NEW PUBLICATIONS.
Rome and Geneva. Translated from the French. With an introduction by M. J. Spalding, D.D., Archbishop of Baltimore. 8vo. Pamphlet. Baltimore: John Murphy & Co.
We always knew that the Archbishop of Baltimore is an able writer of the more solid kind of essays, but were not before aware how gracefully he can use his pen in description. In his preface to the pamphlet whose title is given above, he draws a very pretty and graphic picture of Geneva, the ancient headquarters of Calvin, and in right, though not in possession, the See of St. Francis of Sales. Some interesting, curious, and gratifying facts in connection with that city are mentioned by the archbishop. He tells us that half the population of the city and canton is Catholic, and of the other half only one-tenth is Calvinistic. John Calvin's house is a convent of Sisters of Charity. The gloomy heretiarch and his companions are unhonored and almost unknown in the city which was once called the Rome of Protestantism, but which is now a sort of temporary centre of Catholic activity in Europe, while the Holy City is desecrated by the rule of the Lombard usurper. The pamphlet itself is a letter addressed by a young law-student of Geneva to our old friend the eminent romance-writer, Merle d'Aubigné and one of his confrêres, both of whom, it appears, seized the occasion of the absence of the bishop at the Council to make a feeble assault on the church. It is a manly, sensible letter, more interesting as a specimen of what a young student can achieve in a polemical combat with veteran antagonists than from anything new or peculiar in its arguments. The youthful champion uses his sling and pebble with skill and dexterity, although he had not so hard a skull as that of Goliath of Gath to crack. Our young gentlemen who are training for professional life ought to be interested to see how he does it, and the noble, chivalrous spirit of faith and honor which is manifest in the letter is one we desire to see extended as much as possible among these generous youth who are able to do as much for the cause of truth.
The Sympathy of Religions. An address delivered at Horticultural Hall, Boston, February 6, 1870. By Thomas Wentworth Higginson.
"Our true religious life begins when we discover that there is an inner light, not infallible, but invaluable, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world. Then we have something to steer by, and it is chiefly this, and not any anchor, that we need." These are the two opening sentences of the above lecture. If an "inner light, not infallible" is all that our author has "to steer by," we beg, for our part, not to enter on board the ship of which he is the captain. In this case, it is not the "inner light, not infallible" that is invaluable, but the anchor, unless one would foolishly expose himself to certain shipwreck.
If this be man's plight, then let him keep silence until he finds something that will give him certitude. For what else can an erring guide lead to than error? It is the blind leading the blind into the ditch.
Think, too, of the absurdity of the author's pretensions, with such a guide, to criticise all religions in order to give to the world "the religion"!—"the religion of all ages!"
These free-religionists who talk so much about the value of reason have yet to learn its true value and the great dignity of the human soul. If the author's premise be true, it is an insult to our common sense to read his lecture.
The Happiness of Heaven. By a Father of the Society of Jesus. 1 vol. 16mo, pp. 372. Baltimore: John Murphy & Co. 1871.
We might perhaps appropriately designate this work as "The Popular Theology of Heaven:" theology, because it is strictly accurate in its dogmatic teaching; popular, because the whole subject, without being lowered, is brought within the sphere of the popular mind. We might call it also the "Spiritual Geography of Heaven," since it gives us such a knowledge as we can have at this distance of the promised land which we must hope one day to inhabit. We are told what is that beatific or happy-making vision of God which is the essential bliss of the elect; what is the light of glory by means of which the soul sees God; what are the occupations of heaven, the social joys of the blessed; the qualities and enjoyments of the glorified body and senses; the degrees of beatitude, yet the complete and satiating happiness of each individual, without envy or jealousy, without regret of the past or fear for the future. The book presents an elegant appearance, and is brought out in Messrs. Murphy & Co.'s best style.
De Domini Nostri Jesu Christi Divinitate. 3 vols. Turin: Marietti. Baltimore: John Murphy & Co. 1870.
To the many excellent volumes which Father Perrone has contributed during his long career to the theological library, he has now made in the work before us an addition in no way inferior to his previous writings. It is a work addressed to the learned alone, and in the language of the learned; but it is one which they will prize very highly, not only for its depth of theological lore, but also for its peculiar fitness to the present time. Its subject is the fundamental dogma of Christianity—now so much attacked and, we may add, outside of the Catholic Church so little believed—the Divinity of Jesus Christ, which it proves and defends against the infidels, the rationalists, and the mythics of our day.
In the first volume, we have the proofs drawn from the pages of the Old Testament; in the second, those furnished by the New Testament. The third volume establishes the Divinity of Christ on evidence drawn from the institution of the church, and, in particular, from the institution of the Roman Pontificate. The author demonstrates how the promises made by the Redeemer to his church, the characteristic marks by which he distinguished her, the gifts with which he enriched her, give evidence of a Divine Author and Founder. A most convincing argument springs from the Primacy conferred on St. Peter and his successors in the See of Rome, since God alone could have established and maintained throughout the ages and the nations of the earth so exalted a dignity, together with the prerogatives which befit its possessor.
Of all the works produced in our day on this important subject, Fr. Perrone's is without doubt the most satisfactory, because the most forcible, learned, and exhaustive.
The Spiritual Doctrine of F. Louis Lallemant, S.J. Preceded by some Account of his Life. Translated from the French. Edited by F. W. Faber, D.D. New Edition. London: Burns, Oates & Co. For sale by the Catholic Publication Society, 9 Warren Street, New York.
F. Lallemant was one of the brightest lights of the Society of Jesus, and occupies in French spiritual literature a place analogous to that of F. Alvarez in the Spanish. This book, of which a new edition has been lately published, is now well known in England and the United States through the translation which was brought out under the auspices of F. Faber. It ranks among the best of modern times, and even deserves to be classed with the works of the celebrated authors of past ages. The pietistic mystics among the Protestants, and even some Catholics, prepossessed by certain unfounded prejudices, have accused the Jesuits as the enemies of interior spiritual piety. There was never a more unfounded charge. The present work is one signal proof, among many others, that strict orthodoxy in doctrine, unswerving fidelity to the teaching of the Roman Church, and accurate theological science, so far from having quenched spirituality in the Society of Jesus, have only given it purity and illumination. The writings of the thoroughly orthodox masters of the spiritual life are, beyond all comparison, superior, in respect to their insight into the mysteries of faith and their knowledge of the higher paths of the ascent toward union with God, to any of those who have fancied themselves illuminated with a private and personal light of the Holy Spirit, which they have thought should supersede the infallible teaching of the church. F. Lallemant is specially remarkable for his skill and accuracy in pointing out the perfect harmony which must always exist between the genuine interior guidance of the Holy Spirit in the soul and the exterior, divinely-appointed, infallible guidance of authority to which it must always be subordinate. The Spiritual Doctrine is orthodox and precise in its teaching without being dull or dry; fervent and spiritual without any tinge of vague or visionary enthusiasm; clear, judicious, and practical in its treatment of every topic; void of all wordy declamation and vapid sentimentalism; addressing the will and the heart through the intellect; clothing the thoughts and feeling of a saint in the style and language of a scholar. It is just the book for the more intellectual and educated class of readers, provided they have some desire for solid Christian virtue and piety.
The Romance of the Charter Oak. By William Seton. 2 vols. 12mo. New York: P. O'Shea. 1871.
To weave into a story interesting incidents of colonial life in the state of Connecticut, during the reign of James II. of England, is the intention of these two volumes. The delineation of that remarkable incident in Connecticut history, the seizing of the state charter from under the very eyes of the British authorities, and its secretion for many years in the famous Charter Oak, and the picture of the regicide Goffe living in perpetual fear of detection are well drawn.
The story in some respects shows a pen not yet perfectly at home in this kind of writing; but no one who takes an interest in our early colonial history can fail to find in reading these volumes both pleasure and much useful historical information.
Familiar Discourses to the Young. Preceded by an Address to Parents. By a Catholic Priest. 1 vol. 18mo. New York: The Catholic Publication Society, 9 Warren Street. 1871.
The reproduction, in America, of this work, originally written in Ireland, will prove to be a benefaction in many a homestead. This is the work of a man who thoroughly knows his subject. It is a book for the time, free alike from the doubtful stories of too many writings of the same kind and the tedious dryness that meets the youthful eye in most books of instruction. We wish a hearty God-speed to this valuable accession to our English Catholic literature. No Catholic family in the land should be without a copy of this book. It will be worth more than its weight in gold to those who read it; and to those who practise the lessons of wisdom it contains it will be their glory on earth and their crown in heaven.
It is a book that ought to be encouraged on missions and by all priests having charge of congregations.
The Countess of Glosswood. A Tale. Translated from the French. 1 vol. 16mo. Baltimore: Kelly, Piet & Co. 1871.
We have here a touching but 'ower sad' tale of the life of a Scotch Covenanter who, being found in arms against his king Charles II., is condemned to death, but has his sentence changed by the interposition of a friend to a life of hard labor in the Cornish mines. His wife, the Countess of Glosswood, will not leave her husband, but with her infant daughter follows his hard fortune, all communication with the world outside of mining life being forbidden by his sentence. But the good God, in compensation for their desolate lives, sends them the priceless gift of faith, through the instrumentality of a Catholic priest, disguised as a miner that he may win souls for Christ, in times when to be known as a priest was to give one's self up to certain death. The countess had been taught to regard the Catholic Church with hatred and terror, and the agony of mind through which she must pass in learning to love what she had before hated is forcibly described; and the gentle way in which she is led step by step toward the light by the devoted priest cannot fail to give satisfaction to the earnest reader. The doctrine of indulgences was, of course, a terrible stumbling-block in her way, and Father Deymand's explanation is specially clear and convincing. The book comes to us in an attractive dress, with tinted paper and good type.
THE CATHOLIC WORLD.
VOL. XIII., No. 75.—JUNE, 1871.[45]
SARDINIA AND THE HOLY FATHER.[46]
The volume giving the call and proceedings of the meeting held last January at the Academy of Music, in this city, in celebration of Italian unity, especially the occupation of Rome and the suppression of the Papal government, is handsomely printed, and does credit to the taste and skill of our New York book-makers; but it is a sad book, and almost makes one despair of civil society and natural morality. Nothing can be more sad and discouraging to all right-minded men than to see a large number of the most distinguished and influential men of a great nation-statesmen, politicians, judges, lawyers, officers of the army, ministers of religion, journalists, poets, philosophers, scholars, professors and presidents of colleges and universities—assisting, by their presence, addresses, letters, or comments, to applaud events notoriously brought about by fraud, craft, lying, calumny, and armed force, in contravention of every principle of international law and of public and private right. It is a sad thing for our republic when so many of its representative men, whose names are recorded in this volume, can endorse the fraud and violence by which the Sard king has effected what he calls the unity of Italy, and congratulate him on his successful sacrilege and spoliation in the Roman state; and the only consolation left us is that, with a solitary exception, no Catholic name appears on the list, and all the sympathizers are Protestants, and all, or nearly all, prominent adherents of the same dominant political party.
To the unity of Italy, under some circumstances, we might not seriously object. It is true, we hold small states are more favorable to the growth of intelligence, the development of elevated and strong personal character, to individual liberty, to social well-being, to the moral progress of the people, than huge centralized states or empires, which can be governed only despotically, and in which there is so great a distance between power and the people that personal and affectionate relations between the governors and the governed, and which do so much to soften the asperities of authority and to render obedience willing and cheerful, are, for the most part, impracticable. But if the several independent Italian states that have been absorbed by Sardinia to form the new kingdom of Italy had freely and of their own accord given their consent to the absorption, and no craft, fraud, violence, or disregard of public or private right had been resorted to in order to effect it, we might doubt its wisdom, but we could not object to it on the ground of international law or of natural justice. We, of course, defend the temporal sovereignty of the Pope; but if the Pope had, motu proprio, without coercion, the show or the threat of coercion, given his consent to the absorption of the Roman state in a united Italy, we should have nothing to say against it, for it would have been the act of the Roman state, no public or private right of justice or morality would have been violated, and no blow struck at the equal rights of independent states or nations, at the authority of the sovereign power of a state to govern it, or to the duty of obedience to it.
But it is well known that such is not the case either with the Holy Father or the several other Italian sovereigns that have been dispossessed and their states absorbed by Sardinia in order to effect Italian unity. In every case, the absorption was effected by violence and force, without and against the consent of the sovereign authority. The Pope refused his assent to the absorption of the ecclesiastical state, and said, to the demand to surrender it, "Non possumus." The Roman people, without the Pope, gave no assent—had no assent to give or to withhold; for, without the Pope, they were not a state or a sovereign people. It matters not whether plebiscitums can or cannot be alleged, for a plebiscitum, where there is a legitimate government, cannot be taken without its authority, especially not against its authority; for without its authority it would be a legal nullity, and against it it would be revolutionary and criminal. Nor would it help the matter for the absorbing state to invade with its armies the state to be absorbed, overthrow the legitimate government, take forcible possession of the territory, and then call upon the population to decide their future condition by a plebiscitum, so long as a legitimate claimant to the government remains living. This was the case in the Roman state and in the other independent Italian states that have been absorbed. As a plebiscitum before the conquest is treasonable and not permissible, after the conquest it is a mockery, for the fate of the state is decided, however the population may vote.
Let us look the facts in the face, and see by what deeds and on what principles the unity of Italy has been effected. Sardinia, aided by France and Prussia, made an unprovoked war on Austria, and wrested from her the Lombardo-Venetian kingdom, and appropriated it to herself. Neither she nor her allies had any just cause of war against Austria, or even of offence, except that sire wanted to get possession of all Italy. France wanted the left branch of the Rhine for her boundary, and Prussia wanted to absorb the rest of Germany. There was no other reason for the war. The several independent Ducal states fell with Austria, with whom they were closely allied, and were invaded and taken possession of by the Sard king. The Kingdom of the Two Sicilies was invaded by Garibaldi and his filibusters, backed—covertly at first, openly at last—by the Sard government, conquered, because the Neapolitan king listened to the insidious advice and deceitful promises of Imperial France, said to have been given not to offer any serious resistance, taken possession of and appropriated as the highwayman appropriates the traveller's purse. The Æmilian provinces of the Roman state, prepared for insurrection by the secret societies and Sardinian emissaries, were invaded by the Sardinian forces and appropriated by the House of Savoy. Finally, the Roman state was invaded by the same Victor Emmanuel, with too strong a force for the Papal government to resist, its sovereign declared deposed, its government suppressed, and its territory and people annexed to the so-called kingdom of Italy.
This simple recital of facts tells the whole story. Sardinia, aided by the arms and diplomacy of France and Prussia, by the foreign policy of the Whigs and Radicals of Great Britain, the intrigues of the secret societies, the money and co-operation of the Protestant propaganda, the malcontents and malefactors of all the states of Italy, and adventurers and miscreants from all nations of the earth, has succeeded, without any right, without having received any offence or provocation, in the violation of every principle of international law and every precept of morality or natural justice, in absorbing every Italian state, and effecting the unification of the whole peninsula under her own royal house. These are the facts, stated in their simplest form, without passion and without exaggeration.
These facts, being public and notorious, must be as well known to those distinguished American sympathizers who addressed the meeting or wrote letters of approval to the committee that called it as they are to us. We dare not so insult the intelligence of such eminent men as to suppose, for a moment, that they did not know what they sympathized with, or that, in applauding the unity of Italy, they were ignorant of the craft, violence, and robbery that had been resorted to in order to effect it. What, then, must we and all right-minded men think of their own principles, of their religion, their politics, or their sense of justice? Does their Protestantism or their hatred of the Papacy justify, approve the violation of international law, the equal rights of sovereign states, the sacred rights of property, public and private, the principles of natural justice the basis of the state and of all legitimate authority, without which not even natural society itself can subsist? Does it authorize them to applaud unprovoked war and conquest, and public and private robbery? If so, how can they justify their Protestantism or their hatred of the Papacy? If they cannot assert either without denying all public and private right and trampling on all laws, human and divine, how can they regard either as defensible?
There is no mistaking the real character of the acts by which the sovereign states of Italy have been suppressed by Sardinia and her allies, and the present unification of Italy effected; and it only adds to their atrocity that it was done in part by exciting the populations, or a portion of them, to insurrection and rebellion against their respective sovereigns. There is nothing meaner or more unjustifiable than for one sovereign to tamper with the fidelity of the subjects of another, especially in time of profound peace between the two states. If persisted in, it is a justifiable cause of war. International law, or the law of nations, makes all sovereign states equal in their rights, without regard to the form of government, size, race, language, or geographical position; and the law of ethics, at least, requires each sovereign state to respect, and to cause its subjects to respect, the authority of every other sovereign state over its own subjects, as it requires every other to respect its authority over its subjects. The rule is, no doubt, often violated, but it is none the less sacred and binding on that account. It is equally wrong for the citizens of one state to attempt to seduce the citizens of another state from their allegiance. International law, national law, municipal law, as well as the moral law, know nothing of the doctrine, so eloquently preached by the ex-Governor of Hungary, of "the solidarity of peoples."
Hon. Richard H. Dana, Jr., an able lawyer, reputed to be well versed in the law of nations, and who affects, in his elaborate letter to the committee, to argue the question as it affects Catholics with fairness and candor, appears to have some doubts whether the invasion of the Roman state by the Sardinian troops, the deposition and virtual imprisonment of its sovereign in his own palace, and the annexation of its territory and inhabitants to the dominion of the House of Savoy, is really a violation of international law; but he evidently, besides arguing the question on a collateral issue, takes a juridical instead of an ethical view of international law, and considers it only so far as it enters into the national jurisprudence, and is enforcible by the nation through its own courts on its own citizens. Yet he cannot be ignorant that there are violations of international law which cannot be taken cognizance of by the national jurisprudence, and which may be, and often are, justifiable causes of war. The basis of international law is the law of justice, or droit naturel, as it is the basis of all natural ethics. There may be treaty or conventional agreements between nations, which must be considered whenever the case comes up juridically, or the law is to be juridically enforced, but these cannot abrogate or modify the law of justice, the jus gentium of the Roman jurists, which is the principle and foundation of all law. Acts in contravention of justice, St. Augustine and St. Thomas after him tell us, are violences rather than laws, and are nullities. International law applies justice to the mutual relations of sovereign states, precisely as ethics does to the relations of individuals. It declares all sovereign states equal in their rights, the territory of each to be sacred and inviolable, and that no one is permitted to do to another what it would not have another to do to it. The rule is plain and practicable, and under it Mr. Dana's doubts ought to vanish. For one sovereign state to invade with its armies another, suppress its government, and absorb its territory and population, without any provocation or any offence given, but merely because it wants it to complete and round off its own territory, as Sardinia has done to the Roman or ecclesiastical state, is too manifestly a violation of international law to leave any doubt on any mind that does not hold the principle of all law to be that might makes right.[47]
No doubt certain untenable theories of popular sovereignty and certain alleged plebiscitums have had something to do with blinding the eyes of our American sympathizers to the atrocity of the acts they applaud. But plebiscitums cannot be pleaded when taken without the order or assent of the sovereign authority, if there is a sovereign authority, as we have already said. In the case of every Italian state absorbed, there was a sovereign authority, and the plebiscitum taken was not by its order or assent, but against its positive prohibition. It is idle to say that the people of these several states gave their consent to be absorbed, for except as the state, represented by its sovereign authority, there is no people with a consent either to give or to withhold. The people, no doubt, are sovereign in the constitution and government, but not otherwise, for otherwise they have no existence. A people or population of a given territory wholly disorganized, without constitution or laws, and deprived of all government, must necessarily, for simple preservation, reorganize and reconstitute government by conventions or plebiscitums as best they can; but when they have reconstituted government or the state, their sovereignty merges in it. The people of the United States and of the several states can amend the constitution, but only constitutionally, through the government. The notion which has latterly gained some vogue, that there persists always a sovereign people back of the government and constitution, or organic people, competent to alter, change, modify, or overturn the existing government at will, is purely revolutionary, fatal to all stable government, to all political authority, to the peace and order of society, and to all security for liberty, either public or private. We see the effects of it in the present deplorable condition of France.
The resolutions reported by the committee and adopted by the meeting, and which Dr. Thompson in his address tells us "are constructed on a philosophical order of thought," attempt to place "the temporal power of the Pope within the category of all earthly human governments, and bound by the same conditions and subject to the same fortunes." This may be successfully disputed. The Roman or ecclesiastical state was a donation to the Holy See or the Church of Rome. Gifts to the church are gifts to God, and when made are the property, under him, of the spirituality, which by no laws, heathen, Jewish, or Christian, can be deprived of their possession or use without sacrilege. They are sacred to religious uses, and can no longer, without the consent of the spirituality, be diverted to temporal uses, without adding sacrilege to robbery. Whoso attacks the spirituality attacks God. The property or sovereignty of the Roman state vests, then, in the Holy See—hence it is always called and officially recognized as the state of the church—and not in the Pope personally; but in him only ex officio as its incumbent, as trustee, or administrator. Hence the Pope denied his right to surrender it, and answered the Minister of Sardinia, Non possumus. The temporal power of the Pope is therefore not within the category of all earthly human governments, but is the property of the spirituality. Victor Emmanuel, in despoiling the Pope, has despoiled the Holy See, the spirituality, usurped church property, property given to God, and sacred to the religious uses. The deed which our eminent jurists and Protestant divines sympathize with and applaud, strikes a blow at the spirituality, at the sacredness of all church property, of Protestant churches as well as of Catholic churches—at the sacredness of all eleemosynary gifts, and asserts the right of power when strong enough to divert them from the purposes of the donors. These Protestant ministers assert in principle that their own churches may be despoiled of their revenues and funds without sacrilege, without injustice, by any power that is able to do it. They defend the right of any one who chooses to divert from the purpose of the donors all donations and investments to found and support hospitals, orphan asylums, retreats for the aged and destitute, asylums for idiots, deaf-mutes, the blind, the insane, public libraries, schools, colleges, seminaries, and academies, peace societies, tract societies, home and foreign missionary societies, and Bible societies; they not only defend the right of the state in which they are placed to confiscate at its pleasure all funds, revenues, and investments of the sort, but the right of any foreign state to invade the territory in time of peace, take possession of them by armed force, as public property, and to divert them to any purpose it sees proper. Did the learned divines, the eminent jurists, who approve the resolutions ever hear of the speech of Daniel Webster and the decision of the Supreme Court of the United States in the famous Dartmouth College case? Or are they so intent on crushing the Papacy that they are quite willing to cut their own throats?
But the fact of the donation to the Holy See is denied. Be it so. Certain it is that the Roman state never belonged to the Sard kingdom; that the church has always claimed it, had her claim allowed by every state in the world, has possessed the sovereignty, not always without disturbance, for a thousand years without an adverse claimant; and that is sufficient to give her a valid title by prescription against all the world, even if she have no other, which we do not admit—an older and better title than that of any secular sovereign in Europe to his estates. Every sovereign or sovereign state in Europe is estopped by previous acknowledgment, and the absence of any adverse claimant with the shadow of a right, from pleading the invalidity of the title of the Holy See. The Roman state is therefore ecclesiastical, not secular.
Whether Père Lacordaire ever said, as Dr. Thompson asserts, that "in no event could the people be donated," or not, we are not authentically informed; but if he did, he said a very foolish and a very untrue thing. The people cannot be donated as slaves, nor could any of their rights of property or any of their private or public rights be donated. Every feudal lawyer knows that. The donation, grant, or cession could be and was only the right of government and eminent domain, or the right the grantor possessed; but that could be ceded as Louisiana was ceded by France, Florida by Spain, and California by Mexico, to the United States. In the cessions made to the Holy See, no right of the people to govern themselves or to choose their own sovereign was ceded, for the people ceded had had no such right, and never had had it. The sovereign who had the right of governing them ceded his own right to the church, but no right possessed or ever possessed by the people or inhabitants of the territory. International law knows no people apart from the sovereign or government. The right of self-government is the right of each nation or political people to govern itself without the dictation or interference of any foreign power, and is only another term for national independence. What was Pepin's or Charlemagne's, either could cede without ceding any right or possession of the people. So of the donations or cessions of that noble woman, the protectress of St. Gregory VII., the Countess Matilda. If Père Lacordaire ever said what he is reported to have said, he must have forgotten the law to which he was originally bred, and spoken rather as a red republican than as a Catholic theologian, statesman, or jurist.
But waiving the fact that the sovereignty of the Roman state has a spiritual character by being vested in the Holy See, and granting, not conceding, that it is in "the category of all earthly sovereignties," its right is no less perfect and inviolable, and the invasion and spoliation of the Roman state by Sardinia, as of the other Italian states, are no less indefensible and unjustifiable on any principle of international law or of Christian or even of heathen ethics; for one independent state has no right to invade, despoil, and appropriate or absorb another that gives it no just cause of war. Nor is the act any more defensible, as we have already shown, if done in response to the invitation of a portion, even a majority, of the inhabitants, if in opposition to the will of the legitimate authority. Such invitation would partake of the nature of rebellion, be treasonable, and no people has the right to rebel against their sovereign, or to commit treason. Men who talk of "the sacred right of insurrection," either know not what they say, or are the enemies alike of order and liberty. The people have, we deny not, the right to withdraw their allegiance from the tyrant who tramples on the rights of God and of man, but never till a competent authority has decided that he is a tyrant and has forfeited his right to reign, which a Parisian or a Roman mob certainly is not. How long is it since these same gentlemen who are congratulating Victor Emmanuel were urging the government, leading its armies, or fighting in the ranks, to put down what they termed a rebellion in their own country, and condemning treason as a crime?
But the Romans and other Italians are of the same race, and speak the same language, we are told. That they are of the same race is questionable; but, suppose it, and that they speak the same language. They are no more of the same race and speak no more the same language, than the people of the United States and the people of Great Britain; have we, on that ground, the right to invade Great Britain, dethrone Queen Victoria, suppress the Imperial Parliament, to annex politically the British Empire to the United States, and to bring the British people under Congress and President Grant?
But as Italy is geographically one, it ought, we are told again, to be politically one. The United States, Canada, and Mexico, including Central America and British Columbia, are geographically one; but will any of the honorable or reverend gentlemen who addressed the meeting, or wrote letters to the committee that called it, contend that we have, therefore, the right unprovoked, and simply because it would be convenient to have them politically a part of our republic, to invade them with our armies, suppress their present governments, and annex them to the Union?
"Rome is the ancient capital of Italy, and the Italian government wishes to recover it, and needs its prestige for the present kingdom of Italy." But in no known period of history has Rome ever belonged to Italy; Italy for ages belonged to Rome, and was governed from and by it. Never in its whole history was Rome the capital of an Italian state, or the seat of an Italian government. She was not the capital of any state; she was herself the state as long as the Roman Empire lasted, and as such governed Italy and the world. The empire was not Roman because Rome was its capital city, but because Rome was the sovereign state itself, and all political power or political rights emanated, or were held to emanate, from her; and hence the empire was Roman, and the people were called Romans, not Italians. If you talk of restoration, let it be complete—recognize Rome as the sovereign state, and the rest of the world be held as subject provinces. Italy was never the state while Rome governed, nor has the name Italy at all times had the same geographical sense. Sometimes it meant Sicily, sometimes the southern, other times the northern, part of the peninsula—sometimes the heel or the foot, and sometimes the leg, of the boot.
It might or it might not be desirable for the pretended kingdom of Italy to have Rome for its capital, or the seat of its government, though we think Florence in this mercantile age would be far more suitable. But suppose it. Yet these Protestant ministers must know that there is a divine command that forbids one to covet what is one's neighbor's. Achab, king of Israel, wanted Naboth's vineyard, and was much troubled in spirit that Naboth would not consent to part with it either for love or money. His queen, the liberal-minded Jezebel, rebuked him for his dejection, and, fearing to use his power as king of Israel, took measures in his name that Naboth should be stoned to death, and the vineyard delivered to Achab. It was all very simple and easily done; but we read that vengeance overtook the king, fell heavily on him, his household, and his false prophets; that Jezebel fled from the Avenger, was overtaken and slain, and "the dogs came and licked up her blood." There is such a reality as justice, though our American sympathizers with the liberal and enlightened Jezebel seem to have forgotten it.
Dr. Stevens, the Protestant Episcopal Bishop of Pennsylvania, rejoices at the spoliation of the Pope, the absorption of the Roman state, and the unification of Italy, because "Italy is thus opened to liberal ideas, and Rome itself unlocked to the advancing civilization and intelligence of the nineteenth century." Which advancing civilization and intelligence are aptly illustrated, we presume, by the recent Franco-Prussian war, the communistic insurrection in Paris, the prostration of France, the nation that has advanced farthest in liberal ideas and nineteenth-century civilization. We have here on a fly-sheet a specimen of the liberal ideas to which Italy is opened, and of the sort of civilization and intelligence to which Rome is unlocked. We extract it for the benefit of Bishop Stevens and his brethren:
"Religions said to be revealed," these free-thinkers tells us, "have always been the worst enemy of mankind, because by making truth, which is the patrimony of all, the privilege of the few, they resist the progressive development of science and liberty, which can alone solve the gravest social problems that have tormented entire generations for ages.
"Priests have invented supernatural beings, made themselves mediators between them and men, and go preaching always a faith that substitutes authority for reason, slavery for liberty, the brute for the man.
"But the darkness is radiated, and progress beats down the idols and breaks the chains with which the priesthood has bound the human conscience. Furiously has raged the war between dogma and the postulates of science, liberty and tyranny, science and error.
"The voice of justice, so long silenced in blood by kings and priests conspiring together, comes forth omnipotent from the secret cells of the Inquisition, from the ashes of the funeral pile, from every stone sanctified by the blood of the apostles of truth. People believed the reign of evil would last for ever, but the day is white, a spark has kindled a conflagration. Rome of the priests becomes Rome of the people, the Holy City a human city. She no longer lends herself to a hypocritical faith, which, by substituting the form for the substance, excites the hatred of people against people solely because the one worships a God in the synagogue and the other in the pagoda.
"The association of free-thinkers is established here most opportunely to give the finishing stroke to the crumbling edifice of the priesthood, founded in the ignorance of the many by the astuteness of the few. Truth proved by science is our creed; respect for our own rights in respecting the rights of others, our morality.
"It is necessary to look boldly in the face the monster which for ages has made the earth a battle-field, to defy him openly and in the light of day. We shall therefore be true to the programme of civilization, in the name of which the world has applauded the liberation of Rome from the Pope, and we call upon all who love the moral independence of the family, prostituted and enslaved by the priest, upon all who wish a country great and respected, upon all who believe in human perfectibility, to unite with us under the banner of science and justice.
"To Rome is reserved a great glory—that of initiating the third and most splendid epoch of human civilization.
"Free Rome ought to repair the damage done to the world by sacerdotal Rome. She can do it, and she must do it. Let the true friends of liberty be associated, and descend to no compromise, no bargain with the most terrible enemy the human race has ever had."[48]
This programme of the Association of Free-thinkers in Rome is not an inapt commentary on the letter of the Bishop of Pennsylvania, and is a hearty response to the sympathy and encouragement given them in their work of destruction by the great and respectable New York meeting. It at least tells our American sympathizers how their friends in Rome understand their applause of the deposition of the Pope from his temporal sovereignty and the unity of Italy. Are they pleased with the response given them?
There may be a difference between the free-thinkers and their American friends; but the chief difference apparently is, that the free-thinkers are logical and have the courage of their principles, know what they mean and say it frankly, without reticence or circumlocution, while their American sympathizers have a hazy perception of their own principles, do not see very clearly whither they lead, and are afraid to push them to their last logical consequences. They have not fully mastered the principles on which they act; only half-know their own meaning; and the half they do know they would express and not express. Yet they are great men and learned men, but hampered by their Protestantism, which admits no clear or logical statement, except so far as it coincides with the free-thinkers in regarding the Papacy as a monster, which must, in the interests of civilization and liberty, be got rid of. Yet we can discover no substantial difference in principle between them. The deeds and events they applaud have no justification or excuse, save in the atrocious principles set forth by the free-thinkers. We are willing to believe these distinguished gentlemen try to persuade themselves, as they would fain persuade us, that it is possible to war against the Papacy without warring against revealed religion or Christian morals, as did the reformers in the sixteenth century; but these Roman free-thinkers know better, and tell them that they cannot do it. They understand perfectly well that Christianity as a revelation and an authoritative religion and the Papacy stand or fall together; and it is because they would get rid of all religions that claim to be revealed or to have authority in matters of conscience, that they seek to overthrow the Papacy. They attack the temporal sovereignty of the Pope only as a means of attacking more effectually his spiritual sovereignty; and they wish to get rid of his spiritual sovereignty only because they wish to rid themselves of the spiritual order, of the law of God, nay, of God himself, and feel themselves free to live for this world alone, and bend all their energies to the production, amassing, and enjoying the goods of time and sense. It is not the Pope personally, or his temporal government as such, that they call the worst enemy of mankind, or the "monster that for ages has made the earth a field of blood," but revealed religion, but faith, but the supernatural order, but the law of God, the spiritual order, which the Pope officially represents, and always and everywhere asserts, and which his temporal power aids him to assert more freely and independently. They recognize no medium between the Papacy and no-religion. They disdain all compromise, admit no via media, neither the Anglican via media between "Romanism" and dissent, nor the Protestant via media between the Papacy and infidelity. They war not against Protestantism, though they despise it as a miserable compromise, neither one thing nor another; they even regard it with favor as a useful and an efficient ally in their anti-religious war.
The free-thinkers in Rome and elsewhere present the real and true issue between the Papacy and its enemies, and give the real meaning of the atrocious deeds which have effected the deposition of the Pope, the absorption of the state of the church, and the unity of Italy under the House of Savoy. They present it, too, without disguise, in its utter nakedness, so that the most stolid cannot mistake it; precisely as we ourselves have uniformly presented it. The issue is "the Papacy or no-religion," and the meaning of the deeds and events the New York meeting applauded is, "Down with the Papacy as the means of putting down religion and emancipating the human conscience from the law of God!" How does the Protestant Episcopal Bishop of Pennsylvania, and his brother Protestant Episcopal bishops among the sympathizers with Italian unity, like the meaning or the issue, when presented truly and honestly, and they are forced to look it squarely in the face? What does Mr. Justice Strong, of the Supreme Court of the United States, think of it? He is the president of an evangelical—perhaps we should say fanatical—association, whose object is to procure an amendment to the preamble of the Constitution of the United States, so that the republic shall be made to profess, officially, belief in God, in Christ, and the supernatural inspiration of the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments. What says he to the assertion that "religions said to be revealed have always been the worst enemy of mankind"? Yet his name appears among the sympathizers with Italian unity. Do these gentlemen know what crimes and atrocities they applaud, and what is the cause with which they express their sympathy? Or, like the old Jews who crucified the Lord of Life between two thieves, are they ignorant of what they do?
These Roman free-thinkers only give us the programme of the secret societies, who have their network spread over all Europe, and even over this country; of the Mazzinis and Garibaldis, of the Red Republicans and Communists, who have instituted a new Reign of Terror in Paris, who are filling the prisons of that city while we are writing (April 7) with the friends of order, with priests and religious, plundering the churches, entering and robbing convents and nunneries, and insulting and maltreating their peaceful and holy inmates, banishing religion from the schools, suppressing the public worship of God, and drenching the streets in the blood of the purest and noblest of the land, all in the name of the people, of liberty, equality, and fraternity—the programme, in fact, of the whole revolutionary, radical, or so-called liberal party throughout the world. The realization of civil liberty, the advancement of science, the promotion of society, truth, and justice, are—unless, perhaps, with here and there an individual—a mere pretext to dupe simple and confiding people, and gain their support. The leaders and knowing ones are not duped; they understand what they want, and that is the total abolition of all revealed religion, of all belief in the spiritual order, or the universal, eternal, and immutable principles of right and justice, and the complete emancipation of the human intellect from all faith in the supernatural, and of conscience from all the law not self-imposed.
Are our American sympathizers with Victor Emmanuel in his war on the Pope, with the unity of Italy, and the revolutionary party throughout Europe, and with which the Protestant missionaries on the Continent in Catholic nations are in intimate alliance, really dupes, and do they really fancy, if the Papacy were gone, the movement they applaud could be arrested before it had reached the programme of the Association of Free-thinkers in Rome? We can hardly believe it. Europe was reorganized, after the fall of the Roman Empire, by the Papacy, and consequently on a Christian basis—the independence of the spiritual order, and the freedom of religion from secular control or intermeddling, the rights of conscience, and the supremacy of truth and justice in the mutual relations of individuals and of nations. No doubt the Christian ideal was far from being practically realized in the conduct of men or nations; there were relics of heathen barbarism to be subdued, old superstitions to be rooted out, and fierce passions to be quelled. The Philistines still dwelt in the land. In reorganized Europe there was no lack of great crimes and great criminals, followed often by grand penances and grand expiations; society in practice was far from perfect, and the good work that the church was carrying on was often interrupted, retarded, or destroyed by barbarian and heathen invasions of the Normans from the North, the Huns from the East, and the Saracens from the South.
But the work was renewed as soon as the violence ceased. Under the inspiration and direction of the Papacy and the zealous and persevering labors of the bishops and their clergy, and the monastic orders of either sex, assisted not unfrequently by kings and emperors, secular princes and nobles, the Christian faith became the acknowledged faith of all ranks and classes, individuals and nations. Gradually the old heathen superstitions were rooted out, the barbarisms were softened if not wholly subdued, just and humane laws were enacted, the rights of individuals and of nations were defined and declared sacred and inviolable, schools were multiplied, colleges established, universities founded, intelligence diffused, and society was advancing, if slowly yet surely, towards the Christian ideal. If men or nations violated the immutable principles of justice and right, they at least recognized them and their duty to conform to them in their conduct; if the law was disobeyed, it was not denied or so altered as to sanction men's vices or crimes; if marriage was sometimes violated, its sacredness and indissolubility were held to be the law, and nobody sought to conform it to the interests of lust or lawless passion; if a feudal baron wrongfully invaded the territory of his brother baron, or oppressed his people, it was acknowledged to be wrong; in a word, if the conduct of men or nations was bad, it was in violation of the principles which they held to be right—of the law which they owned themselves bound to obey. The conscience was not perverted, nor ethics and legislation made to conform to a perverted conscience.
But in the sixteenth century, bold, base, and disorderly men rose not only in acts of disobedience to the Pope, which had been no rare thing, but in principle and doctrine against the Papacy; declared it a usurpation, hostile to the independence of sovereigns and the Bible; denounced the Papal Church as the mystery of Babylon, and the Pope as the man of sin. The sovereigns listened to them, and the people of several nations believed and trusted them, cast off the Papacy, and interrupted the progress in manners and morals, in society and civilization, which had been going on from the sixth century to the sixteenth under the auspices of the Popes. The reformers, as they are called, no doubt really believed that they could cast off the Papacy and retain the church, Christianity, revealed religion, in even greater purity and efficiency. Yet the experiment, it must be conceded, has not succeeded. The church, as an authoritative body, has been lost with the loss of the Papacy. The Bible, for the want of a competent and authoritative interpreter, has ceased to be authority for faith, and has been made to sanction the most various and contradictory opinions. Faith itself has been resolved into a variable opinion, and the law of God explained so as to suit each man's own taste and inclination. Religion is no longer the recognition and assertion of the supremacy of the spiritual order, the rights of God, and the homage due to our Maker, Redeemer, and Saviour; nothing eternal and immutable is acknowledged, and truth and justice, it is even contended, should vary from age to age, from people to people, and from individual to individual.
The state itself, which in several anti-Papal nations has undertaken to supply the place of the Papacy, has everywhere failed, and must fail, because, there being no spiritual authority above it to declare for it the law of God, or to place before it a fixed, irreversible, and infallible ideal, it has no support but in opinion, and necessarily becomes dependent on the people; and, however slowly or reluctantly, it is obliged to conform to their ever-varying opinions, passions, prejudices, ignorance, and false conscience. It may retard by acts of gross tyranny or by the exercise of despotic power the popular tendency for a time, but in proportion as it attempts it, it saps the foundations of its own authority, and prepares its own overthrow or subversion. If in the modern non-Catholic world there has been a marked progress in scientific inventions as applied to the mechanical and industrial arts, there has been an equally marked deterioration in men's principles and character. If there is in our times less distance between men's principles and practice than in mediæval times, it is not because their practice is more Christian, more just or elevated, for in fact it is far less so, but because they have lowered their ideal, and brought their principles down to the level of their practice. Having no authority for a fixed and determined creed, they assert as a principle none is necessary, nay, that any creed imposed by authority, and which one is not free to interpret according to one's own private judgments, tastes, or inclination, is hostile to the growth of intelligence, the advance of science, and the progress of civilization. The tendency in all Protestant sects, stronger in some, weaker in others, is to make light of dogmatic faith, and to resolve religion and morality into the sentiments and affections of our emotional nature. Whatever is authoritative or imposes a restraint on our sentiments, affections, passions, inclinations, fancies, whims, or caprices, is voted tyrannical and oppressive, an outrage on man's natural freedom, hostile to civilization, and not to be tolerated by a free people, who, knowing, dare maintain their rights.
Take as an apt illustration the question of marriage, the basis of the family, as the family is the basis of society. In the Papal Church marriage is a sacrament, holy and absolutely indissoluble save by death, and the severest struggles the Popes engaged in with kings and emperors were to compel them to maintain its sanctity. The so-called reformers rejected its sacramental character, and made it a civil contract, and dissoluble. At first, divorces were restricted to a single cause, that of adultery, and the guilty party was forbidden to marry again; but at the pressure of public opinion other causes were added, till now, in several states, divorce may be obtained for almost any cause, or no cause at all, and both parties be at liberty to marry again if they choose. There are, here and elsewhere, associations of women that contend that Christian marriage is a masculine institution for enslaving women, though it binds both man and woman in one and the same bond, and that seek to abolish the marriage bond altogether, make marriage provisional for so long a time as the mutual love of the parties may last, and dissoluble at the will or caprice of either party. No religious or legal sanction is needed in its formation or for its dissolution. Men and women should be under no restraint either before or after marriage, but should be free to couple and uncouple as inclination dictates, and leave the children, if any are suffered to be born, to the care of—we say not whom or what. Say we not, then, truly, that without the Papacy we lose the church; without the church, we lose revealed religion; and without revealed religion, we lose not only the supernatural order, but the moral order, even natural right and justice, and go inevitably to the conclusions reached by the free-thinkers in Rome. One of the greatest logicians of modern times, the late M. Proudhon, has said: "One who admits the existence even of God is logically bound to admit the whole Catholic Church, its Pope, its bishops and priests, its dogmas, and its entire cultus; and we must get rid of God before we can get rid of despotism and assert liberty."
Let our American sympathizers with Victor Emmanuel and the unity of Italy look at modern society as it is, and they can hardly fail to see that everything is unsettled, unmoored, and floating; that men's minds are everywhere shaken, agitated by doubt and uncertainty; that no principle, no institution, is too venerable or too sacred to be attacked, no truth is too well established to be questioned, and no government or authority too legitimate or too beneficent to be conspired against. Order there is none, liberty there is none; it is sought, but not yet obtained. Everywhere revolution, disorder—disorder in the state, disorder in society, disorder in the family, disorder in the individual, body and soul, thoughts and affections; and just in proportion as the Papacy is rejected or its influence ceases to be felt, the world intellectually and morally, individually and socially, lapses into chaos.
We describe tendencies, and readily admit that the whole non-Catholic world has not as yet followed out these tendencies to their last term; in most Protestant sects there are undoubtedly those who assert and honestly defend revealed religion, and to some extent Christian doctrines and morals; but, from their Catholic reminiscences and from the reflected influence of the Papacy still in the world by their side declaring the truth, the right, the just, for individuals and nations, and denouncing whatever is opposed to them, not from Protestant principles or by virtue of their Protestant tendencies; and just in proportion as the external influence of the Papacy has declined and men believed it becoming old and decrepit, has the Protestant world been more true to its innate tendencies, developed more logically its principles, cast off more entirely all dogmatic faith, resolved religion into a sentiment or emotion, and rushed into rationalism, free religion, and the total rejection of Christian faith or Christian morals, and justified its dereliction from God on principle and at the command of what it calls science—as if without God there could be any science, or anybody to cultivate it. The Protestant world has no principle of its own that opposes this result, or that when logically carried out does not lead surely and inevitably to it. The principles held by Protestants that oppose it and retain many of them from actually reaching it are borrowed from the Papacy, and if the Papacy should fall they would fall with it.
Now we ask, and we ask in all seriousness, the learned jurists, the distinguished statesmen, the able editors, the eminent Protestant divines, poets, and philosophers, who took part in or approved the great sympathy meeting, where but in the Papacy are we to look for the nucleus or the principle of European reorganization, for the spirit that will move over the weltering chaos and bid light spring from the darkness, and order from the confusion? We know they look anywhere but to the Papacy; to the Parisian Commune, to Kaiser William and Prince Bismarck, to Victor Emmanuel, to Mazzini, and to Garibaldi—that is, to the total abolition of the Papacy and the Catholic Church. But in this are they not like the physician who prescribes, as a cure to the man already drunk, drinking more and more deeply? Are they not like those infatuated Jews—we are writing on Good Friday—who demanded of Pilate the release, not of Jesus in whom no fault was found, but of Barabbas, who was a robber! Can Barabbas help them? Will he help re-establish the reign of law, and teach men to respect the rights of property, the rights of sovereigns, and the duties of subjects?
We say not that the Pope can reorganize Europe, for we know not the secret designs of Providence. Nations that have once been enlightened and tasted the good word of God, and have fallen away, lapsed into infidelity, and made a mock of Christ crucified, cannot easily, if at all, be renewed unto repentance and recover the faith they have knowingly and wilfully cast from them. There is not another Christ to be crucified for them. We have no assurance that these apostate European nations are ever to be reorganized; to be saved from the chaos into which they are now weltering; but if they are, we know this, that it can be only by the power and grace of God, communicated to them through the Papacy. There is no other source of help. Kings and Kaisers cannot do it, for it is all they can do to keep their own heads on their shoulders; the mob cannot do it, for it can only make "confusion worse confounded;" the popularly constituted state, like our own republic, cannot do it, for a popular state, a state that rests on the popular will, can only follow popular opinions, and reflect the ignorance, the passions, the fickleness, the selfishness, and the basenesses of the people; science and philosophy cannot do it, for they are themselves disorganized, in a chaotic state, uncertain whether man differs from the brute, whether he has a soul, or is only a congeries of matter, and whether he is or is not developed from the monkey or the tadpole; atheism cannot do it, for it has no positive principle, is the negation of all principle, and effective only for destruction; Protestantism cannot do it, for it is itself chaos, the original source of the evil, and contains as its own no principle or organite from which a new organization can be developed. We repeat, then, if there is any hope, it is in the Papacy, which rests on a basis outside of the world, and speaks with divine authority; and the first step to reorganization must be the re-establishment of the Holy Father in the full possession of his rights. Whether there is faith enough left on earth to demand and effect his restoration, remains to be seen.
Certain it is, let men say what they will, the Pope is the only sovereign power on earth at this moment that stands as the defender of the rights of independent governments, of international law, the equality of sovereign states without regard to size, race, language, or geographical position—the sole champion of those great, eternal, and immutable principles of justice on which depend alike public liberty and individual freedom, the sanctity and inviolability of the family, the peace and order and the very existence of society. If the kings and rulers of this world are with him, or dare utter a feeble whisper to encourage and sustain him, the people are opposed, or cold or indifferent, and pass him by, wagging their heads, saying in a mocking tone, "He trusted in heaven, and let heaven save him."
It were little short of profanity to indicate the contrast between his sublime attitude and the abject and servile attitude of these distinguished countrymen of ours. They but prove themselves slaves to the spirit of the age, and only reflect popular ignorance and passion, and follow the multitude to worship at the shrine of Success, and to trample on the wronged and outraged. He dares arraign the fierce and satanic spirit of the age, to face the enraged multitude, to defy popular opinion or popular passion, to proclaim the truth it condemns, to defend the right it tramples under foot, and uphold the scorned and rejected rights of God, and the inviolability of conscience. It were an insult to truth and justice, to moral greatness and nobility, to dwell on the contrast. His attitude is that of his Master when he trod the wine-press alone, and of the people none were with him. It is grand, it is sublime, beyond the power of mortal man, unless assisted with strength from above. No man, it seems to us, can contemplate his attitude, firm and inflexible, calm and serene, without being filled, if he have any nobility or generosity of soul, or any sense of moral heroism or true manliness in him, with admiration and awe, or feeling that his very attitude proves that he is in the right, and that God is with him. Let our American sympathizers with his traducers and persecutors behold him whom they calumniate, and, if they are men, blush and hang their heads. Shame and confusion should cover their faces!