Russia continues her strides in the East, nearing Hindostan, and with Hindostan the sea, at every step. Despite occasional reverses, her march against the conflicting tribes and peoples that lie in her path can only be regarded as irresistible. Meanwhile, at home she is eaten up by sects and the socialistic spirit that pervades other nations, and which tyranny may stifle for a time, but cannot destroy. Again the mistake occurs of regarding the Catholic Church as her enemy, and dragooning her Catholic subjects with a creed which their consciences reject. Austria is engaged in the attempt to set her internal affairs in order, and to recover from the defeat at Sadowa. She finds time, notwithstanding, to attack the church, though without the persistent brutality of her German neighbor, whose offer to procure a joint interference among the nations in the election of the next pope was politely but firmly rejected by Austria. In this path Italy also walks. Rejecting the rough hempen cord with which Germany binds and strives to strangle the church, Italy, true to her national character, chooses one of silk, which shall do the work softly and noiselessly, but none the less securely. Sensim sine sensu. Thus the Law of Guarantees of 1871, which was founded on Cavour’s maxim of “a free church in a free state,” provided for the absolute freedom of the Pope in spirituals. This Germany resents, and early in the year made strong remonstrance with Italy, to see, in plain English, if some plan could not be devised by which the Pope might be muzzled and prevented from issuing encyclicals and bulls and so forth, save only such as might please the mind of present German statesmen. Italy refused to alter the law. But now in November we find Minghetti, the president of the Council, stating to his electors at Cologna-Veneta that there are defects in the law of papal guarantees. The church—says that excellent authority, M. Minghetti—is the congregation of all the faithful, including, of course, M. Minghetti himself. But the state, on whom with the jus protegendi devolves also the jus inspiciendi, is bound to see that the right of the laity and the interest of the lower clergy be not sacrificed to the abuse of papal and episcopal authority. Wherefore, M. Minghetti, urged solely by the desire of seeing that no injustice is done, pledges his electors that he will bring in a bill empowering the laity to reclaim the rights to which they are entitled in the government of the church. How far those rights extend, of course, remains to be seen.
The Holy Father is still spared to us in the full enjoyment of his health and powers of mind. Pilgrims flock to him in thousands, and the eyes of the world, friends and foes alike, look with sympathy upon him. Surely now is the real triumph of his reign, and in his weakness shines forth his true strength. No earthly motives, if ever they affected the allegiance of Catholics to him, could affect it now. Yet what does the world witness? As men regard things, a weak and powerless old man, ruling, from the palace that is his prison, the hearts of two hundred millions of people in the name and by the power of Jesus Christ, whose saintly vicar he is. The Pope, lifted above all entanglements by recent events with the political policy of so-called Catholic countries—his voice, as the head of the church, is heard and respected by all nations as perhaps it never was at any other period of time.
Spain opened with a new revolution—the re-entering of Alfonso, the son of the exiled queen, to the kingdom and the throne from which she was driven. This being said, the situation remains in much the same condition that it has done for the past two years; if anything, notwithstanding some defections and reverses, Don Carlos has gained in strength and boldness. The move that brought in Don Alfonso was a good one, but it came too late.
The customary chronic revolutions prevail in South America. The assassination of Garcia Moreno, the able and good President of Ecuador, by members of a secret society, added a unique chapter of horrors and dastardly cowardice to the records of these societies, showing that to accomplish their purpose they are ready to stab a nation. Garcia Mareno died a martyr to his faith. From a far different cause, though by the same means, died Sonzogno, the editor of the Capitale, the trial of whose assassins furnished food for thought as to the force at work in regenerated Italy. An event that might have been of great importance was the death of the youthful Emperor of China, which was followed by that of his wife. He was succeeded by a child five years old, and the government seems to have passed into the hands of the same men who held it before, so that a change for the better towards Christians is scarcely to be hoped for, while Christian residents are still exposed at any moment to a repetition of the Tien-Tsin massacre.
With the year closes the third quarter of the most eventful century, perhaps, which the world has yet known, the first century of the Christian era alone being excepted. It opened on what Lacordaire has well called “a wild and stormy morning,” and he would be a bold prophet who should predict a clear sky at the close. A writer of the day describes nations within the past year as engaged in “a wild war-dance.” The same is true of the century. Nations seem to have learned nothing, but forgotten much. In forgetting the faith that made them whole they have forgotten the secret of the elixir of national life. Hence, bitter as the struggle is, a Catholic cannot but hope much in the near future from the present trials of the church. The blows of Germany have crushed shams to the earth, and caused the truth to shine forth resplendent and beautiful. Whatever may be this faith that the nations have forgotten, that has been a mockery among men of the world, it is manifest, at least, that there is a profound reality in it, and a vitality that no power on earth can hope to destroy. This testimony of strength in weakness, of the purest devotion and loftiest sacrifices that this world can show, if it do nothing else, at least brings men to ponder and look back, and compare and inquire, and arrive at some conclusions. For the world cannot remain an indifferent spectator to a question that is wide as the world. The vagaries of belief, the churches with fronts of brass and feet of clay, the parasites and the flatterers who, professing to worship and believe in God alone, bow down in secret before the prince of this world, now slink away in shame or stand abashed before the unbeliever.
Again, considering the intensity of the activity of the age, induced in a great measure by the facilities of expressing and communicating our thoughts, of reaching the uttermost parts of the earth in a flash of time—all of which enhances the responsibility of our free will—religion, in view of these facts, will have to keep pace with this activity in order to perform the office for which God established it upon earth. That she will do so is as much a matter of certitude as her existence; for that same “Spirit which fills the whole earth” finds in her bosom his dwelling-place. The general tendency to material science, and the material interests of nations, which have so wonderfully increased within the century, tend all to obscure the supernatural. But there is nothing to be feared from the advocates of material science. There is no escaping from God in his creation. And these men, in their way, in common with the more open persecutors, are preparing for the triumph of the church, and in the providence of God are co-workers in the more complete demonstration of his divine truth.
NEW PUBLICATIONS.
Life of the Apostle S. John. By M. L. Baunard. Translated from the first French edition. New York: The Catholic Publication Society. 1875.
The life and character of S. John are so beautiful and so closely connected with our Saviour that true believers have always craved to know more about him.