With this overturning of all the conditions of Catholic life came new problems, new trials, and a period of indefinite, uncertain circumstances that were finally set at rest only at the Congress of Vienna in 1815, by which an end was put to the political changes that began with the Revolution of 1789.
The modus vivendi then reached, and soon consecrated by a series of concordats, has remained substantially the basis of the dealings of Catholicism with the governments of the Old World. Only one formal and permanent violation of this legal situation has taken place, the violent and unjust dispossession of the Holy See by the government of the House of Savoy, in flagrant violation of every title that could be invoked by a legitimate civil power. Elsewhere Catholicism has undergone much suffering, both in the states of the Old World and in the republics of South America. But, the above vital conflict apart, the old century closed with no very acute or intolerable condition of things, although there is much that does not reply to our ideas of fairness and justice.
THE VATICAN COUNCIL
The chief event of the century, from the point of view of Roman Catholicism, is undoubtedly the holding of the Vatican Council. Since the Council of Trent the bishops of the Catholic world had not met in common under the guidance of the Bishop of Rome. The gravest interests of religion seemed at stake after more than a century of public infidelity and the overthrow of all former safeguards of faith. The character of doctrinal authority and its visible tangible possessor were declared by the dogma of Papal infallibility. The genuine relations of reason and revelation were set forth in unmistakable language.
The troubles that followed the close of the Council in some parts of Europe were neither serious nor long-lived, since its teachings were in keeping with the general sense of Catholicism. It promoted, notably, mutual respect and concord among the bishops and gave to the multitudes of Catholics in the Old and New Worlds a new sign of the unity and internal vigor of the Church. The scenes of the Council are indelibly fixed in my memory, for I was the youngest and humblest of the six hundred and sixty-seven bishops who composed it.
A General Council is the very highest act of the life of the Church, since it presents within a small compass, and at once, all the movements that have been developing in the course of centuries, and offers to all the faithful and to all outside the Church straightforward answers to all the great ecclesiastical problems that come up for settlement. Had the Vatican Council been finished it would have taken up the grave subject of ecclesiastical discipline. That is reserved for the reopening of the Council at some future date.
THE MISSIONS OF CATHOLICISM
It is incumbent on the Catholic Church to spread the teachings of Jesus Christ, and this by His own divine command: “Going, therefore, teach all nations.”
In this last century she has not been unfaithful, any more than in others. No portion of the vineyard has been neglected; the martyr’s blood has watered some parts more abundantly, but in all the missionary has toiled without ceasing, has spent himself. In the Far East Catholic missions have been carried on in India, China, Thibet, Tonkin. In every part of Africa, northern, central, and southern, the priests and nuns of the Catholic Church have preceded the explorer or followed the trader and the miner with the blessings of religion. In the still pagan parts of North and South America her missionaries are found all through the century. They have kept up their vigils in the Holy Land, and in general have made a notable progress.
The inventions of the age have been beneficial by opening up new lands and by making transit easy and rapid, thus recalling some of the conditions which conduced to the original spread of the religion of Jesus. A multitude of noble souls have devoted all to the enlightenment of the barbarian and pagan world. And while I disparage no land, and do not undervalue the good intentions and efforts of those outside our pale, I cannot pass over in silence the French nation, which has given more abundantly than any, perhaps more abundantly than all others, of priests, sisters, and funds for the essential duty of Catholicism. The work of the Propagation of the Faith and the Seminary of Foreign Missions at Paris deserve a special souvenir as often as Catholic missions are mentioned.