Six Popes ruled the Church in the nineteenth century: Pius VII., Leo
XII., Pius VIII., Gregory XVI., Pius IX., and the present venerable
pontiff, Leo XIII. In the person of Pius VII. they have known what
martyrdom was like, also the shame and humiliation of being subject
to a civil power absolute in its character and prone to unwarrantable
interference with the ecclesiastical power, even to contempt of its
most ancient and venerable rights. In Gregory XVI. and Pius IX.
they learned the purposes and the power of those who in Europe have
succeeded to the men of the French Revolution. In Leo XIII. their line,
the oldest line of rulers on the earth, can boast of a most enlightened
mind and a very sympathetic heart. Long time a bishop of an important
see before he was made Pope, he has been at the level of every task
imposed upon the Papacy.
In a particular manner he has been the patron of ecclesiastical
studies, by his scholarly encyclicals on philosophy, Scripture,
history, and other branches of learning. A noble specimen of this
activity is his late letter to the bishops of France on the studies
of the clergy. His spirit is the Christian spirit of reconciliation
and concord, yet without sacrifice of the immemorial rights and the
solemn obligations of the Apostolic See. He may not live to see the
restoration of his independence, and the reparation of the wrong
inflicted upon the Holy See, but he can maintain a protest that will
forever invalidate among Catholics the claim of the actual government
and keep open the Roman question until it is rightly settled.
Catholics cannot forget that the Pope for the time being is, according
to Catholic doctrine, the successor of Saint Peter in all his rights
and privileges as the visible head of the Church, appointed by Jesus
Himself. Hence, among other duties, he has to safeguard the approved
traditions and the general legislation of the past, to protect the
status of the Church as given over to him, and to hand it down
undiminished to his own successor. Precisely because he is the head
of the Church he may not licitly alter its organic and regular life,
or arbitrarily abandon the almost sacrosanct ways along which his
predecessors have moved, or give up lightly the institutions in which
religion has gradually found a setting for itself.
I venture to say that this element of fixity in the attitude of
the Apostolic See will be more appreciated in another age, more
constructive and architectonic than the past, less querulous and
destructive, even if less daring and brilliant. Forever to pull down
and scatter, and never to build up and perfect, cannot be the final
purpose of human society. It is perhaps worth remarking that the
average reign of the Popes was much longer in the nineteenth century
than in any other, being over sixteen years, and that two successive
reigns, those of Pius IX. and Leo XIII., represent fifty-four
continuous years of Church government at Rome, a phenomenon not
witnessed since the foundation of that Church by Saint Peter and Saint
Paul.