Rids X. And His Task

ON the 4th of August the piazza in front of St. Peter’s basilica was filled with people, restlessly waiting. A cardinal stepped forth on the balcony over the middle door of the church, and said, “ I bring you a great joy ; we have a pope.”

As the memory, prompted by some handbook on papal history, wanders over a list of two or three hundred popes, some disposition to a cynical elevation of the brows comes over the indifferent hearer of tins news, and he accepts the cardinal’s words as an old form, borrowed from the speech of the angel at Christ’s Nativity, and he calls to mind, as the cynically indifferent do, the doctrines of Christ, and speculates upon their connection with the Holy Catholic Church Apostolic and Roman, which has endured, some say, ever since that preaching. If he continues to ruminate or to read his handbook, he can hardly escape the conclusion, either that the Church was created by special act of creation, or that she exists because she has adapted herself to the needs of men. If he balk at this conclusion, then he must re-read his papal biographies, with a profound sense of the tyrannical ability which that long line of men must have possessed, in order to foist on Europe and her dependencies an ecclesiastical system not suited to their needs, and to maintain it in the face of bitter opposition.

Probably there is less prejudice at present against the Roman Catholic Church than at any time since the Reformation, for the general waning of interest in dogmatic Christianity has softened the hearts of Protestants, and Leo XIII., by his blameless life, by his endeavor after the blessedness of the peacemakers, and by the serene dignity of his old age, persuaded the Protestant world that if his life were the fruit of popery, then popery could not be altogether bad. To the Catholic Church, however, Protestant opinion is of no great consequence ; to her it is immaterial whether there be Protestant prejudice or not, unless that prejudice take an active form inimical to the Church. She has her own commandments to keep. She believes that she was founded by God the Son, and was charged by Him to keep the truth, which He had divinely revealed, and to teach it to all men throughout the world. She believes that He watches over her, as the means that shall bring all men unto Him. Therefore we outsiders, in our own eyes serenely unprejudiced, ought to remember that Catholic action must be judged primarily from its effect on the Catholic Church and not from its effect upon Protestant opinion. More especially ought we to remember this, because to Protestants the Catholic Church is essentially a political body, whereas to Catholics it is essentially a religious body.

The new pontiff is the head of a spiritual body which is charged with an immense spiritual responsibility toward its members, therefore the problems that await him are chiefly spiritual. Nevertheless, outsiders are somewhat justified in giving greater attention to his opinions on politics than to his opinions on religion, because history has made the Church a political body, and, at least from a worldly point of view, the political situation of the papacy requires immediate action, whereas spiritual matters may be by the Church, as by us all, indefinitely postponed. Certainly Pius X. will be obliged to express political opinions very soon ; even the strict maintenance of his predecessor’s policy will be such an expression. Those opinions may be more or less conservative ; they cannot be liberal, as we use the word. A pope is so bound by the nature of his office that he cannot be aught but conservative. His service is to conserve. In theory, he is an autocrat; in fact, he is fenced in and padlocked by a hundred restraints. The nature of the Church prevents any turning to right or left from the great road that has been marked out by long laborious centuries. The Church that succeeded to the Roman Empire cannot leave its course at the bidding of one man, its intricate machinery can act only in certain definite ways ; the confessional, the celibacy of the clergy, the concentration of power in Rome, the Religious Orders, keep the mighty wheels in their grooves. Age has given a propulsion and momentum which are of necessity tyrannical ; no one pontiff can devise a brake ; for instance, no pope could abolish the confessional or the veneration of images. The Church also is Latin. Her foundations rest on ancient Rome, — the character of Cato, the genius of Cæsar helped set those foundation stones in place, — and she is in the main, humanly speaking, the handiwork of the Italian race. She is Latin in the definiteness of her creed, in her dislike of uncertainty, in her acceptance of the tenet that power should descend from the imperator, not rise from the people. The Pope could not change this Latin inheritance, even if he should wish ; he could not remove his seat from Rome, he could not establish a representative government. Universal respect and reverence for tradition and habit, for antique custom and hoary ideas, would override the papal mandate, or rather would stifle it before issue.

The Church also is well-nigh universal. She embraces Italy, France, Spain, Belgium, Portugal, Ireland, nearly half Germany, Austria and Hungary, many millions in the United States and Russia, in South and Central America, Mexico, the Province of Quebec, the West Indies, Australia, and in parts of Africa and Asia. She counts her children to the number of two hundred and fifty millions, and almost all are of European race. In her constituent parts is a motley company: old families of England, Irish cotters, Spanish bigots, American artisans, Sicilian peasants, the Faubourg St. Germain, Poles, Copts, and Filipinos. It needs no more to make us understand not only the impotence of one man to budge such an empire from its predetermined course, but also how impossible it would be for the Church to discard politics entirely, and devote herself solely to the spiritual life. The Church and the state are the soul and the body. For reasons of history, of ethnology, of expediency, papal action must be slow, considerate, circumspect; Roman Catholics make one body ecclesiastical, but politically they are divided into dozens of separate governments, suspicious, jealous, inimical, and therefore the diplomacy of the Church is most difficult, requiring the utmost skill, patience, and tact. No wonder that Cardinal Sarto felt an immense reluctance to accept this imperial burden.

The pole star of papal policy must always be to prevent schism. In a body so large and so constituted there is always a latent tendency to disunion. Ecclesiastical unity is the fundamental article of the Catholic political creed that all who believe in the divine revelation of Christ should belong to one church “holding the unity of the faith in the bond of truth;” but the good of unity like every other great good can be bought only at a great price. The price of ecclesiastical unity is that wariness and circumspection, that slowness and temporizing, which Protestants are wont to cast as a reproach against the Catholic Church. For example, the Church cannot disregard national differences. A French pope could not be chosen without danger of defection if not of schism in Germany ; in fact, the election of any one not an Italian would herald storms and revolutionary dangers. Schism is no phantom danger. It was not impossible that Bismarck should have effected a separation of the German church from the Holy See by means of the Kulturkampf; it was not impossible for the Irish church to have seceded, had Leo XIII. been brought into more violent collision with the home-rulers. Even now there is the Los von Rom movement in Austria. Pius X., like his predecessors, is not free to withdraw to his closet and to contemplation, nor to confine his attention to ecclesiastical administration and things spiritual; he must be a statesman ; he must keep constant watch on the political purposes of every government in Europe, and be on the alert to oppose, to obstruct, to check, to hinder, to delay, all those which are hostile to the Church.

It is obvious, therefore, that the new Pope is confined, by the nature of the Church and of his office, a prisoner in an ideal Vatican ; but as we should not exaggerate, also we should not underestimate, his real freedom of action. He is free in certain matters. For instance, he has complete freedom to deal with that most familiar but by no means most important of papal political questions, the temporal power. Here he is free because his temporal power is a matter which does not really affect the Church. It is but an affair of secular dignity, a trapping, which touches neither the life nor the health of a religious body. Whether Pius X. adhere to the claim upon the ancient papal domain, or altogether renounce that claim, there will be no schism, no revolution, no defection, no commotion; the Church will not heed; she moves on majestic, indifferent to the changing titles to principalities or kingdoms, whether they be her own or another’s. Catholics who desire the restoration of the temporal power are not three in a hundred; they are certain members of the papal Curia, some enthusiastic Irishmen, a few score youthful priests and students in seminaries, a scattered noblesse, old and new, whose conservative tastes prefer that the tiara be in fact atemporal crown. To be sure, many Catholic prelates have followed the Vatican in expressing their belief in the benefit to the Church to be derived from a restoration ; they have full confidence in the wisdom of the Vatican ; it would be neither loyal nor deferential in them to dissent; but should the Vatican change its policy under Pius X., there is no reason to suppose that those prelates would fail to be impressed by tbe new arguments pat forward, or scant their loyalty to the new policy.

Why has the Vatican been so strongly set in favor of this temporal restoration ? One reason undoubtedly is the immense conservatism of the Church. She knows that her strength lies in her conservatism, in her fixedness, in her clinging to the past, in her refusal “ with the remover to remove.” She has her dominion in deep unreasoning feelings of the human heart; she aspires to be the symbol and likeness of that which abideth and doth not change. She cannot lightly forego any great tradition ; all her great traditions affect one another, and if one breaks, the others, in appearance at least, are weaker. The temporal power was older than the time of Charlemagne, and Catholics received it as an article of belief that this immunity from the jurisdiction of a secular power was the means which Providence had chosen for the maintenance of its Divine Church. Seven centuries, — the period of triumphant Christianity, of the Church fathers, of the —cumenical councils before the eastern schisms, the period of the exaltation of the Bishop of Rome over other bishops, the golden ages of the faith, — all passed before the establishing of temporal power. Thirty-three years have passed since that temporal power was taken away. Both Church and papacy are stronger now than they were at the fall of Rome, and it is become plain that if that power has been in tbe past a divine means for the preservation of the Church, it is not now an indispensable means. Nevertheless the argument that Rome, the abode of the pontiff, the meeting-place of the great committees which control ecclesiastical affairs, ought to be upon neutral ground does not lack plausibility. The Church deals with most momentous affairs in every land, and each Catholic nation has a just claim to security that no other nation shall bring improper pressure to bear on the Church government. There should be no possible color for German, French, or Spanish suspicion that the Italian government exercises any influence whatever over the Church. Ought not the Church, therefore, as Archbishop Ireland has suggested, to have a district, like the District of Columbia, free from any jurisdiction but its own ? This moral right to security of papal impartiality is a perfectly satisfactory answer to the Italian claim that the Pope should accept the pecuniary indemnity offered by the Italian government after it had seized Rome; for some men might have believed that a pensioner would not be absolutely indifferent toward the hand that fed and had power to withhold.

The papal argument, however, has a weak point. It assumes that the papacy might suffer itself to become the tool of the Italian government, or at least that men might think so. If such papal weakness is possible, if the character of the Pope does not guarantee to Christendom the integrity of papal action, then there is not merely danger from the Italian government, but from every government within whose jurisdiction the Church exists. What is to prevent France or Germany from exerting political pressure on the Church ? Has not Germany done so ? Does not France do so now ? This danger differs in degree, as in one case the secular wrong is aimed at the head of the Church, in the other at her members, but it does not differ in kind. If the Italian government shall seek simoniacally to influence the Pope, as its subject, either he will submit, just as, humanly speaking, he might accept a bribe from Russia, or he will cry out and resist, just as Leo XIII. resisted the May laws in Germany and the anti-clerical legislation in France. If there be danger of such monstrous simony there will be opportunity in abundance without the need of geographical proximity. Moreover one cannot be insensible to the fact that the fears which may exist in Christendom lest Italy should exert undue pressure on the Vatican find far louder expression in the Vatican than elsewhere in the world. And why is there not an outcry against the Right of Exclusion which Austria, France, and Spain may exercise in the conclave of cardinals against the candidate who but for that secular bar would become the Vicar of Christ on earth ? Is not this lay interference in the choice of the head of the Church as serious as any that can readily be imagined ?

It was natural enough that Pius IX., who was not a statesman, should have been terribly bewildered by the revolutions in Italy, and angry at the robbery, as he deemed, of his God-given domain ; it was likewise natural that Leo XIII., in part out of respect for the memory of Pius IX., in part from the still fresh indignation of the Curia, in part because his own life at Perugia had been spent in the strife between secular and ecclesiastical powers, should have continued the policy of protest. But now that a new generation has grown up, it would be perfectly open to Pius X. to adapt himself to the political reconstruction of Italy. Leo XIII. set a most significant precedent in his letter urging the French people to be loyal to the Republic. The civil constitution of states may change from year to year, and an enduring Church must not bind itself to any one form of political institution. But the boldness of a complete renunciation of all claim to temporal power is not to be expected. His Holiness has already given sundry intimations that he will follow his predecessor’s policy ; he did not bless the Roman people from the balcony of St. Peter’s, he did not announce his election to the Italian government, and he is reported to have said that the Vatican and its gardens have become his world. Nevertheless official non - intercourse may be maintained, and yet by little acts of friendliness a kindly relation between the Vatican and the Quirinal may be established ; and this there is reason to expect because Pius X. has been on friendly terms with the House of Savoy, and has lived his life away from the susceptible and irritable Roman Curia, among the quiet canals and ancient traditions of Venice, and not the least important of Venetian traditions is that of stiff-necked independence toward the Vatican. It is said that the Pope is bound by his oath of office not to relinquish any claims of the Church, but the renouncement of the claim to the old Papal States is hardly more than an extension of the principle embodied in the thirteenth article of the Concordat made between Pius VII. and Napoleon, by which the Pope agreed not to disturb the purchasers of ecclesiastical property which had been seized and sold by the French government during the French Revolution.

The papal claim to Rome vexes the Italian government, for it keeps alive the fear that foreign nations may interfere to restore the Pope, but it does not trouble Italian Catholics as much as is supposed ; it may be doubted whether the consciences torn by a divided duty between the papacy and patriotism number many hundreds. The great majority of Italian Catholics belong to two classes, those who are really devoted children of the Church, and those who profess themselves to be such ; but both are resolute against restoring the temporal power to the Church, and never waver in their opinion that Rome must belong to the kingdom and not to the papacy. Those lovers of Italy, however, who are most in sympathy with the national sentiment which effected the unity of Italy must remember that to the world the Roman Catholic Church is far more important than the Italian kingdom, and that if there were a doubt whether the Church or the kingdom would derive the greater advantage from the possession of Rome, that doubt should be resolved in favor of the Church.

A far more intricate question before the Vatican is the course to pursue in France. Matters there show how impossible it is for the Church to abstain wholly from politics. The theory of the complete separation of church and state, wholly modern receives its strongest support from the practical difficulties of administration ; in a Catholic country these difficulties are increased because the head of the church is not the head of the state, and members of the church may find their duties, as such members, clash with their duties as citizens. France has no official religion, but the overwhelming majority of her citizens are Roman Catholic, and in the budget of public worship the appropriation of 40,000,000 francs goes almost entirely to the Roman Catholic Church, and therefore the connection between church and state is very close.

The present troubles are somewhat complicated. After the attempt to abolish religious worship in France during the Revolution, Napoleon, then First Consul, made the Concordat of 1801 with Pius VII., under which, with sundry interruptions and modifications, France and the papacy have lived ever since. The first article provided that the Roman Catholic religion should be freely exercised in France, but of the Religious Orders which have been the objects of anticlerical attack no mention was made. The beginnings of the present clerical oppression began with Gambetta, and his example was followed in 1880 and 1881 by M. de Freycinet and M. Jules Ferry, who took drastic measures against the teaching Orders. The schools and colleges of these Orders were closed, many establishments of the Jesuits, Carmelites, and Barnabites were broken up, and many of the brethren left the country. The motives of the government were various. Its supporters thought that the Church as a body aided and abetted the enemies of the Republic, — Legitimists, Orleanists, Bonapartists, — and they believed that a body which received its orders from a foreign head could not be and was not patriotic. They also thought that it was unjust for the Religious Orders to receive the privileges of citizenship without sharing its burdens ; for instance, the brethren were exempt from military service, and in certain districts pious judges had adjudged them exempt from the general income tax on the grounds that where there were no dividends there could be no income, and where there were vows of poverty there could be no taxable estate. The government was sustained in the general elections, but the agitation subsided, and the Religious Orders were suffered in a measure to return to their old ways until M. Waldeck-Rousseau came back to the attack in 1900. The premier and his cabinet depended on the support of Radicals and Socialists, who entertained very hostile feelings against the Church and especially against the Religious Orders, and he himself no doubt believed these Orders were not patriotic. He said of them that they “ under the specious veil of a religious institution tend to introduce into the state a political corporation, the object of which is first to arrive at complete independence, and then to usurp all authority.” He denounced the great accumulation of ecclesiastical property ; it was an economic harm to the country, he said in exaggerated figures, that a billion of francs should be taken out of free circulation, and held tight in the dead hand of the Church. His government took the position that France could not tolerate two wholly different kinds of education, one based on science and the principles of the French Revolution, the other on scholastic and mediæval notions and on the unpatriotic teaching that the first duty of a citizen is not to France but to a foreign power. The Chamber of Deputies supported the government, the anti-clerical legislation of 1901 was passed, and the Religious Orders were expelled from France. It is true that the law allows the Orders to ask for charters from the government, but the effect of receiving such a charter is to subject the Order to secular inspection, and in substance to the authority of the state instead of to the authority of the Church. The Church refused its sanction to a course of submission.

The immediate cause of these attacks was political, but underneath there appears to be justification for the accusation of the Catholics that the government wishes to make France a non-Christian country, in the sense that it wishes to stop all religious teaching and to destroy the bonds that bind the Catholic to his Church. The present president du conseil, M. Combes, is likewise strongly anti-clerical. He takes the position that when the French government nominates candidates for the episcopate, the Pope must invest them as a matter of course, and, irritated by clerical opposition, he goes so far as to hint at breaking the Concordat. The government represents the Chamber of Deputies, but it is said that the Chamber does not represent the nation, for the peasants, who are pious Catholics, do not understand the suffrage, and stay away from the polls. In some parts of France, as in Brittany, when the schools of the Religious Orders were closed, great feeling was shown, and in one or two cases military officers refused to obey orders. Certainly the anti-clerical measures are very severe. Practically all private schools are closed, parents are not allowed to send their sons to schools in which they think morals will be better tended, where religion and such subjects as they may wish will be taught; all men alike must submit their sons to the secular instruction of the public schools. The Religious Orders, too, are associated with all the works of charity, — care of the old and infirm, tending of orphans, healing the sick, — and are bound by ties of intimacy, friendship, and love with thousands of families.

What can Pius X. do to better the Catholic cause in France ? Shall he protest, following Leo’s example, or shall he advise submission to the demands of the state ? Shall he attempt to organize a Catholic party, or rely on gentle suasion ? Perhaps it might be better for the Church to let the French government abolish the Concordat. The bishops and clergy would then depend solely on the offerings of their flocks, and the Church would be free from secular coercion. On one occasion M. Waldeck-Rousseau deprived an archbishop and several bishops of a year’s salary, as punishment for a letter which criticised the government. It is not likely that the Pope will submit to what he believes an endeavor to eradicate Christianity from France. It would not be fair to desert the Religious Orders, whose main object is to promote the interests of the Church, since he believes that those interests and the spiritual interests of men are one and inseparable. One cannot glance over the history of the papacy for the last hundred years without thinking it likely that the Church will find means to retrieve her position in France. Her opportunity may come there, as it well may in the rest of Europe, out of the general need for an antidote to the materialism of successful socialism; then perhaps she may persuade leaders of men that religion even mingled with superstition, if that qualification please them, is more necessary to the laboring classes than municipal ownership of the means of production or the equal division of the fruits of labor. All things may come to the church that waits.

The political task before the papacy in Spain is somewhat similar to that in France, except that there the Church has successfully defended herself. The government attempted to imitate the anticlerical legislation of France, and threatened to enforce a decree requiring all Religious Congregations to apply to the state for charters under pain of dispersion; but not only is Catholicism stronger there than in France, and the Spanish government weaker than the French government, but also Leo XIII., who had great influence because he was always a friend and strong support to the Queen Regent and the young King, took a firm stand. He offered to discuss the question of authorization, but only on condition that every demand from a Religious Congregation for a charter should be granted. The government, facing Socialists, Carlists, and a threatened political Catholic Union, and well aware of the insecurity of the throne, had not the courage to press the anti-clerical measures, and they have been suffered to rest uninforced. The success of Catholic opposition in Spain, in contrast with its failure in France, serves to illustrate the need of diverse diplomatic methods, — here to yield, there to resist, — and also shows the extreme difficulties in the way of papal diplomacy.

In Germany different problems exist. The growth of the Socialist party is certainly a movement toward the rejection of any political interference from the Church, and though the clerical party, the Centre, which numbers 102 out of 397 members, is the largest party in the Reichstag, and of great parliamentary importance, nevertheless the writing on the wall indicates that the political future of Germany will be in the hands of the Socialists, and therefore it behooves the Church to consider what attitude she shall take when that time comes. Leo XIII., faithful to the conservatism of the Church, was strongly in favor of private property, and denounced both state and municipal socialism, yet he set a course which would justify Pius X. in permitting and even in encouraging Catholics to become Socialists, so long as that party refrained from attacking the Church. It is not likely that the three million voters of the Socialists are all agreed on an exact socialist platform ; some insist on the doctrines of Marx, but probably all unite solely in their opposition to the military system, to a protective tariff, and to certain ideas of the imperial government, and there may well be many who would prefer Christian Democracy, divorced from politics, to a material socialism. Leo’s words in his encyclical of January 18, 1901, on Christian Democracy represent a widespread feeling : “ It is the opinion of some, and the error is already very common, that the social question is merely an economic one, whereas, in point of fact, it is above all a moral and religious matter, and for that reason must be settled by the principles of morality and according to the dictates of religion. For even though wages are doubled, and the hours of labor are shortened, and food is cheapened, yet if the workingman hearkens to the doctrines that are taught on this subject, as he is prone to do, and is prompted by the examples set before him to throw off respect for God and to enter upon a life of immorality, his labors and his gain will avail him naught.”

In spite of Leo’s categorical denunciation of public ownership of the means of production, his immense sympathy with the laboring classes directed Catholic policy toward the general goal of socialism, — to secure for those classes a larger share and a sweeter enjoyment of earth’s abundance, — and leaves Catholics free to treat the goal as of more importance than the particular means by which it may be attained. In his encyclical on the condition of the working classes, Leo said : “ If we turn now to things external and corporeal, the first concern of all is to save the poor workers from the cruelty of greedy speculators, who use human beings as mere instruments for money-making. It is neither just nor human so to grind men down with excessive labor as to stupefy their minds and wear out their bodies. . . . Daily labor, therefore, should be so regulated as not to be protracted over longer hours than strength admits. How many and how long the intervals of rest should be must depend on the nature of the work, on circumstances of time and place, and on the health and strength of the workman. Those who work in mines and quarries and extract coal, stone and metals from the bowels of the earth should have shorter hours in proportion as their labor is more severe and trying to health. Then, again, the season of the year should be taken into account. . . . Finally, work which is quite suitable for a strong man cannot reasonably be required from a woman or a child. And, in regard to children, great care should be taken not to place them in workshops and factories until their bodies and minds are sufficiently developed. For just as very rough weather destroys the bud of spring, so does too early an experience of life’s hard toil blight the young promise of a child’s faculties and render any true education impossible. Women, again, are not suited for certain occupations; a woman is by nature fitted for home work, and it is that which is best adapted at once to preserve her modesty and to promote the good bringing up of children and the well-being of the family. As a general principle it may be laid down that a workman ought to have leisure and rest proportionate to the wear and tear of his strength ; for waste of strength must be repaired by cessation from hard work. ”

The German policy of Pius X. must aim to prevent socialism from becoming a rival and an enemy to the Church, and the way is indicated by the encyclical just quoted. On the one hand, there is no fundamental reason why socialists should not be Catholics, and on the other hand, there is the fundamental teaching of the New Testament that Christians should incline toward socialism. The difficulty lies in getting the stiff joints of the conservative Church to bend with the changing attitude of public opinion. The present pontiff, always interested in good works, will, of his nature, help the laboring classes all he can, but a triumphant Social Democracy, once in possession of the empire, may be hard to manage.

In Austria Pius X. has to face the Los von Rom movement, which is a secession from the Holy See by a part of the German population, more especially in Bohemia, undertaken apparently for the sake of recommending the seceders to the sympathies of the German Empire, and of preparing their way to political incorporation with that empire on the anticipated downfall of Austria. In Hungary, too, there is a strong sentiment against the Vatican on account of its hostility to the Triple Alliance and of its opposition to certain liberal legislation, of which one of the provisions was to make civil marriage compulsory.

These matters, not to mention many others, are most intricate and difficult, and require great tact and diplomacy on the part of a power which cannot resort to force. Leo was a great political leader, and, though men from different points of view pass different judgments on his career, he was on the whole very successful; it remains to be seen whether Pius X., who bears the reputation of a Christian priest, and has received little or no political training, will be able to hold the tiller with equal skill and success. Certainly it is easy to sympathize with the new pontiff under the load of his great responsibility. Uneasy lies the head that wears the triple crown.

Interesting as papal politics are, they are but the action of the Church on national bodies corporate, which have no souls. The life and vigor of the Church does not consist in them, but in her relations with her individual members, with the countless multitudes who lead laborious lives, recklessly or heedfully plodding on among the rough temptations that beset their way. Here is the domain of faith and morals, here is the true empire of the Church, the source of her power, and the justification of her existence. In the matter of faith her central idea is fixedness. The Church by her most essential personality is steadfast; she will hand on the faith such as she has received it, not in the spirit only, but in the letter also, unabated by the loss of one jot or tittle. Such she conceives her duty as the depositary of truth. Leo XIII. authorized a consideration and study of biblical criticism, yet he lays down the basic laws for scholars that “ nothing can be proved either by physical science or archæology which can really contradict the Scriptures,” and that they must hold the truth of Holy Scripture to be irrefutable. The Church’s first law is to remain literally faithful to the end. How literal is that fidelity with respect to what she believes is the word of God is shown by the famous case of St. George Mivart. He, a distinguished man of science, in two leading English reviews, The Fortnightly and The Nineteenth Century, published his opinions on certain passages of the Old Testament, and stated that educated Catholics no longer believe that the Bible is literally inspired throughout. This declaration was a blunt challenge to the Church to state her position. Cardinal Vaughan attempted to persuade Mivart to retract, and meeting refusal, wrote him a letter in which he demanded subscription to this article of faith : —

“ In accordance with the holy Councils of Trent and of the Vatican, I receive all the books of the Old and New Testament with all their parts as set forth in the Fourth Session of the Council of Trent and contained in the ancient Latin edition of the Vulgate, as sacred and canonical, and I firmly believe and profess that the said scriptures are sacred and canonical, — not because, having been carefully composed by mere human industry, they were afterward approved by the Church’s authority, nor merely because they contain revelation with no admixture of error ; but because, having been written by the inspiration of the Holy Ghost, they have God for their Author, and have been delivered as such to the Church herself. Wherefore, in all matters of faith or morals appertaining to the building up of Christian doctrine, I believe that to be the true sense of Holy Scripture which our Holy Mother the Church has held and now holds, to whom the judgment of the true sense and interpretation of the Holy Scripture belongs.

“ I firmly believe and profess that the doctrine of faith which God has revealed has not been proposed like a philosophical invention to be perfected by human ingenuity, but has been delivered as a Divine deposit to the Spouse of Christ, to be faithfully kept and infallibly declared, and that, therefore, that meaning of the sacred dogmas is to be perpetually retained which our Holy Mother the Church has once declared, and that that meaning can never be departed from, under the pretense or pretext of a deeper comprehension of them. I reject as false and heretical the assertion that it is possible at some time, according to the progress of science, to give to doctrines propounded by the Church a sense different from that which the Church has understood and understands, and consequently that the sense and meaning of her doctrines can ever be in the course of time practically explained away or reversed.”

Mivart replied : “ It is now evident that a vast and impassable abyss yawns between Catholic dogma and science, and no man with ordinary knowledge can henceforth join the communion of the Roman Catholic Church if he correctly understands what its principles and its teaching really are.” He refused to subscribe, and the cardinal excommunicated him. The declaration of faith demanded was not new; it followed the doctrine laid down by Leo XIII. in his encyclical known as Providentissimus Deus, issued in 1893. The Pope said : “ It is absolutely wrong and forbidden, either to narrow inspiration to certain parts only of Holy Scripture, or to admit that the sacred writer has erred. For the system of those who, in order to rid themselves of these difficulties, do not hesitate to concede that Divine inspiration regards the things of faith and morals, and nothing beyond, because (as they wrongly think) in a question of the truth or falsehood of a passage, we should consider not so much what God has said as the reason and purpose which He had in mind in saying it — this system cannot be tolerated. For all the books which the Church receives as sacred and canonical are written wholly and entirely, with all their parts, at the dictation of the Holy Ghost; and so far is it from being possible that any error can coexist with inspiration, that inspiration not only is essentially incompatible with error, but excludes and rejects it as absolutely and necessarily as it is impossible that God himself, the supreme truth, can utter that which is not true.

“This is the ancient and unchanging faith of the Church, solemnly defined in the Councils of Florence and of Trent, and finally confirmed and more expressly formulated by the Council of the Vatican. . . . Hence because the Holy Ghost employed men as His instruments, we cannot therefore say that it was these inspired instruments who, perchance, had fallen into error, and not the primary Author. For, by supernatural power, He so moved and impelled them to write — He was so present to them — that the things which He ordered, and those only, they, first, rightly understood, then willed faithfully to write down, and finally expressed in apt words and with infallible truth. Otherwise it could not be said that He was the author of the entire Scripture. . . . It follows that those who maintain that an error is possible in any genuine passage of the sacred writings either pervert the Catholic notion of inspiration, or make God the author of such error.”

This pronouncement was delivered by Leo XIII. ex cathedra. It concerns the Roman Catholic faith, and as such, in consequence of the dogma of infallibility, even if it had not been taken from decrees of the Councils of Trent and of the Vatican, would be an authoritative and final statement. As such, of course, it is binding on Pius X. Nevertheless it is one thing to have a dogma on the statute book, another to enforce it. In France opinions similar to those entertained by Mivart are expressed without fear. M. Léon Chaine¹ says: “ The great error has been to find in the Bible that which could not be in it and is not in it. The Bible, inspired as it is, is not a treatise upon astronomy or the natural sciences. . . . Some have triumphed a little noisily over certain recent discoveries, because these discoveries have done away with certain contradictions that seemed to exist between the Bible and science. This does not prevent it from being highly unwise to consider all the contents of the Holy Scripture inspired. A school, at the head of which in France is Mgr. d’Hulst, and of which at present Mgr. Le Camus, Bishop of La Rochelle, is one of the most learned representatives, puts a distinct limitation upon the inspiration of the Bible. . . . One may remain attached to orthodoxy without believing that the world was created exactly 4004 years before Jesus Christ, without believing in the story of the apple in the garden of Eden, or in that of the devil tempting in the disguise of a serpent, . . . in the tumbling of the walls of Jericho at the sound of trumpets, the sun stopping at the voice of Joshua, Balaam’s ass speaking, or yet in Jonah’s traveling in the belly of a whale.”

M. Chaine is writing in defense of the oppressed Catholics, and uses arguments likely to affect the French public in favor of the Church. In England, on the contrary, St. George Mivart challenged the Church ; he forced the issue ; she did not flinch, and no doubt in a similar case she would again deny her rites to a contumacious heretic. But those who are willing to give up the Church for the sake of disbelieving in the tower of Babel, in Jonah and the whale, in Joshua’s stopping the sun, are exceedingly few. Those who trouble themselves about what they style a monstrous demand on credulity are the outsiders.

It cannot be too firmly insisted that the alleged conflict of science with the dogmas of the Church is not a matter of consequence to members of the Church ; some of the educated deny the conflict, some have separate departments in their minds for experience and for divinity, some shrug their shoulders, the great mass of Catholics pass on ignorant and indifferent. The attitude of the Church is a logical consequence of the dogmas, that she has received the truth, that she is its interpreter. Neither Pius X. nor any other pope can alter the Church’s position.

During the last fifty years knowledge has increased more than in any half century of recorded time. Astronomy, physics, chemistry, biology, psychology have developed beyond all hope, and in consequence of these discoveries many educated men in every country in Europe, as well as here, became materialists and atheists. The Roman Catholic Church during those fifty years has declared the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary a dogma of faith, she has asserted the infallibility of the Pope in matters of faith and morals, she has reaffirmed the doctrines of the Council of Trent, and repeated the theories of Thomas Aquinas, and to-day she stands higher in the estimation of mankind, of the educated as well as of the ignorant, than she did before the great illumination of science. Her dogmas have not hindered her, perhaps they have helped her. This steadfastness is the great distinction of the Catholic Church. Protestant churches become rationalistic, following in their own halting fashion, and at a very respectful distance, what they deem the conclusions of science, but the Roman Catholic Church, endowed with a vital principle of her own, develops in her own theology, unswerving under alien influence, embodying in fresh form some truth which she believes was revealed to the Apostles.

At the present time, however, no question of dogma needs to be settled ; there is no dispute in the Church over any tenet, and it is wholly beyond probability that Pius X. should think of holding an Œcumenical Council, or of declaring a new dogma. A priest who has passed his life in the dead little city of Venice, doing good to the poor, will be far more likely to fix his mind on the virtues of conduct, and on obedience to the commandment made to the Apostle, and through that Apostle, as he believes, directly to him, “ Simon, son of Jonas lovest thou me, . . . feed my sheep.”

Certainly, the duty of the Church to assist men in their spiritual struggles is now and always has been her first duty, for the duty to preserve the faith is but a means to that end. Dogma has no significance except as a rod and staff to the spiritual pilgrim. The new pontiff must ask himself, “ Does the Church help her children in all reasonable ways, in all possible ways, to be better men, to forsake lower pleasures and emotions for higher and nobler feelings ? ” Here is the real task before him. In the practical business of reigning, of administering the Church, he is free to act according to his will, so far as the nature of a gigantic task can leave a man free ; here is his great opportunity. The question of temporal power is but a speck of dust compared to the immense importance of able and upright administration. Yet, what can one man do with a thousand bishops and a hundred thousand priests ?

In the first place the Pope has the power to appoint cardinals. At present the Sacred College is nearly full, but the cardinals are old men, and it is likely that Pius X. will have frequent opportunity of appointment. That body, respectable enough, cannot be said to be composed of very eminent men. It is unworthy of the Church to have forty cardinals from little places in Italy, and but one to represent the United States and one to represent England. The Pope certainly would not run the risk of leaving the Italian cardinals without a working majority, but that body should be composed of the most virtuous, dignified, able, and intellectual priests in the whole Church. The appointments to the cardinalate of Lavigerie in France, of Manning in England, of Gibbons in the United States, were equal to great victories for the Church. A resolute pontiff could make the politics of the Vatican of consequence to every government in the world by the appointment of the proper cardinals.

The Pope has the right to invest bishops, and though he appoints, by agreement or by custom, candidates nominated to him, nevertheless directly or indirectly he has immense power over the hierarchy, and can make the Church a career for virtue and talents. That the standard of the bishops should be raised, at least in certain portions of the world, can hardly be doubted ; for if the bishops were what they might be, the priests would be on the average of somewhat higher type. One may well regard with admiration the general faithfulness to their trust displayed by an immense multitude of priests, and feel sure that a Father Damien is no rare exception, and yet one may also think that the standard of intelligence among the priesthood in various corners of the world might be raised, and that more priests might have a deep sense of the tremendous responsibility that accompanies their power. It may be added that a little knowledge of hygiene would not diminish any priest’s influence for good. The parish priest is the material out of which the Roman Church is made ; by him, and not by pope and cardinals, is the Church to be judged. He need not be much better or wiser than his flock in order to be qualified to lead them and help them, but he must be a little better, a little wiser. His life is hard, his opportunities are great; in his hands lies the future of the Church of Rome. One cannot hope that educated men will be ready to sacrifice their lives and live among peasants, but a little broader education, an education that would bring them into contact with the earth beneath as well as with the heaven above, might be required. It surely would be possible to diminish ignorance in the priesthood, and to check an extreme readiness to call upon the special interposition of Providence to the exclusion of those instruments of grace specially sanctioned by Providence, — intelligence and knowledge. Priests might be better instructed than, when a fire breaks out in a village and threatens every house, to walk up and down in front of the conflagration with litanies and censers and get in the way of the water-buckets.

The pontiff has a great opportunity for immense service in raising the character and the education of the priesthood. The priests, however, are the Church’s hands to succor and uplift, to encourage and strengthen, to carry spiritual life to the people, and the best instruction they can receive must remain the Christian doctrines. The gospel of Christ was to bring peace on earth, to turn men away from the individual struggle for existence, and persuade them to union, that side by side they should subdue nature and struggle against the brutal inheritances which bar the way to the Kingdom of God. The Church has not always preached peace, but under Leo XIII. she walked in the true way. He strove to the best of his power to prevent war between nations, and also to prevent as well as to soften that civil struggle between masters and laborers, which resembles war in brutality, knavery, lies, and hypocrisy. Here the Church has declared herself for reason and conciliation. Used to old ways, accustomed to the old order, she was naturally inclined to take the side of the masters, but under the generous-hearted Leo she has pronounced her compassion for the downtrodden and oppressed, and proclaimed herself the protector of the poor and unfortunate.

In the world’s weary endeavor after peace, between nation and nation, between master and laborer, between man and man, the Church may do very much ; as a cosmopolitan society, she can sympathize with American and Spaniard, with Englishman and Russian, with German and Frenchman; having children in every rank and condition of society, she can be indifferent between rich and poor; with her great age, her far-away beliefs, her unworldly standards, she can be just between man and man. She can be the great peacemaker, and if Pius X. and his successors shall be able to increase her influence for peace and the brotherhood of men, as no doubt they will endeavor to do, they may be sure that after the empires of Austria, England, Germany, and Russia shall have passed away, the papacy will still remain, because she will have again proved that she serves mankind.

H. D. Sedgwick, Jr.