IX.
But how long will this only and ultimate safeguard endure?—this protection which renders the life and person of the Holy Father secure in Rome?
As long as the Subalpinists hold the reins of government in Italy, there seems no reason to fear that the security will become less. These men know too well that, were they to lose Rome, they would lose everything; and the only mode of keeping possession of Rome a little longer is not to violate the Vatican. But on that day on which the Italian faction shall get tired of being led by these ten or twelve Piedmontese who form the perpetual Zodiac of the ministry; on that day when this faction is weary of seeing all the master-machinery of the state, the army, finance, bureaucracy, and diplomacy regulated by Piedmontese; on that day when it takes it into its head to render the
government of this factious Italy Italian in its manner of rebellion, rather than provincial—on that day the danger will arise that even this said only and ultimate safeguard may lose its force. For in such a case, the mobocracy would come to the surface, and a scene of destruction would be inaugurated varying little from that carried out by the Commune of Paris.
The dilemma is this: either the Subalpinists or the Socialists must prove fatal to our poor Italy, prepared as it is for revolution. God alone knows what is to happen in the proximate future. But it is certain that the present condition of the Holy Father in Rome cannot endure much longer: it is certain that any agreement between him and his spoilers is utterly out of the question. It is also certain that Europe could not tolerate for a series of years that the Head of the Catholic Church should be held as a prisoner by the men who at the present day hold dominion throughout the Peninsula; and, finally, it is certain that in his own time God will interfere, and his intervention will not be to reward the persecutors of his Vicar on earth. These four certainties keep the world in suspense, and the authors and approvers of the transitory triumph of the Porta Pia in uneasiness.
But in this extremity of affairs and in this intense trepidation of mind, what is the duty of Catholics?
Is it to wish for an agreement between the Pope and the inimical power which oppresses him?
This is but to assume the office of members of the faction, under the disguise of zealous Catholics. He only who hath his part in the leaven of the Pharisees can believe it possible for the successor of St. Peter to sacrifice the eternal rights of Christ to the interests of Belial.
Is it to recommend the Holy Father to abandon his own state and seek compensation in some Catholic country outside of Italy? This is the advice of the imprudent. The Holy Father has received from God the grace of office to determine what is the best for the Apostolic See and for the church. No one need trouble himself to give advice unasked. He has his natural counsellors, and above all he has the Spirit of the Lord, with whom he is in daily and fervent communion. If Pius IX. remains in Rome, notwithstanding the satanic tempest which howls so wildly and so furiously against him, it is a sign that he knows such to be the will of God, and therefore makes it his duty to remain. In the course of events, we shall see that, if the Pope has remained in Rome, it is because it was best that he should remain there.
The real duty of Catholics is, on the other hand (besides assiduous prayer, conformably to the example of the primitive Christians when St. Peter was in vinculis), to unite and so work as to hasten the liberation of our common Father.