It is the privilege of every soul born to Christ in his holy church in the waters of regeneration, to receive thereby the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit. It is the bounden duty of every Christian soul to follow with fidelity the promptings of the Holy Spirit. In order that the soul may follow faithfully the indwelling Holy Spirit, it must be secured against all mistakes and delusions and protected against all attacks from error. Every child of the church has therefore a claim in justice upon the authority of the church for this security and protection. But it would be absurd and an intolerable indignity for the soul to obey an authority that might lead it astray in a matter concerning its divine life and future destiny; for in the future world no chance or liberty is left for a return to correct the mistakes into which the soul may have fallen. Therefore the claim is founded in right reason and justice that the supreme teaching and governing authority of the church should be divine—that is, unerring. And it is the intrusion of human authority in the shape of private judgment, or that of the state, as supreme, in regard to the truths of divine revelation, that is the radical motive of the resistance to Protestantism as Christianity on the part of Catholics.
Now, when the soul sees that the authority which governs is animated by the same divine Spirit, with whose promptings it is its inmost desire to comply, and appreciates that the aim of the commands of authority is to keep it from straying from the guidance of the indwelling divine Spirit, then obedience to authority becomes easy and light, and the fulfilment of its commands the source of increased joy and greater liberty, not an irksome task or a crushing burden. This spiritual insight springing from the light of faith is the secret source of Catholic life, the inward principle which prompts the obedience of Catholics to the divine authority of the holy church, and from which is born the consciousness of the soul’s filiation with God, whence flow that perfect love and liberty which always accompany this divine Sonship.
The aim of the authority of the church and its exercise is the same as that of all other authority—secondary. The church herself, in this sense, is not an end, but a means to an end. The aim of the authority of the church is the promotion and the safeguard of the divine action of the indwelling Holy Spirit in the soul, and not a substitution of itself for this.
Just as the object of the authority of the state is to promote the common good and to protect the rights of its citizens, so the authority of the church has for its aim the common good of its members and the protection of their rights. And is not the patriotic spirit that moves the legislator to make the law for the common good and protection of his fellow-countrymen identically the same spirit which plants in their bosoms the sense of submission to the law? Consequently, to fix more firmly and to define more accurately the divine authority of the church in its papal exercise, seen from the inside, is to increase individual action, to open the door to a larger sphere of liberty, and to raise man up to his true manhood in God.
It does, indeed, make all the difference in the world, as the poet Goethe has so well said, to “look at the church” with “Sir Philistine” in a “narrow and captious” spirit from “the market square” stand-point, or to gaze on the church from the inside, where all her divine beauty is displayed and, in a free and lofty spirit, fully enjoyed.
VII.—THE VATICAN COUNCIL (continued).
To define the prerogatives of the papal authority, and its place and sphere of action in the divine autonomy of the church, was to prepare the way for the faithful to follow with greater safety and freedom the inspirations of the Holy Spirit, and thus open the door wider for a fresh influx of divine life and a more vigorous activity. Thanks for these great advantages to the persistent attacks of the foes of the church; for had they let her authority alone, this decree of the Vatican Council would not have been called for, and the prerogatives of the papal functions might have been exercised with sufficient force as the unwritten and common law, and never have passed into a dogmatic decree and become the statute law.
The work of the Vatican Council is not, however, finished. Other and important tasks are before it, to accomplish which it will be sooner or later reassembled. Divine Providence appears to be shaping events in many ways since the adjournment of the council, so as to render its future labors comparatively easy. There were special causes which made it reasonable that the occupant of St. Peter’s chair at Rome should in modern times be an Italian. Owing to the radical changes which have taken place in Europe, these causes no longer have the force they once had. The church is a universal, not a national society. The boundaries of nations have, to a great extent, been obliterated by the marvellous inventions of the age. The tendency of mankind is, even in spite of itself, to become more and more one family, and of nations to become parts of one great whole rather than separate entities. And even if the wheel of change should, as we devoutly hope, restore to the Pope the patrimony of the church, the claims of any distinct nationality to the Chair of Peter will scarcely hold as they once held. The supreme Pastor of the whole flock of Christ, as befits the Catholic and cosmopolitan spirit of the church, may now, as in former days, be chosen solely in view of his capacity, fitness, and personal merits, without any regard to his nationality or race.
It must be added to the other great acts of the reigning Pontiff—whom may God preserve!—that he has given to the cardinal senate of the church a more representative character by choosing for its members a larger number of distinguished men from the different nations of which the family of the church is composed. This, it is to be hoped, is only a promise of the no distant day when the august senate of the universal church shall not only be open to men of merit of every Catholic nation of the earth, but also its members be chosen in proportion to the importance of each community, according to the express desire of the holy œcumenical Council of Trent. Such a representative body, composed of the élite of the entire human race, presided over by the common father of all the faithful, would realize as nearly as possible that ideal tribunal which enlightened statesmen are now looking for, whose office it would be to act as the arbitrator between nation and nation, and between rulers and people.
Since the close of the first session of the Vatican Council nearly all the different nations of Europe have, of their own accord, broken the concordats made with the church and virtually proclaimed a divorce between the state and the church. This conduct leaves the church entirely free in the choice of her bishops; which will tend to bring out more clearly the spiritual and popular side of the church; to set at naught the charge made against her prelates as meddling in purely secular affairs; and to wipe out the stigma of their being involved in the political intrigues of courts.