersed the Roman Catholic population of Ireland. France drove away her good king. The Emperor of Austria was compelled to abdicate, and the empire was not saved from dismemberment without aid from Russia. The King of Bavaria also had to lay down his crown. The sovereigns of Tuscany and Naples were compelled to fly; as was, alas! the Pontiff himself. Spain and her Queen were seldom heard of, except for an insurrection or a scandal. Only two Roman Catholic countries were thriving—Belgium, with a Protestant king, and a constitution which the Church had solemnly and vehemently condemned; and Piedmont, which, worse than Hannibal, had opened the passes of the Alps to religious liberty.

This was the first sweep of the hurricane. During its prevalence, those portions of the world which lay without the Papal circle enjoyed as much rest as was to be looked for beside such troubled waters. Both schismatical Russia and heretical England were stable and expanding. Prussia was for a time seriously disturbed, but, nevertheless, was manifestly advancing to the first place in Germany. Holland, Denmark, and Sweden held on their way; and the United States were growing apace.

From his exile the Pope called on the Catholic powers for armed aid. Austria crushed and held the Emilia. Spain took Fuimicino and the cities on the Tyrrhenian shore. Naples conquered Frosinone and the south up to Palestrina, but was driven back at Velletri by Garibaldi. Finally, France declared herself ready to terminate the war; and, after failing for weeks before the slight defences of Rome, ultimately took the city.[9]

Indebted for a welcome restoration to the unwelcome hand of a Bonaparte, Pius IX, on re-entering his States, found himself permanently dependent for possession of the capital on the sword of France, and for that of the provinces on the sword of Austria. Under their protection he enjoyed some years of struggling sovereignty. This could hardly be called a restoration of the temporal power, for a power is not really restored till it can again stand alone. Instead of being an opponent of the Jesuits, a Liberal, and a Reformer, as he had been, the Pope was now transformed into a violent reactionary, and had fallen entirely under the influence of the Jesuits. His admirers proudly point to his acts from that time forward as evidence that they have been uniformly aimed at one end. That end, viewed on its negative side, they call combating the Revolution, and, viewed on its positive side, the reconstruction of society. In the introduction to his Speeches, his peculiar mission is said to be that of reconstruction. This reconstruction was to begin with the restoration of ideas, and was to proceed to the restoration of facts.

It is this movement that we are about to trace. First, we shall take a brief retrospect from the time of its inception at Gaeta up to the appearance of the Syllabus, which, as the ostensible ground-plan of a cosmopolitan code, was meant to be the charter of reconstruction. We shall then, from that stage onward, as far as our materials enable us, detail the progressive steps of the movement up to the end of the Vatican Council, which was meant to complete the constituent arrangements of the new theocratic monarchy. We shall see unfolding a movement for dominion as distinctive as was that of Leo III when he linked the fortunes of the Papacy to those of a new Western Empire; as distinctive as was the movement of Hildebrand when from political dependence he lifted up the Papacy to unheard-of domination; as distinctive as was the movement of the Popes after the Reformation, when through war and the Inquisition they restored in several countries of Europe their spiritual ascendancy. We shall witness the rise of a curious and powerful literature—scholastic, serial, and popular—which has steadily swollen in volume, and now acts with ever accelerating force on the religious antipathies of many nations, pointing to future wars on a scale unheard of, fixing the aim of those wars, and hinting at the disappearance of all existing institutions but the Church. We shall see a well-sustained endeavour, in the name of freedom of instruction, to take all schools and universities out of the hands of parents and of States, and to put them into the hands of priests. We shall see such rights in matters ecclesiastical as in the Church of Rome had still survived to the laity, the priests, and the bishops, gradually suppressed in action till the way was prepared for their abolition in law. We shall see the subordination of the civil law to the canon law, and the subjection of the civil magistrate to the "ecclesiastical magistrate" insisted upon as the essence of social order. We shall see all the inherited rights of kings and rulers, within their own dominions, to put limits upon the action of the Pope of Rome, first impugned, then contested, then defied, and finally, as far as the Church could do it, legislated out of existence. We shall see all kings and rulers challenged to accept the Pontiff as their head, and even as their judge in all matters involving moral responsibility. We shall find it taught and taught again that all Catholic countries have two rulers—the universal and the national one, the universal one superior, the national one subordinate; and that every citizen of those countries is more the subject of the Pope than of his prince. We shall see the relation between the civil and the ecclesiastical authorities as existing within the Papal States solemnly and repeatedly declared to be the normal relation of those two orders of authority, and to be the only example of their proper relative position extant in all the earth. We shall see the Papal States earnestly held up as the model for the new theocracy in the entire world.

Further, we shall see, for five successive years, secret proceedings of the Court of Rome sufficiently laid open by official divulgence to enable us to note the slow, sure steps devised for depriving kings of all their rights in self-defence against the Pope; for depriving bishops of all their powers of checking or restraining the Pope; for depriving theologians of any voice in the councils of the Church; and for depriving the parochial clergy of their individual and collective franchises. We shall at almost every turn hear modern laws and constitutions—liberty of worship, liberty of the press, liberty of meeting, with representative legislatures and responsible governments—denounced as the curse of mankind in all the varying accents of a strange dialect, or a dialect happily strange to us. We shall witness the preaching of a new crusade, on a cosmopolitan scale, with considerable art, making the bearing of arms for St. Peter to appear, pre-eminently, the life of the Cross, and dying in arms for St. Peter to appear as the martyr's end, the fairest of deaths, and the most enviable. We shall see how the most jealous and obstinate oligarchy in the world were led on from step to step of subjugation till they were made the instruments of reducing their collective body, when in Council assembled, from a co-ordinate branch of a legislature to a mere privy council to the Bishop of Rome, and of reducing the members of their body, when dispersed, from the position of real diocesan bishops to that of prefects of the Bishop of Rome.

Still further, we shall see evolved under our eyes the process by which opinions are elevated into doctrines, and doctrines are erected into irreformable dogma. We shall see how the bishops, while dispersed, were induced, in order to facilitate the making of a new dogma, to discredit their acknowledged standard of belief, tradition, substituting for it the general consent of the Church; and how, when the passing of the dogma was secured, the assembled bishops were induced to disavow the consent of the Church as unnecessary. We shall see ecclesiastical magnates prostrate and petitioning the Bishop of Rome for the elementary liberties of a legislature, and petitioning in vain. We shall see how such magnates in secret petitions represented the principles about to be erected into dogma as contrary to their traditional belief and constant teaching, as fraught with peril to the State, and as certain to bring discredit on the loyalty of any sincere believer in such dogma; and how the same magnates afterwards in public documents affirmed the opposite in all these respects. We shall see how renowned champions of the Papacy complained late in life that they had been used for its glory and deceived as to its principles. Finally, we shall see set in motion an immense apparatus of means for effecting, in a course of ages, the complete social, political, and ecclesiastical reconstruction of all society, which reconstruction will culminate only when the spiritual and the temporal powers meeting as in an apex in the Vicar of Christ, he shall be by all men regarded as not only High Priest, but as King of kings and Lord of lords; when, all authority and dominion, all principality and power, being put under him, there shall in the whole earth exist only, as we should express it, one master and all men slaves, or, as he would express it, one fold and one shepherd.

FOOTNOTES:

[6] The word is vis, which both the Civiltá Cattolica and the French Recueil translate by "force." But not so the German Stimmen aus Maria Laach, which makes it "influence"—einfluss (Heft i. p. 10). Such a difference in versions meant for Germans, Englishmen, and Americans is not rare.

[7] Recueil, end of preface.

[8] Il Papato, etc., p. 188.

[9] The Pope, in the Allocution of April 20, 1849, says that Spain first stirred up the other Catholic nations to form a league among themselves for his restoration (Recueil, p. 228). His description of the Holy City during his absence was, "a thicket of roaring beasts"—silvam frementium bestiarum (Id. 224). His description of himself at the same time was "being counted worthy to suffer shame for the name of Jesus, and being made in some measure conformable to His passion" (Id. p. 234).

CHAPTER III

Foundation of a Literature of Reconstruction, Serial and Scholastic—The Civiltá Cattolica: its Views on Education and on Church and State—Tarquini's Political Principles of Pope and King—Measures Preparatory to the Syllabus.

With the year 1850 was commenced a magazine, at the instance of the Jesuits, and under their direction, bearing the title Catholic Civilization (Civiltá Cattolica), in opposition to modern civilization. We may here say that the daily organ of the same complexion bears the title of Catholic Unity (Unitá Cattolica), in opposition to Italian unity. Above one hundred volumes of the Civiltá have been published; and it must ever be named in connexion with Pius IX as the intimate organ of his policy, and the most complete store of his published records. Perhaps its place in the history of literature is unique. Considering the number of books, serials, and journals, in different languages, of which it is the inspiring force, and considering the modifications it has already succeeded in bringing about in the ideas and even in the organization of the whole Catholic society, they can scarcely be charged with vain boasting who call it the most influential organ in the world. The Jesuit Fathers forming its editorial staff reside close to the Pope's palace, and work under his immediate direction. Dr. Friedrich, during the Vatican Council, told some bishops that if they would understand the Council, they must study it with the Civiltá in their hands. For our part, before reading that remark we had applied the same principle to the entire movement.

The leading idea of the Civiltá is expressed, says the article on the programme, in its title. Catholic Civilization is flag, device, and profession of faith.[10] The substance is civilization, the quality Catholic. Civilization is not polish, but organization in community, under rule. Civilization, after the Catholic ideal, had continued steadily to grow up to the fifteenth century, but was broken in the sixteenth by Lutheranism; was again enfeebled in the seventeenth by Jansenism; yet again was it undermined in the eighteenth by Voltairianism, and now in the nineteenth it is lacerated by Socialism. The evil has actually entered Italy, and even heterodoxy itself threatens to invade the Peninsula. Heresy is, in fact, likely to become connected with that aspiration after national unity by which the people are misled. Almost everything having been overhauled in heterodox spirit, almost everything must be reconstituted from the foundation.[11] These words express the mission of the new periodical, and of the restored Papacy. They are the original announcement of a policy ever since pursued without flagging.

To reconstitute society according to the Catholic ideal is the single object set forth. "On the brink of social dissolution," the one necessity felt, pressed, reiterated, is that of re-establishing on the Catholic ideal the notion of civilization—that is of the civil system; and of leading back the movement of civilization to that Catholic ideal from which it had been departing for three centuries.[12]

The essential point in this fabric is "the idea of authority." But the idea of authority cannot be restored except by quickening it, and reinforcing it by the Catholic conception. When the divine authority was shaken, men would no longer hear of the human (i.e. when the Papacy was rejected, civil government fell into contempt). The Catholic ideal is idly reproached with absolutism. But, among Catholics, pure monarchy, if not limited by certain conventional checks, is tempered by a higher law, not abstract, but practical, active, and operative. Absolutism in the sense of despotism is the creation of Protestantism and Voltairianism, and if it may sit on the throne of a king, it is more frequently found in constitutional chambers or democratic assemblies.[13] Therefore the one sufficing remedy is the restoration in ruler and subject of the notion of authority according to the Catholic ideal. For this the new organ calls for a salutary conspiracy, a holy crusade;[14] two phrases that mean all that has since taken place, and all that has yet to come.

The very first article of the Civiltá, after that upon the programme, is on education: "the question which holds all the future destinies of the European nations struggling within its ballot-boxes." With this appreciation of its theme, it takes ground which has since become familiar to Europe, and enunciates principles which have now frequently been reproduced in our own discussions; so that a slight sketch of its reasoning will not be without interest to English readers. The interest is increased by the fact that its aims have steadily gained ground in France. In England, some of them, if not recognized as principles, have been, to a considerable extent, practically embodied, as undetected principles are apt to be.

Beginning with the theme of Freedom of Instruction, it denounces the tyranny and monopoly of the University of France. Had not the spirit of Catholicism, it says, broken the chain, it would soon have become unlawful for one man to tell another the right road, unless he had a bachelor's degree, for doing so was a sort of instruction. The line properly limiting freedom of instruction it finds in the line which divides the truth from falsehood. They who demand liberty of instruction do so in order to teach the truth. But in excluding the teaching of lies, it may be even "necessary to protect children betrayed by the barbarous apathy of their parents."

The writer then asks, But who is to determine what is the lie? Governments? "Until a government can show itself infallible, it must renounce all pretensions to regulate instruction and opinion." The pretension on its part to do so is tyrannical, because interference here is trespassing on the sanctuary, where the truth alone bears rule.

The position that it belongs to a government to fix the limits of freedom of opinion is denounced as having originated in the Reformation, as being Protestant, and, further, as being destitute of foundation. The Church is the moderator of instruction, precisely because she is the infallible moderator of opinions in all that relates to the moral order. Consequently there is in existence a competent, effectual, and revered tribunal. Then follow taunts at journals which complain of communal authorities for giving up their educational rights to the clergy. These are succeeded by jeers at such statesmen as doubt if the liberty of communal authorities extends so far as to give them the right of surrendering their liberty.

The objection is then faced, that liberty may be as justly claimed by the non-Catholic as by the Catholic. Of course, replies the Civiltá, the only case in which that question can become a practical one for Catholics is where they form the majority. Is it to be supposed that a majority shall be bound, for the sake of a minority "to pass a law opening all the pits of hell for its fellow-citizens? … With Catholics the liberty of dissidents cannot be a natural right."

The position taken by statesmen, that the Church is not infallible in politics and economy, and that therefore these subjects must be under the control of the State, is first laughed at. It reminds the writer of a musketeer who should say to his general, "I see that your artillery is of no avail against these Alps; let us open upon them with our rifles." After this comes the principle. The assertion that politics and economy ought to be under the control of the State rests on one or other of three errors: (1) Politics and economy do not belong to the moral sciences; or, (2) The moral sciences are not subject to moral laws; or, (3) The Church is not the authentic exponent of moral law. The first of these errors is refuted by every university in Europe, in all of which politics and economy are classed among the moral sciences. The second is a contradiction in terms. The third is a heresy in every Catholic ear.

It will help to a clear understanding of many expressions which must occur hereafter, if the reader, at this stage, will set before his mind's eye the scope of the three principles here asserted. Phillips, a modern lay doctor, quoted by the humblest polemic and the mighty Civiltá, in his seven volumes on ecclesiastical law (Kirchenrecht), discusses the relations of Church and State at great length. He shows that the Church is supreme and the State subordinate, in all things that come under the divine laws. Holtgreven, a Catholic judge, and an opponent of the Falk laws, explains this clearly: "To the divine laws, in this sense, belong, not only the ten commandments, but also the canons of the Church, as the Council of Trent shows. The things subject to the divine laws include all such worldly things as are connected with morality."[15]

This much is conceded by the Civiltá, that, if danger to the public interests should arise from false teaching of any material science, the government may interfere, as it would in a case of adulteration of food. The Church is not infallible in material instruction.

The article, it will be seen, claims the right to take the teaching of the child out of the hand of the parent, and that of the subject out of the hand of the State.[16] The latter may mix itself up in the matter as to material things, not as to moral. Royal supremacy, in university, college, seminary, or primary school, must not be allowed. It has the twofold evil of setting the authority and responsibility of the parent for his child above that of the priest, and of setting the local authority of the national ruler above the all-embracing authority of the universal one. The State is not only welcome to appear in school, but ought to appear in its subordinate capacity, finding money, secular status, and instruction in material things. But in all that part of schooling which may be called education in the higher sense, of a father, a Christian, or a king, the State is not to have a word to say.

It would seem difficult to ask a community to do an action involving a more serious disregard of moral considerations than to find money and power for schools and colleges, and not have a word to say as to the principles taught in them. We are far from ascribing such a disregard of moral considerations to a devout Ultramontane. On the contrary, he is persuaded that the State, in committing its money and authority to the Church, takes not only the highest human guarantee, but a truly divine one, for the protection of every moral interest. The motto of the article is a sentence intimating that, all over Europe, the question of the future must be the establishment of universities canonically instituted.[17]

In order to the restoration of ideas now undertaken, as preparing the way for the restoration of facts, it was a practical necessity to establish an invariable association between the two ideas of the only Judge of true and false, the only Arbiter of right and wrong, and the one holy Roman Church. This association could not be established so well by any arrangement as by making each school an arena on which every day the authority of both the parent and the State should be—not pranced upon, not even trampled upon, but serenely and devoutly walked over, by what M. Veuillot calls the crushing sandals of the monk.

Another article in the first volume of the Civiltá gives such expression to the principles which underlie the whole struggle ever since conducted, that some account of it will do more to put the reader in possession of certain of those principles than formal explanations. It is on the central question of the relations of Church and State; or, as the Civiltá puts it, of the separation of Church and State—a phrase which, like almost every other, has a different meaning in its pages from what it has with us. The following headings give an idea of the drift of the article: "6. The nation is a part of the Church." "7. The part ought to be subordinate to the whole." "8. Because the Church has authority." "9. The authority of jurisdiction."[18]

I believe in the holy Catholic Church, in the Apostles' Creed, is thus interpreted: "I believe that every Catholic individual and nation forms a part of the Catholic society, and that only by virtue of its being a part does it partake of the benefit of the whole, through being subordinated to the laws of the whole."

On the point of jurisdiction, the writer first unearths "the serpent," which is the notion that the Church may judge about sins, virtues, doctrines, rites, and such-like, but must not touch temporal jurisdiction. This serpent he proceeds to kill. First, he solemnly appeals to the faith of the reader. "Do you believe that the Church is infallible in dogmatic Bulls, at least, unless they are formally rejected by the episcopate?" After this, he resorts to pleasantry: "Come close to me, and I will tell it in your ear. The Bull of John XXII condemned John Gianduno and Marsilius of Padua as heretics, because they denied to the Church the right of punishing by corporal pains, and it declared that she could inflict pains even unto death.[19] But I tell you this in secret, solely that you may know what is the doctrine of the Catholic Church, which you profess—doctrine put in practice through very many centuries, down to the last Council (Trent), which fulminated I know not how many penalties, and material ones, even against counts, marquises, princes, and emperors. Woe to us if they should hear us!" Thus jauntily did those who had only just been reinstated by foreign arms treat the neo-Catholic doctrine, or, as it has since been called, the Liberal Catholic one. "I tell you plainly," adds the writer, "that if the Church cannot rule her sons, even in material things, the Church is lost; at least, the Catholic Church. She might survive as that invisible Church which was discovered by Luther among the ruins of the middle ages, and, reconstructed as the amphitherium and palæotherium, were discovered in the geological strata, and reconstructed by Cuvier."

Addressing kings, the writer solemnly counsels them to bring forth all their codes, and pass them under a careful examination. But the light by which such examination is to be conducted must be that "of pure Catholicism, to which all other legislation must be subordinated. Restore every article of your code, according to the articles of your creed, not only in what relates to the duties of subjects, but also in what would seem to diminish the rights of rulers. And that the Catholic influence, which modifies codes, may shine in all its fulness, let it not be ministers or legists, but bishops and the Pontiff, who shall minutely search into your legislation for every anti-Catholic element."

The theocratic Papal polity might have been almost intentionally framed to contrast with the first principles of the Mosaic theocratic polity. The latter, put in one word, seems to be this: God as the general Father is the great right-holder, and He identifies the rights of every creature with His own, identifying at the same time their welfare with His own glory. Therefore He leaves no creature to the care of a Vicar, no province to any departmental divinity. Every act done for the benefit of our fellow-creatures He reckons as a tribute to Himself. Every infringement of their rights He treats as an offence against Himself. Every man was taught to see, not an abstract principle, but a great Father standing beside the gleaning widow, the supperless hireling, the pauper forced to pawn, and having no second coat—was taught to hear this common Father saying for these to happier neighbours, "I am the Lord." Every man tempted to lie, cheat, steal, oppress, seduce, or strike, saw the same great Father rising up against him, and saying, "I am the Lord."

It was of the essence of this theocracy that all who held authority did so by and under a written law in the vulgar tongue. Of this law every father in his own house was made the guardian, and in it he was the responsible instructor of his children. Every prophet professing that he bore a fresh message was to be brought to the test of this written law. Those who were to apply the test were the men of the whole community. Every one who claimed to bear a special commission was bound first to conform to the law, and secondly, to show signs of special divine power. It was a theocracy of direct divine government, not of government by a Vicar; a theocracy of written law, not of arbitrary will styling itself authority; a theocracy of private judgment, not of a veda shut up from the low caste, to be read and interpreted only by the twice-born Brahman. Finally, it was a theocracy in which whatever came from God became its own witness by benefits to God's children not to be mistaken, and obvious to all.

The statement made in the Civiltá as to the guidance under which the reactionary policy in Austria was devised, gives light upon the duties then engrossing nuncios and confessors at the various Courts where Papal influence was powerful. All that appeared to the world was, that at every one of those Courts a cold current of reaction set in and ran strong. The Jesuits took it for a tide, and the bark of St. Peter was to sail cheerily over all the shoals. But the Liberal Catholics were proportionably disquieted as to the prospects of the Church. The first days of Pius IX had fired them with hope that Rome might yet be fit to face three things of which she was shy—the Bible, History, and Freedom. But the advent of the Jesuits to power caused serious forebodings, which soon began to be realized. To quote the memorable words of Montalembert, "Who could have thought that the clergy, after crying out for liberty in Belgium, would turn round as they did in 1852, till we found them beating down all our liberties and privileges—in fact, all our ideas—as held in times preceding Napoleon III?"[20]

We now find that at the time when the Pontiff was using his clergy to help kings in taking away constitutional rights from their subjects, he was himself preparing to take from the kings what they indeed looked upon as rights, but what he regarded in the light of constitutional concessions, infringing the higher rights of their divinely appointed suzerain. When the Italian government took possession of the Collegio Romano, it was found that the Jesuits had left in the great library of the establishment little belonging to the present pontificate. One pamphlet is of some significance. A manuscript note on the title-page proudly tells how his Holiness wished to have it circulated as widely as possible. It also adds that on February 1, 1853, when the fathers of the Collegio Romano stood before his Holiness, he singled out the author, Father Camillo Tarquini, in presence of the other Jesuits and of the Court, and addressed him thus: "Father Tarquini, I am delighted; bravo! well done! I confirm it, and confirm it with all my heart."[21] This was an early foretoken of the purple in which Tarquini died. He is the writer to whom Cardinal Manning appeals, as softening the doctrine of Bellarmine and Suarez to a temper fitter for our times. The pamphlet signalized by this display of favour aims at proving the wickedness of kings in subjecting the bulls, briefs, or any acts whatever of the Pope, to a placet, exequatur, or other form of royal assent, before recognizing them as having the force of law in their States. This is one form of the error of regalism.

The power of the Pontiff, argues Father Tarquini, is this—What he binds on earth is bound in heaven. But if the king, stepping in, says, To bind implies the force of law, and your acts shall not acquire the force of law without my placet, how then? Why, the Pontiff becomes the one really bound. The king refuses to allow the pontifical judgments to take effect of themselves. It is not with him "said on earth and done in heaven." His placet must intervene.

It is competent, indeed, he admits to the Pontiff, to grant a right of placet; but such a right, founded on the grace of a Pope, cannot be confounded with one inherent in the crown. We quote the following in full:—"You say that the placet is a real right, demanded by justice, and essential to political government. The Church condemns it by a series of judgments, perhaps without parallel in her history, extending from her foundation down to Pius IX. She expressly defines it, with Leo X, Clement VII, Clement XI, and Benedict XIV, as opposed to all justice, as indecent, absurd, rash, scandalous, as insufferable depravity, and worthy of eternal pain. Therefore she punishes it with the greatest of penalties, the anathema.

"In this matter there is no middle course. You must either lay aside the mask of Catholicism, which no longer becomes you, and boldly avow that the Church has defined good as evil, justice as injustice, an inherent right of the crown as an absurdity and a wrong, and done so in a judgment perpetuated from her foundation to our own day; or you must, on the other hand, confess that you are in an error not to be tolerated."

Thus it seems that what with a Christian minister would only be a claim to announce the belief and the moral precepts which he found in the Holy Scriptures, becomes with the Roman Pontiff a claim to put his decree on any matter which he deems conducive to the good of "the Church" into the form of law, and to set it up without, or in spite of, but anyhow above, the national law, be it republican, royal, or imperial. This boundless pretension—for boundless it is—will often be found gently expressed as the right of the Pontiff to communicate with the faithful.

The writer then asks what, from his point of view, would seem to be a natural question. Would kings like the Pope to demand that his placet should be required before their laws came into force?[22] He replies that some of them have so far unlearned "Christian doctrine as to say that, in case the Pope did so, he would usurp sovereign rights in their States." But such a proposition is heretical, pronounced to be so by the Holy Office in 1654, with the approbation of Innocent X.[23] By virtue of this, even our children know that the Church presided over and governed by the Vicar of Christ is a kingdom which has the ends of the earth for its bounds. Therefore it belongs to the Vicar of Christ to make laws in all parts of the world for her welfare and for her government.

Liberal Catholics trembled for the consequences to Church and State of Jesuit Court confessors and far-aiming but short-seeing plans. They knew that the devout Jesuit calls upon all to regard the Papal government as the model for the whole world; and that if statesmen and jurists could be replaced by Jesuits at the various Courts, a combination of plan and an unity of action might be secured everywhere for a great movement to establish the dominion of Christ in a higher degree than the Thirty Years' War did in Austria and Bohemia.

There is a point illustrated in this pamphlet which seems to enter into the English head more slowly than any other. We mean the conscientious view of a true Ultramontane as to what constitutes religious liberty, or violates it. Englishmen sometimes not only transfer their own views on this subject to Ultramontanes, but betray the feeling that they are generous in doing so. It is never generous, or even just, to ascribe views to a man which he religiously condemns. If the Englishman will clearly set before his mind the first postulate of the Ultramontane, that God has appointed a vicar upon earth, to whom He has committed all power, surely he will see that religious liberty must principally consist in the freedom of that vicar to do all which he conceives it to be in his province to do, and in the freedom of those who receive his commands to carry them out, exactly according to his intentions. If any king or nation limits his freedom to act and command, "the Pope becomes the one really bound." The Englishman may say that, on this principle, no guarantee is left for any liberty but that of the Pontiff, or of those who represent authority derived from him. But that is precisely what the Ultramontane does not believe.

On the contrary, he holds that the highest guarantee for all legitimate liberty lies in the complete freedom of the Pontiff. No liberty can be legitimate that consists in exemption, or assumed exemption, from divine authority. And further, the authority of the Vicar of God, being exercised under unfailing guidance, is not liable to commit violations of any right.

We thus see begun the movement for the restoration of ideas, as preparatory to the restoration of facts. Ranke has traced the course of the "ecclesiastical restoration," which was rendered necessary by the damage inflicted on Rome by the Reformation, without being careful to mark the principles or to track the processes by which "restoration" was effected in Bohemia, Austria, Spain, Italy, and France. That restoration, however, had been real and momentous. A second restoration had taken place after the wreck of the French Revolution, when the Papacy had been smitten by its own sons. It was the pride of the clergy to cite the fact that the rulers of England and Prussia had co-operated in that restoration, as proof that the Papal throne was even in Protestant eyes the central point of order. Now a third restoration was to be effected—one which would do all that had been left undone by the other two. The Pope's throne was not only to be reared up again in Rome, but was to be gradually elevated to a spiritual supremacy equal to the highest claimed in former Bulls, and to a temporal supremacy as complete as when Hildebrand triumphed at Canossa.

The first of these restorations had been fought out with the weapons of the Inquisition and the war-plots of the Jesuits. The second had been fought out with the weapons of the Liberal Catholics, borrowed from the Reformation and the Modern State. When the Jesuits had pushed, not too far, but untimely far, they were for the day disowned; not, however, as inimical to the Church, but as hateful to the nations, and as, therefore, lowering the credit of the Church with the outside world. Now had come the moment when the Liberal Catholics, having done their work, were in turn to be disowned; but on other grounds. They were to be cast out as children of the world, infected with principles subversive of the "kingdom of God," of that polity in which the priest of God is the king of men, and the affairs of an erring race are unerringly guided by consecrated hands.