NEW PUBLICATIONS.
| A Life of Pius IX. down to the Episcopal Jubilee, | [135] |
| Almanac, Catholic Family, | [572] |
| Almanac and Treasury of Facts for the year 1878, | [860] |
| Ancient History, | [432] |
| Annals of Our Lady of the Sacred Heart, | [144] |
| Antar and Zara, | [431] |
| Bible of Humanity, The, | [143] |
| Bibliotheca Symbolica Ecclesiæ Universalis, | [284] |
| Blanche Carey, | [140] |
| Catacombs, A Visit to the Roman, | [859] |
| Catechism of Christian Doctrine, | [137] |
| Catholic Parents’ Friend, The, | [144] |
| Charles Sprague, Poetical and Prose Writings of, | [143] |
| Christianity, The Beginnings of, | [425] |
| De Deo Creante, | [426] |
| Eternal Years, The, | [575] |
| Evidences of Religion, | [572] |
| God the Teacher of Mankind, | [137] |
| Grammar-School Speller and Definer, The, | [139] |
| Human Eye, Is the, Changing its form under the Influences of Modern Education? | [860] |
| Iza, | [575] |
| Jack, | [143] |
| Knowledge of Mary, | [715] |
| Letters of Rev. James Maher, D.D., | [141] |
| Life of Marie Lataste, | [134] |
| Life of Pope Pius IX., A Popular, | [135] |
| Lotos-Flowers, | [573] |
| Marie Lataste, The Life of, | [134] |
| Mary, The Knowledge of, | [715] |
| Materialism, | [859] |
| McGee’s Illustrated Weekly, | [143] |
| Mirror of True Womanhood, | [719] |
| Miscellanies, | [281] |
| Missa de Beata Maria, | [139] |
| Modern Philosophy, | [428] |
| Mongrelism, | [142] |
| Monotheism, | [571] |
| Morning Offices of Palm Sunday, Holy Thursday, and Good Friday, | [858] |
| Nicholas Minturn, | [575] |
| Records of a Quiet Life, | [859] |
| Recueil de Lectures, | [288] |
| Repertorium Oratoris Sacri, | [574] |
| Roman Catacombs, A Visit to the, | [858] |
| Sadlier’s Elementary History of the U.S., | [432] |
| School Hygiene, Report upon, | [136] |
| Shakspeare’s Home, | [719] |
| Specialists and Specialties in Medicine, | [142] |
| Standard Arithmetic. No. I., | [287] |
| Standard Arithmetic. No. II., | [288] |
| Sunday-School Teacher’s Manual, | [575] |
| Suppression of the Society of Jesus in the Portuguese Dominions, History of the, | [429] |
| Surly Tim, | [574] |
| The Beginnings of Christianity, | [425] |
| The Fall of Rora, | [431] |
| The Life of Pope Pius IX., | [135] |
| Vesper Hymn-Book, The New, | [573] |
| What Catholics Do Not Believe, | [719] |
THE
CATHOLIC WORLD.
VOL. XXVI., No. 151.—OCTOBER, 1877.
THE OUTLOOK IN ITALY.
I.—WHAT IS THE MEANING OF RECENT EVENTS IN ITALY?
The revolutionary movement in Italy headed by Victor Emanuel has, step by step, trampled under foot every principle of religion, morality, and justice that stood between it and its goal. No pretext of the welfare of a people, even when based on truth, can ever make perfidy and treachery lawful, or furnish a covering of texture thick enough to hide from intelligent and upright minds so long and black a list of misdeeds as the Piedmontese subjugation of Southern Italy contains. “All iniquity of nations is execrable.” What is more, the catalogue of the crimes of this revolution is by no means filled, and, what is worse, the future forebodes others which, in their enormity, will cast those of its beginning into the shade. That the natural desire for unity among the Italian people might have been realized by proper and just means, had the religious, intelligent, and influential classes exerted themselves as they were in duty bound to do, there is little room for reasonable doubt. For it would be an unpleasant thing to admit that civilized society, after the action of nineteen centuries of Christianity, could find no way to satisfy a legitimate aspiration, except by a process involving the violation and subversion of those principles of justice, right, and religion for the maintenance and security of which human society is organized and established. It is indeed strange to see the Latin races, which accepted so thoroughly and for so long a period the true Christian faith, now everywhere subject to violent and revolutionary changes in their political condition. How is this to be reconciled with the fact that Christianity, in response to the primitive instincts of human nature, and in consonance with the laws which govern the whole universe, aims at, and actually brings about when followed, the greatest happiness of man upon earth while securing his perfect bliss hereafter? For so runs the promise of the divine Founder of Christianity: “A hundred-fold more in this life, and in the world to come life everlasting.”
What has beguiled so large a number of the people of Italy, once so profoundly Catholic, that now they should take up the false principles of revolution, should accept a pseudo-science, and unite with secret atheistical societies? How has it come to pass that a people who poured out their blood as freely as water in testimony and defence of the Catholic religion, whose history has given innumerable examples of the highest form of Christian heroism in ages past, now follows willingly, or at least submits tamely, to the dictation of leaders who are animated with hatred to the Catholic Church, and are bent on the extermination of the Christian faith, and with it of all religion?