IV
The assailants of the Papacy are wont to say, in their own praise, that the Vatican has for its adversaries the most enlightened, cultivated, and virtuous men of our time. We, on the contrary, see the very opposite. With certain exceptions, including the blind, the dull, and the deluded, in the throng of declared enemies of the Roman Pontificate, we find only the moral dregs of society. There are great and small, of course, but, when put to a moral test, they are all equal, one as good as another, unless, indeed, the great are worth less than the small. In the throng, there are heretics without a creed, Jews without a Testament, atheists without a God, and Catholics without laws. We find deserters from every flag—those who betray their masters, and bite the hands of benefactors; doubled-faced deceivers—men who have instigated horrible massacres, and flattered every social crime; men guilty of infamous sacrilege, awful rapine, nefarious murders. We see corruptors of the people—burglars, brawlers, bombarders of harmless cities, mercenary writers, vendors of honor, protectors of evil haunts, worshippers of luxury. We notice all the apostates from the church and the priesthood: renegade Christians, silenced priests, unfrocked friars. We see men who insult God, disturb civil order, tear down thrones, cheat and defraud their neighbor—in short, men who blaspheme against the faith, and trample on the Ten Commandments. There is no kind of sectarian, from the most stupid of Freemasons to the most brutal of communists, that does not make part of this crowd of enlightened, cultivated, virtuous men of the present age.
The Prophet Daniel contemplated, in four shadowy, mysterious creatures, not only the four great monarchies of the earth, but the four great persecutions to which Christ’s church would be subjected in the course of ages. The interpreters of this acceptation of the vision agree in saying that the first, symbolized by the lioness, meant the persecution of Gentiles so cruelly prosecuted by the Roman Cæsars; the second, denoted by the bear, that of heretics; the third, represented by the leopard, that of false Christians; and the last, figured by a nameless creature awfully hideous, that of Antichrist, and so designated because, in ea erit omnium perversitatum concursus, it shall contain in itself the wickedness of the three preceding ones.[135]
It is, indeed, difficult to decide whether the terrible and universal persecution which the Catholic Church is now sustaining, especially in the person of the Sovereign Pontiff, should be referred to the third as its completion, or to the fourth as its preparation. When we consider the quality of the persecutors, they are undoubtedly false Christians, and worthy to be compared in ferocious malice to the leopard. But when we see in them the union of all perversity united to slay the church in its head, we suspect that the present is, indeed, a preparation for that final persecution which must forerun the consummation of the human race.
However that may be, it is beyond controversy that the persecution of to-day bears all the marks of Antichristianity, and that its promoters, followers, and accomplices accord with the description given by the apostle S. Paul to his disciple and Timothy. We give the text, let him deny it who can:
“Know also this, that, in the last days, shall come dangerous times.
“Men shall be lovers of themselves, covetous, haughty, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, wicked,
“Without affection, without peace, slanderers, incontinent, unmerciful, without kindness,
“Traitors, stubborn, puffed up, and lovers of pleasures more than of God;” and the following verses.[136]
Now, if, according to the proverb, the vituperations of the wicked are praise, is it not glory for the Papacy to see unchained against it to-day all the malice of the world, and to be lashed by all that Christendom holds in its bosom most odious, despotic, base, and abominable? Is not this the highest summit of grandeur? Is it not an unexampled participation in the glories of Christ?