THE POPES OF THE CENTURY
Six Popes ruled the Church in the nineteenth century: Pius VII., Leo XII., Pius VIII., Gregory XVI., Pius IX., and the present venerable pontiff, Leo XIII. In the person of Pius VII. they have known what martyrdom was like, also the shame and humiliation of being subject to a civil power absolute in its character and prone to unwarrantable interference with the ecclesiastical power, even to contempt of its most ancient and venerable rights. In Gregory XVI. and Pius IX. they learned the purposes and the power of those who in Europe have succeeded to the men of the French Revolution. In Leo XIII. their line, the oldest line of rulers on the earth, can boast of a most enlightened mind and a very sympathetic heart. Long time a bishop of an important see before he was made Pope, he has been at the level of every task imposed upon the Papacy.
In a particular manner he has been the patron of ecclesiastical studies, by his scholarly encyclicals on philosophy, Scripture, history, and other branches of learning. A noble specimen of this activity is his late letter to the bishops of France on the studies of the clergy. His spirit is the Christian spirit of reconciliation and concord, yet without sacrifice of the immemorial rights and the solemn obligations of the Apostolic See. He may not live to see the restoration of his independence, and the reparation of the wrong inflicted upon the Holy See, but he can maintain a protest that will forever invalidate among Catholics the claim of the actual government and keep open the Roman question until it is rightly settled.
Catholics cannot forget that the Pope for the time being is, according to Catholic doctrine, the successor of Saint Peter in all his rights and privileges as the visible head of the Church, appointed by Jesus Himself. Hence, among other duties, he has to safeguard the approved traditions and the general legislation of the past, to protect the status of the Church as given over to him, and to hand it down undiminished to his own successor. Precisely because he is the head of the Church he may not licitly alter its organic and regular life, or arbitrarily abandon the almost sacrosanct ways along which his predecessors have moved, or give up lightly the institutions in which religion has gradually found a setting for itself.
I venture to say that this element of fixity in the attitude of the Apostolic See will be more appreciated in another age, more constructive and architectonic than the past, less querulous and destructive, even if less daring and brilliant. Forever to pull down and scatter, and never to build up and perfect, cannot be the final purpose of human society. It is perhaps worth remarking that the average reign of the Popes was much longer in the nineteenth century than in any other, being over sixteen years, and that two successive reigns, those of Pius IX. and Leo XIII., represent fifty-four continuous years of Church government at Rome, a phenomenon not witnessed since the foundation of that Church by Saint Peter and Saint Paul.