Being a genuine and world-wide religion, Catholicism could not but come
into contact with the powers in which rests the social authority.
In many cases the fundamental relations of both have been settled by
documents of a _quasi_ constitutional character known as concordats.
They are binding on both parties, yet in more than one case the supreme
authority of Catholicism has had reason to complain of their violation
either in letter or in spirit.
Important points like the freedom of episcopal elections, the
management of ecclesiastical revenues, the freedom of access to and
communication with the Holy See, have been tampered with or openly
abolished. In a general way Catholics are far from being content
with the actual administration of these _quasi_ treaties between
the civil and the ecclesiastical powers in the Old World and in
South America—yet they respect them and desire to live up to their
requirements. It is to be hoped that in the new century there will
be less suspicion of the truly beneficent intentions of the Church,
and less hampering of the common organs of her existence and work.
In a century filled with revolutions as no other the Catholic Church
has comported herself with dignity and equity, and managed to find
the correct _via media_ in this great tangle of opposing and mutually
destructive forms and theories of government.