It is the Catholic Church alone, again, that has always regarded the Christian marriage as the corner-stone of society; and at that corner-stone have the Popes stood guard for eighteen centuries, by insisting that Christian marriage is one, holy, and indissoluble. Woman, weak and unprotected, has, as the history of the Church abundantly proves, found at Rome that guaranty which was refused her by him who had sworn at the altar of God to love her and to cherish her till death. Whilst, in the nations whom the Reformation of the sixteenth century tore from the bosom of the Church, the sacred laws of matrimony are trampled in the dust, whilst the statistics of these nations hold up to the world the sad spectacle of divorces as numerous as marriages, of separations of husband from wife, and wife from husband, for the most trivial causes, thus granting to lust the widest margin of license, and legalizing concubinage and adultery; whilst the nineteenth century records in its annals the existence of a community of licentious polygamists within the borders of one of the most civilized countries of the earth, we must yet see the decree emanating from Rome that would permit even a beggar to repudiate his lawful wife, in order to give his affections to an adulteress.
The female portion of our race would always have sunk back into a new slavery, had not the Popes entered the breach for the protection of the Unity, the sanctity, the Indissolubility of matrimony. In the midst of the barbarous ages, during which the conqueror and warrior swayed the sceptre of empire, and kings and petty tyrants acknowledged no other right but that of force, it was the Popes that opposed their authority, like a wall of brass, to the sensuality and the passions of the mighty ones of the earth, and stood forth as the protectors of innocence and outraged virtue, as the champions of the rights of women, against the wanton excesses of tyrannical husbands, by enforcing, in their full severity, the laws of Christian marriage. If Christian Europe is not covered with harems, if polygamy has never gained a foothold in Europe, if, with the indissolubility and sanctity of matrimony, the palladium of European civilization has been saved from destruction, it is all owing to the Popes. "If the Popes"—says the Protestant Von Müller—"if the Popes could hold up no other merit than that which they gained by protecting monogamy against the brutal lusts of those in power, notwithstanding bribes, threats, and persecutions, that alone would render them immortal for all future ages."
And how had they to battle till they had gained this merit? What sufferings had they to endure, what trials to undergo? When King Lothair, in the ninth century, repudiated his lawful wife in order to live with a concubine, Pope Nicholas I. at once took upon himself the defence of the rights and of the honor of the unhappy wife. All the arts of an intriguing policy were plied, but Nicholas remained unshaken; threats were used, but Nicholas remained firm. At last the king's brother, Louis II., appears with an army before the walls of Rome, in order to compel the Pope to yield. It is useless—Nicholas swerves not from the line of duty. Rome is besieged; the priests and people are maltreated and plundered; sanctuaries are desecrated; the cross is torn down and trampled under foot, and, in the midst of these scenes of blood and sacrilege, Nicholas flies to the Church of St. Peter; there he is besieged by the army of the Emperor for two days and two nights; left without food or drink, he is willing to die of starvation on the tomb of St. Peter, rather than yield to a brutal tyrant, and sacrifice the sanctity of Christian marriage, the law of life of Christian society. And the perseverance of Nicholas I. was crowned with victory. He had to contend against a licentious king, who was tired of restraint; against an emperor, who, with an army at his heels, came to enforce his brother's unjust demands; against two councils of venal bishops, the one at Metz, the other at Aix-la-Chapelle, who had sanctioned the scandals of the adulterous monarch. Yet, with all this opposition, and the suffering it cost him, the Pope succeeded in procuring the acknowledgment of the rights of an injured woman. And during succeeding ages we find Gregory V. carrying on a similar combat against King Robert, and Urban II. against King Philip of France. In the thirteenth century, Philip Augustus, mightier than his predecessors, set to work all the levers of power, in order to move the Pope to divorce him from his wife Ingelburgis. Hear the noble answer of the great Innocent III.:
"Since, by the grace of God, we have the firm and unshaken will never to separate ourselves from Justice and Truth, neither moved by petitions, nor bribed by presents, neither induced by love, nor intimidated by hate, we will continue to go on in the royal path, turning neither to the right nor to the left; and we judge without any respect to persons, since God Himself does not respect persons."
After the death of his first wife, Isabella, Philip Augustus wished to gain the favor of Denmark by marrying Ingelburgis. The union had hardly been solemnized, when he wished to be divorced from her. A council of venal bishops assembled at Compiegne, and annulled his lawful marriage. The queen, poor woman, was summoned before her Judges, and the sentence was read and translated to her. She could not speak the language of France, so her only cry was "Rome!" And Rome heard her cry of distress, and came to her rescue. Innocent III. needed the alliance of France in the troubles in which he was engaged with Germany; Innocent III. needed the assistance of France for the Crusade; yet Innocent III. sent Peter of Capua as Legate to France; a Council is convoked by the Legate of the Pope; Philip refuses to appear, in spite of the summons, and the whole of the kingdom of Philip is placed under interdict. Philip's rage knows no bounds: bishops are banished, his lawful wife is imprisoned, and the king vents his rage on the clergy of France. The barons, at last, appeal against Philip to the sword. The king complains to the Pope of the harshness of the Legate, and when Innocent only confirms the sentence of the Legate, the king exclaims, "Happy Saladin; he had no Pope!" Yet the king was forced to obey. When he asked the barons assembled in council, "What must I do?" their answer was: "Obey the Pope; put away Agnes and restore Ingelburgis." And, thanks to the severity of Innocent III., Philip repudiated the concubine, and restored Ingelburgis to her rights, as wife and queen. Hear what the Protestant Hurter says, in his life of Innocent: "If Christianity has not been thrown aside, as a worthless creed, into some isolated corner of the world; if it has not, like the sects of India, been reduced to a mere theory; if its European vitality has outlived the voluptuous effeminacy of the East, it is due to the watchful severity of the Roman Pontiffs—to their increasing care to maintain the principles of authority in the Church."
As often as we look to England, that land of perfidy and deceit, we are reminded of the words of Innocent III. to Philip Augustus. We see Clement using them as his principles in his conduct towards the royal brute Henry VIII. Catherine of Aragon, the lawful wife of Henry, had been repudiated by her disgraceful husband, and it was again to Rome she appealed for protection. Clement remonstrates with Henry. The monarch calls the Pope hard names. Clement repeats, "Thou shalt not commit adultery!" Henry threatens to tear England from the Church; he does it; still Clement insists, "Thou shalt not commit adultery!" Fisher and More go to bleed out their life at Tyburn; still the Pope repeats, "Thou shalt not commit adultery!" Henry had two wives at the same time, and, after them, took a new wife, and killed off his old wife, whenever his beastly passion prompted. The enslavement of the people followed. Henry made himself head of the Church, and bade the English nation recognize him as such. The penalty of disobeying the tyrant was death. The mass of the English yielded. This adulterous beast—this ferocious monster—they accepted as their pope; and their children, following in their steps, accepted his bastard brood—of either sex—as their popes; while the only and true Pope, the successor of St. Peter, the Vicar of Jesus Christ, was rejected by them. To such depths of servility and degradation do apostate nations fall. The firmness of the Pope cost England's loss to the Church. It cost the Pope bitter tears, and he prayed to Heaven not to visit on the people of England the crimes of the despot; he prayed for the conversion of the nation; but sacrifice the sanctity, the indissolubility of matrimony, that he could never do—abandon helpless women to the brutality of men who were tired of the restraints of morality—no, that the Pope could never permit. If the Court, if the palace of the domestic hearth refused a shelter, Rome was always open, a refuge to injured and downtrodden innocence.
"One must obey God more than man." This has ever been the language of the Popes, whenever there was question of defending the laws of God against the powers of the earth; and in thus defending the laws of God, they protected against outrage the personal dignity, the moral liberty and the intellectual freedom of man. "Because there was a Pope," says a Protestant historian, "there could not any longer be a Tiberius in Europe, and the direction of the religious and spiritual welfare of man was withdrawn from the hands of royalty." Because there were Popes, the will of Cæsar could not any longer be substituted for law; for the Popes made the Gospel the law-book of the nations. Now the Gospel teaches that all power comes from God; that from God the sovereign derives his power, to rule in justice and equity for the welfare of his subjects, and that the subjects are bound to obey their rules, for conscience sake. Hence, adopting the great principal of action, the Popes have at all times condemned the spirit of rebellion, and have anathematized those principles, those factions, those organizations whose aim is, and has always been, to overturn lawful authority and to substitute anarchy in the place of the harmony of legitimate government. In conformity with this rule of action the Popes Clement XII., Benedict XIV., Pius VII., Leo XII., Gregory XVI., and Pius IX. have condemned secret societies, whose object is the overthrow of civil and religious government. But at the same time that the Popes required from subjects obedience to their lawful governments, they have ever defended subjects against the abuse of power, or against the tyranny of unjust rulers. In Pagan times it had the appearance as if the people existed for the sovereign, and not the sovereign for the people; but in the days and in the countries where the spiritual supremacy of the Pope was acknowledged by rulers, the Pagan idea had necessarily to disappear, for the Popes gave the princes to understand that they existed for the people, and not the people for them.
Viewed in this light, what a magnificent spectacle does the Catholic Church present to our admiration, and how does the honest heart of downtrodden nationality yearn that these happy days may once more return! Taken mostly from the middle classes, sometimes even from the most humble ranks of society, the Popes ascended the Chair of Peter; and these men, who had been the sons of artisans and mechanics, but who had, by their virtue and talent, gained a merit which neither wealth nor a noble pedigree could bestow, became the arbiters between nation and nation, between prince and people, always prepared to weld together the chain of broken friendship, and to protect, by their power and authority, the rights of subjects oppressed by tyrannical rulers. It was indeed a blessing for Europe that Nicholas I. could curb, with an iron hand, the tyranny of kings and nobles. It was indeed a blessing, not for Europe alone, but for the world, that there lived a genius on earth in the person of Gregory VII., who knew how to protect the Saxons against the wanton lawlessness of Henry, King of Germany, a monster who ground his subjects remorselessly in the dust, and respected neither the sanctity of virginity nor the sacredness of marriage; neither the rights of the Church, nor those of the State; whose very existence seemed to have no other aim but that of the leech, to draw out the blood from the hearts of his unhappy subjects. What would have become of Germany had there not been a power superior to that of this godless prince? It was Gregory VII. who hurled him from his throne, and restored to the noble Saxons and Thuringians their independence, not by the power of the sword, but by the scathing power of his anathema. The same I may say of Boniface VIII., and of Innocent III. There was, happily for Europe, a Court of Appeal, to which even monarchs were forced to bow; and that court was Rome. It was to Rome that the nations appealed, when their independence was at stake or their rights were trampled upon. And Rome was never deaf to the cry of distress, whether it came from Germany or from France, from England or from Poland, from Spain or from the shores of the Bosphorus.
And when the liberty of a nation was on the verge of destruction, and when emperors, and kings, and barons rode rough-shod over the rights, natural and vested, of their subjects, forgetting the sacred trust confided to them, became tyrants, when neither prosperity nor undivided liberty were secure from that rapacious grasp; when even the rights of conscience were set aside with impunity; it was the Popes of Rome who buckled on the armor of Justice, and humbled the pride of princes—even if, as a consequence, they had to say, with a Gregory VII., "Dilexi Justitiam et odivi iniquitatem; ideo morior in exilio"—"I die in exile because I have loved justice and hated iniquity."
The influence of Catholicity tends strongly to break down all barriers of separate nationalities, and to bring about a brotherhood of citizens, in which the love of our common country and of one another would absorb every sectional feeling. Catholicity is of no nation, of no language, of no people; she knows no geographical bounds; she breaks down all the walls of separation between race and race, and she looks alike upon every people, and tribe, and caste. Her views are as enlarged as the territory which she inhabits; and this is as wide as the world. Jew and Gentile, Greek and barbarian, Irish, German, French, English, and American, are all alike to her. The evident tendency of this principle is to level all sectional feelings and local prejudices, by enlarging the views of mankind, and thus to bring about harmony in society, based upon mutual forbearance and charity. And, in fact, so far as the influence of the Catholic Church could be brought to bear upon the anomalous condition of society in America, it has been exercised for securing the desirable result of causing all its heterogeneous elements to be merged in the one variegated but homogeneous nationality. Protestantism isolates and divides; Catholicity brings together and unites.