How, then, stands Rome to-day? Never more united, though never did the whole world collect its forces with greater animus to overwhelm it. The state in Germany banishes the Jesuits, and takes infidels to its bosom; in Spain, it banishes the Jesuits, and finds in their place the Descamisados; in Switzerland, it ejects Mermillod, and embraces Loyson; in Italy, it imprisons the Pope, and welcomes Victor Emanuel or Garibaldi: Non hunc sed Barabbam!
Meanwhile, the Catholic world speaks out, and from the ends of the earth comes back the protest, echoed from point to point, and gathering volume as it goes: We protest as men, we protest as free citizens, we protest as Christians! Protestation does little, say some. True, but, if it has done nothing else, it has at least silenced the false cry that Catholics approved of these measures. Protestation at last tells; and when the interests of those who are now indifferent come, as sooner or later they must come, to be affected by the policy to-day so successful in Prussia, our voices and warnings will be remembered. Catholics cannot at present take up the sword; they can only use, then, the weapons at their disposal—the voice and the pen. They must use them unceasingly and unsparingly until justice is done, and Catholics are granted the rights of citizens, which Freemasons are allowed to enjoy undisturbed. The rights of the state, whether monarchy or republic, are sacred in their eyes, but they live for something more than the state. All the armies in the world cannot coerce the free soul of one man, for they cannot reach it: it is beyond their province. There always will be two laws in this world—the law of God, and the law of man. The first is equivalent to right, the second is not necessarily so. The difficulty between states and the Catholic Church lies in the fact that the states consider legality synonymous with right, and that what is legal therefore must commend itself to the Christian conscience. Were men ruled by the law which makes the Catholic proclaim himself “a Catholic first, and a nationalist if you will,”[153] all difficulties would be at an end. We are Catholics first, because to be a true Catholic is the truest patriotism, and the perfection of citizenship; because to be Catholic is to be Christian, and all civilized governments draw all that is sound and good in them from Christianity, from Christ. When the state constructs no law which is not right, then will Lord Denbigh’s famous sentence have lost its meaning.
[TO THE SACRED HEART.]
“Ego dormio, et cor meum vigilat.”[154]—Cant. v. 2.
Heart of hearts, a love is thine
Madly tender,[155] blindly true!
Love in vastness so divine,
In excess so human too!
Seems it more a burning grief—
Pining, aching for relief.
Seems thou dost not, canst not live,
Save to sue us for thy rest:
While the all that we can give
Is as nothing at the best.