Pius IX. And His Time

by Æneas MacDonell Dawson

Troubles of the Church in Mexico.

The anti-President Juarez had succeeded in establishing himself at Vera Cruz, whilst Miramon was recognized by Mexico, after General Zuloago, as the successor of Santa Anna. Juarez was a revolutionist and persecutor of the church; Miramon, a conservative and friend of religion. As proof of the tyranny of the former, may be cited a decree which he published in July of this year (1859). This decree, which aimed at nothing less than the destruction of religion, and was, at the same time, a cruel outrage on the Catholic nation of Mexico, accounts for the earnestness and determination with which Pius IX., a little later, as has already been shown, insisted that the Emperor Maximilian should adopt a policy friendly to the church, and in harmony with the wishes of the great majority of the Mexican people. Such policy, if only followed in time, would have so strengthened the hands of Maximilian that, in all probability, he would have been able to hold his ground when most unchivalrously abandoned by his faint-hearted ally. No doubt the anti-president claimed that he was a reformer of the church. And surely, indeed, he was, if it was reform to suppress all religious societies whatsoever, to rob the clergy of their property, and that so completely as to reduce them to mendicancy. But let the decree speak for itself:

Art. 1. All property administered under divers titles, by the regular or secular clergy, whether real or personal, whatever its name or object, is henceforth the property of the nation.

Art. 3. There shall be complete independence between affairs of state and such as are purely ecclesiastical. The government will confine itself to protecting the public worship of the Catholic religion the same as any other religion.

Art. 4. The ministers of religion can accept such offerings as may be made on account of the administration of the sacraments and the other duties of their office. They may also, by an agreement with those who employ them, stipulate for remuneration for their services. But in no case can these offerings or this remuneration be converted into permanent property.

Art. 5. All religious orders, whatever their name or their object, are suppressed throughout the whole republic, as well as confraternities or associations connected with a religious community or any church whatsoever.

The 6th article, whilst it prohibits the erection of new convents and new confraternities, forbids also the use of the religious habit.

THE EIGHTEENTH CENTENARY OF THE MARTYRDOM OF SS. PETER AND PAUL.

A new joy awaited the Holy Father. The year 1867 will be ever memorable in sacred annals, as the year of the great centennial celebration of the glorious martrydom of SS. Peter and Paul. “Peter went to Rome,” St. Jerome writes, “in the second year of the Emperor Claudius, and occupied there the priestly chair for twenty-five years.” On the same venerable authority it is known that Peter suffered two years after the death of the great Roman philosopher, Seneca, who was executed by order of Nero in the sixty-fifth year of the Christian era. In the same work (de viris illustribus), St. Jerome says that SS. Peter and Paul were put to death in the fourteenth year of Nero's reign, which corresponds with the sixty-seventh year of our era, when reckoned from the first of January, and not from the 13th October, the date of Nero's accession.

The French troops had scarcely been withdrawn from Rome in fulfilment of the September agreement, when Pius IX. invited all the clergy and people of the Catholic world to visit the city in order to participate in the celebration of the centenary, and witness the canonization of several holy persons long since deceased. Their names were Josaphat, the martyr Archbishop of Solotsk; Pedro de Arbues, an Augustinian friar; the martyrs of Gorcum; Paul of the Cross, founder of the Passionists; Leonardo di Porto Maurizio; Maria Francesca, a Neapolitan of the third order of St. Peter of Alcantara, and Germaine Cousin, of the diocese of Toulouse. Shortly before, in the preceding December, the Holy Father enjoyed [pg 279] the great happiness of celebrating, with even more than ordinary solemnity, the beatification of the Franciscan Monk, Benedict of Urbino, who died in odor of sanctity, at Fossombrone, in 1625, within a few miles of Sinigaglia, the birthplace of the Pope, leaving the whole country bordering on the Adriatic and the province of Umbria in a manner embalmed by a life of sanctity and extraordinary self-denial. Pius IX., from early youth, was familiar with the history of this saint, whose noble birth and distinguished abilities opened to him the way to worldly fame and prosperity, but who, nevertheless, chose the cross, becoming a Capuchin, and having no other ambition in the seclusion of the cloister than to be a worthy disciple of his crucified Saviour.