II.
The cause for which Pius IX. wages so stern a war is the cause of God and man; the cause of liberty, individual, domestic, and social; in short, a cause embracing all those ordinances without which no public or private right, no property, or virtue, or justice, or peace, could be maintained. In the Sovereign Pontiff temporarily imprisoned in the Vatican, the Revolution attacks not only the liberty of the supreme Catholic apostolate and the legitimacy of the most inviolable of thrones, but also all rational liberty of conscience, and the source of all social authority. In the Sovereign Pontiff, it attacks God, whose vicegerent on earth he is, and with God all rights and duties of nature and of grace, which proceed originally from him.
The Revolution, essentially satanic, full of hate towards God and man, extollitur supra omne quod dicitur Deus.[131] It tries to supplant God, whose every image in creation it would gladly see cancelled. From the beginning, it has always attacked the Papacy as the most vivid and universal representation of God among men; of God under the double aspect of Creator and Saviour, author of reason and faith, eternal founder of natural society and of the church; in one word, of Christ the God-man. As it cannot dethrone Christ in heaven, it would dethrone him on earth: and, to accomplish this hellish work of madness under the guidance of Satan, it directs all its efforts against the Roman Pontificate, truly the true vicariate of Christ, the king of the world.
All moral grandeur, human and divine, is therefore included in the cause defended by Pius IX. against the ministers and satellites of the enemy of human nature and of God’s Word. The accursed phalanx make use of innumerable frivolous and false pretexts to reach their aim; but in truth they thirst to destroy the Papacy because the Papacy embraces all morality of reason and faith emanating from the Word, the unchangeable and eternal wisdom. In vain the Revolution masks its batteries behind the dazzling names of liberty, civilization, and progress, pretending to seek the destruction of the Papacy as their implacable adversary. Indeed, after eighty years of experience, it is evident, palpably certain, that under its false liberty lies hidden the most ruinous tyranny that ever oppressed the world. It usurps the dominion of conscience and of family life, and confiscates at its wanton and fickle will the blood and gold of nations which it has trampled underfoot, giving them in return only the liberty of corruption and blasphemy. Its treacherous civilization covers a refined barbarism fully shown by the carnage and ruin of France in 1793, and of Spain in 1834, and by the massacres and conflagrations of the Commune in 1871. Its baleful progress tends to change the partnership of Christian nations into a horrible hell of disorder, where, as in the kingdom of Satan, nullus ordo sed sempiternus horror inhabitat.[132]
Therefore, strictly speaking, Pope Pius IX., with his indomitable resistance, defends all the wealth of humanity against the monster that would destroy it as the communists destroyed it before our eyes in Paris lately. The religious, civil, and material ruin of the human race is the final end for which, directly or indirectly, with or without deliberate purpose, all the partisans of the Revolution exert themselves, from the most hypocritical or dull of moderates to the grossest socialist.
The immeasurable grandeur of this cause defended by the Roman Pontiff is generally seen and felt by all, even more by the enemies than by the friends of the Papacy. Upon their war against the Vatican they have concentrated their best strength, sagacity, and industry. They care for nothing so much as for the least trifle connected with the Pope; they talk, and write, and vociferate of nothing so much as of the Pope’s sayings and doings; of the hopes and fears which agitate them in this war. Hence the first position in the political world and in what we call public opinion is held by the Pontiff. It is preserved to him and nourished by that very Revolution which would gladly annihilate for ever his name and memory. It cries a thousand times a day that he is dead and buried, and a thousand times a day it is forced to bewail his vitality and energy; neither more nor less than do the demons and the damned in the abyss, forced to glorify God for ever, in that they will eternally blaspheme him.
This is one of the marvellous sports of Providence in our day: to make use of the wild beasts of the Revolution to strengthen the Papacy. When they think to devour it, they find themselves drawing its triumphal car. So it was with Nero and Domitian in their persecutions against Christianity; so with Henry IV. and Barbarossa in the middle ages; so with the Directory and Bonaparte in modern times. What doubt can there be that the same will come to pass with the Lanzas, the Bismarcks, and their compeers in our own day?