We invite all honest men to contrast the condition of the Papal States to-day, under the present Italian régime, with their condition under the Papal régime. They cannot show that that condition is bettered. All Italy is in a chronic state of legal and secret terrorism. There was no terrorism under Pius IX. The people groan under taxes such as in their worst days they never had to sustain. Parliamentary representation and freedom of election in Italy is a farce. As for the social and moral effects of the invasion, they have been dwelt upon so often and are so patent that they need no mention here. Pius IX. failed as a political leader and ruler, not because he was not a wise and just and benevolent ruler, but because, as we said, it was intended that he should fail. The combinations against him were too powerful. The wonder is that he withstood them so long. But history will faithfully record that the last ruler—the last, at least, as things are at present—of the temporalities of the church was the best and most just prince in Europe, and the one who cared most for the material and moral advance of his people.
PIUS IX. AS HEAD OF THE CHURCH.
So much for one aspect of the Pope’s life and character. It is a sad and a saddening one—the one in which he is most bitterly and unjustly assailed. Thus far the story has been one of a long and disastrous failure. We turn now to look at him in his greater character as Pontiff and High-Priest of the Catholic Church
Here the heart lifts, the eyes grow dim, the pen falters, as we glance across the ocean and see the meek old man who has done so much for the church, who has served her so faithfully, who has given her so high and holy an example of undaunted faith, of burning zeal, of universal charity, of meekness and long-suffering, laid out at last on the bier to which the eyes of all the world turn in sorrowing sympathy and respect. In this is his true triumph. In the midst of universal disaster the great and mighty church, which was entrusted to him in a condition that was truly deplorable, so far as its existence in the various states of the world went, has gathered together its strength, has renewed its youth like the eagle, has flown abroad on the wings of the wind to the uttermost parts of the earth. In 1846 how stood the church in Europe? In England the Ecclesiastical Titles Bill had not yet been passed. The Act of Catholic Emancipation had only been granted in 1829. Ireland was still a political nonentity. Catholicity in France was suffering under the worst features of the Napoleonic Code. In Austria it was strangled by Josephism. In all places it was under a ban. In the United States and Australia it was still almost a stranger.
WONDERFUL GROWTH OF THE CHURCH.
But a new spirit was awakening among men. The American Revolution was productive of important results to mankind. The French Revolution, which followed, gave a startling impetus to these. All over the world men were rising to a new sense of their natural rights. The awakening found expression in deplorable and revolting excesses here and there, but there were some right principles under the mass of extravagances and chimeras afloat. These principles good, earnest Catholics hastened to grasp and utilize. They beat the progeny of Voltaire, they beat the liberal philosophers, the apostles of liberty, equality, and fraternity, with their own weapons. They gave the right and lawful meaning to those words and would not surrender their claims. Thus uprose O’Connell, who gave the cue and the lead to so many other illustrious champions of civil and religious liberty. O’Connell roared and thundered in England, and made himself heard over the world. Montalembert and Lacordaire and the unfortunate De Lamennais took up the great Irish leader’s cry in France. Görres sharpened his pen in Germany. Balmes arose in Spain. Brownson was won over in the United States. Louis Veuillot found the antidote to his infidel poison, and the school of Voltaire found one of their doughtiest warriors heart and soul in the Catholic ranks. A crowd of men, equally illustrious or nearly so, sprang up and around these leaders. Catholic laymen took heart, entered zealously into good works and political life, and many a one lent his powerful pen and voice to the service of the church, in places often where the priest could not well enter. Catholicity assumed, if we may so say, a more manly and aggressive tone. The children of Voltaire were wont to laugh at it as a thing of cassocks and sacristans. They were astonished to find the young, the enthusiastic, the noble entering on what was veritably a new crusade, and defending their faith courageously and ably wherever they found it attacked. What Pius IX. had attempted in his temporal dominions had actually and, as it were, spontaneously come to pass in the spiritual domain. The laity assumed their lawful place in the life of the church. The Holy Father encouraged them in every way possible; and his aged eyes have been gladdened by witnessing in all lands a new army of defenders of the faith growing up and disciplined, and daily increasing in numbers, strength, and usefulness.
He saw the faith in France and in the German states revive wonderfully. Able and zealous bishops were appointed; the education of the clergy, on which he always insisted with especial vehemence, was very carefully cultivated. Bands of missionaries followed the newly-opened rivers of commerce and carried the faith with them to new lands. The Irish famine of 1846–1847 sent out a missionary nation to the United States, to Australia, to England itself. Priests went with them, or followed them, and in time grew up among them. While Sardinia was confiscating church property, destroying monasteries and institutions of learning, and turning priests and monks out of doors, England and her possessions and the United States were beginning to receive them, and, in accordance with the principles of their government, letting them do their own work in their own way.
And so the church has gone on developing with the greatest impetus in the most unpromising soil. Already men say wonderingly that it is strongest and best off in Protestant lands. Pius IX. had the happiness of creating the hierarchy in England, in the United States, and in Australia, in the British possessions—wherever the faith is to-day reputed to be in the most flourishing condition. But all this has not come about by accident. There was a very active, keen, and observant man at the head of affairs. It is wonderful how the Pope, with the troubles that were for ever pressing upon him regarding the affairs of the Papal States, could have found time to attend to those wider concerns of the universal church. But if he loved Rome and its people with a love that was truly paternal, his first care was always for the church of which he was the guardian. His heart was in every work and enterprise for the advancement of the faith. His eye was all-seeing. His prayers were unceasing.