Passing from abstract to concrete, embodiments of evil are condemned, whether the body is a Church, a Bible Society, a Freemasons' lodge, a pack of communists, or even such clandestine gangs as were known in Christendom only to the territory of the Pope and his favourite Italian princes.
Perhaps the eventual importance of this manifesto was, at the time, exaggerated at the Vatican, and is exaggerated even yet. "In this century," says the Genio Cattolico, already quoted, "rises up the sublime and gigantic figure of Pius IX, another Hildebrand. He is charged by divine Providence with the erection in our day of a new edifice upon the débris of the religious and political revolution, as in former times Gregory VII was commissioned to reconstruct a similar edifice upon the scattered remains of tyranny. Gregory had his Dicta; Pius IX has his Syllabus."
The Civiltá Cattolica has never ceased to glorify the Syllabus. A periodical, expressly devoted to expounding and commending it to the Germans, and making it the basis of a new social condition in that country, was commenced at a Jesuit monastery near Bonn, under the title of Stimmen aus Maria Laach. Catholic journals spoke of the universal scope and pregnant consequences of the Syllabus in terms at which men of the world were more inclined to smile than to take warning. The views taken of the document by learned Catholics not of the Ultramontane school are briefly put by Michelis: "Constitutional freedom, equality before the law, liberty of the Press, all the foundations of modern civilization, were all at once pronounced to be hostile to the Catholic faith."[44] Hints were not wanting that it might introduce a conflict which would rage through centuries, and perhaps leave nothing standing but the Church. Still, for the time, politicians were rather annoyed than alarmed, and perhaps no Protestant statesman thought the matter serious enough to feel even annoyance.
Protestant statesmen were still somewhat in the state of mind expressed by Ranke: "What is there that can now make the history of the Papacy interesting and important to us? Not its peculiar relation to us, which can no longer affect us in any material point; nor the anxiety or dread which it can inspire. The times in which we had anything to fear are over; we are conscious of our perfect security. The papacy can inspire us with no other interest than what arises from its historical development and its former influence." This prognostic, the shortsightedness of which the Germans have been painfully taught, obviously sprang out of a confusion of ideas, expressed immediately afterwards, where Ranke identifies changing professions and claims diplomatically presented with fixed maxims, with objects and claims founded on cherished dogma, and felt to be inalienable. As to the Papacy, Ranke says, "Complete metamorphoses have taken place in its maxims, objects, and claims."[45]
In contrast with the indifference founded on this supposed change was the view of the Civiltá in surveying the events of 1864. The year had been, according to it, one marked by that silent preparation of ideas which brings around great events. To the unobserving this preparation was unseen; but the process was going on and the issue certain. Casting a glance around the world, the Civiltá showed that everywhere what it calls the revolution, what we call representative government, was becoming ruinous, and the old Catholic ideal of government regaining its place in the mind of the thoughtful. In Belgium, it had come to that pass that an important paper declared that the tyranny of a majority was worse than that of an autocrat. By a manifest Providence, that immense Babylon the United States, founded on the principles of the revolution, was broken up and undone. The new Mexican empire had all the more promise of stability, as it would retain, at least in part, Catholic principles.
This historical article proceeded to say that the greatest merit of the past year lay—
In the highly important pontifical documents with which it had been so solemnly closed. The Encyclical of his Holiness Pius IX of December 8, and the Syllabus accompanying it, speak clearly enough of themselves, and need not our comments. Those exceedingly grave utterances of pontifical wisdom and fortitude are already perused in every tongue spoken by Catholics, that is, by the civilized world. Nor do Catholics alone read them; even Liberals do so too. And already we begin to hear a distant echo of the fear and wrath felt by the Liberals. They, who themselves change moment by moment, cannot understand that the Church should never change, in her principles or in her doctrine. They, who would conciliate everything—and, when they can do no more, conciliate fact with law—by the stupid word fait accompli, cannot be at peace, because the Church will not be reconciled to impiety and absurdity. They do not believe with divine faith in the potency of the pontifical word; but they do believe by an instinct of terror, as the devils also believe and tremble. Hence the stream of filth now vainly flowing against those documents from the Italian and foreign journals. The Liberals tremble at this warning, and cannot restrain their vexation, because so many hypocritical efforts to mask their Liberalism under Catholicism are at last brought to nought. They are now compelled to lay aside the mask more and more. No longer can they deceive the simple. They must now declare themselves open enemies of the Church and of her definitions.[46]
Though the Syllabus is not even in profession a proclamation of the glory of Christ, or of the Christian verities, or of the mission of the Church to turn sinners from their sins to God, but is formally a charter of ecclesiastical dominion over civil society, the first fourteen of its eighty propositions are named as if drawn from the domain of philosophy and theology. They, however, lay the doctrinal basis for the political claims that follow.
The fifth proposition illustrates the difficulty of judging of the practice of the Church of Rome by her theory, or vice versa. She condemns the following: "That divine revelation is imperfect, and therefore subject to a continuous and indefinite progress, which corresponds to the progress of human reason." Persons not of her own communion would say that, except for the last clause, this might express the ground on which the fabric of Roman doctrine, properly so called, is built. Believing too much almost always springs from believing too little. He who believes enough about one God does not want assistant divinities. He who believes enough about one Mediator does not want to multiply the number. He who believes enough about one revelation does not want new revelations. Both the Councils of Trent and of the Vatican keep up the theory of only developing revelation. Practically their proceedings are pervaded with this principle, "That divine revelation is subject to continuous and indefinite progress." The popular effect of this is that new quasi-revelations are of frequent occurrence.[47]