The fact that the meaning of carnal weapons is coolly assumed to be fragile or futile ones, is not to be overlooked. It would naturally follow that the chassepots at Mentana, which were neither fragile nor futile, were not carnal weapons. Of course Tarquini would have said that though in their proper nature carnal, when serving a purely spiritual end they took on a spiritual character. But we cannot forget that the "strongholds" which the weapons of Paul were mighty to pull down were "imaginations," and the captives they led bound were "thoughts." That is a sphere in which the proper weapon is not either shot or fetter, but the word and the works of men whom God makes wise to teach and holy to charm. There is one symbol which the Vatican never sees, that of the true and only Head of the Church, with no sword in His hand, much less two, but one sharp sword with two edges proceeding out of His mouth. That alone is the weapon that is not carnal but mighty through God.
We now begin to see the grounds cropping out on which Mr. Bryce's doctrine of two heads to the Catholic State, one civil and one spiritual, was condemned. The days of dualism and Manicheism in any form were numbered.
With their complaints that the Jesuits, both in the confessionals and in their text-books, corrupted Catholic morality, the Liberal Catholics mingled loud and bitter complaints that they sought to make the people superstitious and to keep them ignorant. It was often alleged that even their schools, or those under their virtual if not ostensible control, were themselves preserves of ignorance and superstition, keeping the scholars from an education, according to their capacity, for one "suited to their position," and at the same time preparing them to receive all kinds of fables and "lying wonders,"—a term not infrequently quoted by Liberal Catholics. Those fables and wonders would open a field so large, and one lying on a level so low, that we have not cared even to glance at them. As found in local clerical papers, or books of what is called "devotions," they are so gross that a writer could hardly repeat them without incurring loss, not only in the respect of others, but in self-respect. Liberal Catholics, however, know that they are a real power in Jesuit hands, one of the powers in the future war against science, the Press, and free government, and through these, against Protestantism. One specimen of the higher order we may give, from which some opinion may be formed of those vented in small places, by ignorant men, through low publications.
We speak of the great Civiltá,[181] of the "metropolis of the Christian world," and of a deliverance of the Capitol itself. The plan of the Garibaldians, insists the Civiltá, in October 1867, was to seize the Capitol and to ring the great bell, at the sound of which all over Rome their hordes were to rise. But Anna Maria Taigi, who had died thirty years before, in the odour of sanctity, had seen prophetic visions of Rome wasted with fire and sword, and dreadful with heaps of unburied corpses, breeding dire pestilence. Some thought that 1849 might have been the fulfilment of the vision; others that it was the attempt of 1867. But by the special "devotion" to this saintly woman, such dread event was to be averted. On the evening when all felt that the shock was coming, but no one saw whence or how, a priest of ninety years old, "well known to all in Rome," said to another, "I feel assured that the venerable Anna Maria will defend the city; and her image must at once be carried to the Capitol, for that is the point they will aim at; the Capitol once saved, Rome belongs to the Pope." The other priest objected that the hour was late and the streets unsafe. The old man insisted, reassured him, blessed him, and sent him away with the image, charging him to place it on the highest point. As the priest, bearing the image, reached the steps of the Capitol, a friend from a window, perceiving him, earnestly warned him to go home. Trembling, yet resolute, he pressed up the hill. All was silent as a desert. Having reached the utmost height under the bell-tower, he was fixing up the image, when he heard people move, and a door opened. A woman appeared. "I came," said he, "solely for the purpose of setting up an image." It would appear that it was a picture, for he had brought wafers with him to fasten it. Carlotta (for that was the woman's name) looked at the image, and cried, "Why, that is the venerable Anna Maria Taigi; I also practise devotion to her." The priest withdrew in silence and in haste. Meanwhile a priest from Bologna went in to visit the nonagenarian devotee of Anna Maria. "Don Pedro," cried the old man, "the Venerable has taken possession of the Capitol in the name of the Pope, and she will defend it from the Garibaldians." The attempt on the Capitol was almost immediately made and failed. Those who remember the tale of the Capitol when Brennus was the Garibaldi will be tempted to ask how great is the present elevation of faith above that of the days of the sacred geese.
FOOTNOTES:
[179] Bryce (p. 177) quotes from the second excommunication of Henry IV by Hildebrand as follows: "Come now, I beseech you, O most holy and blessed Fathers and Princes, Peter and Paul, that all the world may understand and know that if ye are able to bind and to loose in heaven, ye are likewise able on earth, according to the merits of each man, to give and to take away empires, kingdoms, princedoms, marquisates, duchies, countships, and the possessions of all men."—Holy Roman Empire.
[180] Guérin, pp. 61, 62; Friedberg, p. 82.
[181] VII. vii. 432 ff.