events that led up to the invasion of the Papal States, and to their
forced blending into what is called united Italy. We cannot here go
into the question as to when invasion is necessary and justifiable.
Common sense, however, is a sufficient guide to the doctrine that no
invasion of another’s territory or property is justifiable or
necessary, unless the holder of that property is incapable; unless that
property has been and is being grossly abused; unless those who live on
that property invite the invasion on just grounds; and unless the
invader can guarantee a better holding and guardianship of the
property, a reform in its administration, a sacred regard for rights
that are sacred. If any man can show us that any one of these
conditions was fulfilled by the Sardinian invasion of the Papal States,
we are open to conviction. Nor in this matter are we taking the rights
and property of the church as something apart from ordinary rights and
property, though they are so. We base our whole opposition to this most
infamous usurpation and robbery on known and accepted natural rights
common to all property and holders of property. It is useless to tell
Europe that it solemnly sanctioned a sacrilege. Europe has forgotten
the meaning of the word sacrilege. It has still some sense of what
robbery and wrong mean, though constant practice in robbery and wrong
and nefarious proceedings has so blunted its moral sense that it can
always readily connive at the wrong, especially when the wrong is done
to the Catholic Church.
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.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
GREAT EVENTS OF THE PONTIFICATE.
The definition of two great dogmas marks the pontificate of Pius IX.
and will make it memorable for ever in the annals of the church: the
dogma of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mother, and of
the Papal Infallibility. The last was a death-blow to schism and
heresy. We do not mean that schism and heresy will die out because of
it. But it roots them out of their holes; and henceforth they will know
that over them hangs a voice, not often used, indeed, or idly, but
which, once it has uttered its last and final and solemn decision, is
irrevocable. The scenes that Rome witnessed in its last declining days
as the city of the popes will dwell in the memory of men. The bishops
of all the earth, in numbers unprecedented, flocking to what was vainly
thought to be the rocking chair of Peter, was perhaps one of the most
striking testimonies to a scoffing and unbelieving age of the immense
vitality of the faith, of the vastness, the splendor, and renown of the
Catholic Church. A more solemn testimony still was the joyful
acceptance by the faithful of the dogma of Papal Infallibility, which,
it was thought by those who knew not the Catholic faith, would rend the
church asunder. The canonization of the martyrs of Japan, the thronging
of the bishops and faithful to Rome on the occasion of the various
jubilees, and the crowning event of last year, when all the Catholic
world assisted at the celebration of the fiftieth episcopal jubilee of
Pius IX., are other events that mark this great pontificate with
significance and splendor. These last were as much personal tributes to
the man as of respect to the supreme head of the church, and they
showed, if aught were needed to show, that Pius, stripped of his
dominions, bereft of his possessions, imprisoned in the Vatican, lived
and reigned as, perhaps, no other pope lived and reigned in the hearts,
not of a small section of his people, but of all the great church that
covers the earth.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE POPE’S PERSONAL CHARACTER.
One feature of all others marks the character of Pius IX. Personally
the meekest and most yielding of men, he was always filled with the
sense of his position and his sacred charge. We do not mean that as
Pope he was proud, overbearing, intolerant. He was anything but that.
But in all that touched the faith and the sacred prerogatives that had
been placed in his pure hands he was simply inflexible. He would not
yield a jot of them. He would not compromise. He would not temporize. A
singularly open, honest, and frank character, ready to trust all men,
he seemed to scent out danger from afar off when it threatened what was
dearer to him than life—life was always a small matter in his eyes—the
chair of Peter and the faith of Christ. The utterances of his bulls and
encyclical letters, the speeches that he delivered, sometimes off-hand,
on important subjects, bear all one tone, never contradict one another.
They are resolute and bold and breathe authority throughout. He saw
from the first the movement of the age, and that it was moving in a
false direction. The movement was, in one word, towards a complete
rejection of divine authority, of divine revelation, and consequently
of the church as a divine institution, and of all authority save such
as men choose to set up for themselves. From his first papal allocution
to the Syllabus of Errors to be condemned, he always struck at this
spirit, and this spirit recognized its vigilant foe and master. Hence
the rage with which his utterances were received in the courts of
Europe and by the infidel press. But he never swerved from his course.
He was never weary of condemning what he knew to be wrong; and the
state of public opinion to-day regarding rights that were once held as
sacred even by large and powerful non-Catholic bodies is a sufficient
vindication, if any were needed, of the pontiff’s course. Rights,
natural and supernatural, are everywhere invaded. The cloister is
desecrated. The home is threatened with disruption by divorce and an
easy marriage that is no marriage. Innocent infants are no longer
consecrated to God. “Free” thought finds its issue in “free” religion,
and free religion means no religion. The sense of right has yielded to
the sense of force. Education is handed over to infidels. This is the
larger growth of the conspiracy that swept away the States of the
Church only by way of a beginning to a wider sweeping that was to
desolate the earth.
All this was what Pius IX. felt coming on and resisted to his last
breath. He guarded the church well, and, if human judgment be allowed
to follow him, he goes before his divine Master with a clean heart and
untroubled conscience, having done his work thoroughly. We shall miss
that majestic figure from our busy scene. We shall miss the grand old
man seated prophet-like on the now bare and barren rock of Peter, the
storms of the earth roaring around and threatening to overwhelm him,
and he calm and unmoved, his head lifted above them clear and lovely in
the white light of heaven. We shall miss the face that we all know as
we know and cherish the picture of a father: with its large, bright
eyes, its sweet lips, and that smile that could only come from a heart
free from guile and clear from constant communings with heaven. Set the
men of the age beside him, and see how they dwarf and dwindle away. Set
Cavour, Louis Napoleon, Bismarck, Thiers, Palmerston, those known as
the greatest among the leaders of men, by Pius IX., and what a
contrast! The story of the struggle that he waged is told in this. Ages
stamp themselves in the men they deify. In brutal, debased, but
“civilized” pagan Rome statues were set up to men like Nero and
Domitian and Claudius and Diocletian; and these were the gods of the
degenerate Romans. The gods of to-day, the idols of the people, are the
men we have mentioned above and the lower brood of the Mazzinis,
Garibaldis, Victor Emanuels, Gambettas. To the worshippers of these
heroes Pius IX. was a despot and a ruler of a brood of despots, an
enemy of the human race. The gown of the cleric has become the garb of
ignominy and darkness; the blood-red cap of the revolutionist the
beacon of liberty and light. The intellectual stream of Voltaire and
the Voltairists, the men of “science” of to-day, filters down into the
mud and blood of the rabble. These dainty gentlemen prepare the
dynamite, leaving others more ignorant to fire it. This is the progress
that Pius IX. stigmatized, and these the lights of the age whom he
condemned. But his work has been effectual. He guarded the vineyard of
the Lord. He made straight its paths. He weeded it well and watered it,
if not with his heart’s blood, with the labors and sufferings of a long
life that never knew rest or thought but of good to the whole human
race. He has left to the world the example of a life of unspotted
virtue, of large and wise charity, of undaunted courage and zeal, of
meekness and childlike simplicity. He goes to his grave amid the tears
and benedictions of the mightiest body on earth, followed by the
sorrowing sympathy of all who esteem piety, honor integrity, and admire
courage.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
NEW PUBLICATIONS.
MORNING OFFICES OF PALM SUNDAY, HOLY THURSDAY, AND GOOD FRIDAY.
Together with a Magnificat for Holy Saturday and a few selections
for the Tenebræ Function. Arranged and edited by Edwin F.
MacGonigle, St. Charles’ Seminary, Overbrook, Pa.
The publication of this work is another comforting evidence of the
reality of the revival of a better taste amongst church musicians, and
of the demand of church people for a style of music at the divine
offices which, at least, shall not outrage every sentiment of religious
reverence and respect which they have for the house of God.
Although giving but few selections from the vast number of sentences,
anthems, etc., enjoined to be sung during the great week, the choice
made proves that there is a more general knowledge of the Rubrics than
has hitherto prevailed amongst church musicians, and a consequent
desire to produce the offices of the church in their entirety. It will
also serve a purpose—to us a very desirable one—which is to turn the
attention of choir-masters and organists to the _sanctioned chant
melodies_ for the Holy-Week services, which are, in our judgment, after
long experience, quite unequalled by any musical melodies that were
ever written.
We fail to see any possible reason for a harmonized _morceau de
musique_ to take the place of the cantor’s chanting of the _Recordare_
at the _Tenebræ_ function, nor can we discover any special merit in the
composition itself. The works of Sig. Capocci seem to us to be better
suited for exhibition at one of our “Vesper Series” concerts at
Chickering and other halls than for practical use _in choro_ before an
altar—unless, indeed, the hearing of a musical concert is to be the
proper and most edifying manner of satisfying the precept of hearing
Mass devoutly, or of piously assisting at Vespers and Benediction.
Can the editor give any authority for the whining _Fa_# in the first
member of the cadence of the _Benedictus_, No. 1, here treated as
_Do_#? Sig. Capocci may have so written it; but then he ought to have
known better.
Those who use concerted music for their church services, and who
possess capable singers, will no doubt be pleased to add this
publication to their collection of “church music.”
A VISIT TO THE ROMAN CATACOMBS. By Rev. J. Spencer Northcote, D.D.,
canon of Birmingham. London: Burns and Oates. 1877. (For sale by The
Catholic Publication Society Co.)
This book is another proof of the untiring attention that Canon
Northcote continues to devote to the object of his special studies—the
Roman Catacombs, to which, as he modestly tells us, he first applied
himself in 1846. The length of time that he has devoted to the subject,
his diligence, scholarship, and perfect orthodoxy, make him the
standard authority among English-speaking Catholics on all matters
connected with those wonderful subterranean cemeteries which are
inexhaustible mines of treasure to students of Christian antiquities,
and points of attraction to all really learned, as well as to some
ignorant and conceited, visitors to Rome. The traveller to the Tiber
and the Seven Hills who does not visit the Catacombs has not seen one
of the three Romes, and returns with a very inadequate knowledge of the
Eternal City. A study of the Roman Catacombs is as necessary to enable
one to understand the manners and customs of the early Christians, and
to appreciate the various stages of the doctrines and practices of the
church from apostolic times to the period that followed the triumph of
religion under Constantine, and its splendid development of ritual and
of ceremonial during the middle ages, as the careful examination of the
deeply-planted roots of a mighty oak is wanted to show the lover of
nature how so noble a tree grows up the monarch of the forest, “and
shooteth out great branches, so that the birds of the air may lodge
under the shadow of it” (Mark iv. 32).
We are glad to learn from the preface of this short but interesting and
instructive _Visit to the Roman Catacombs_ that a second and enlarged
edition of the _Roma Sotteranea_ of the same author, published in
conjunction with Rev. W. R. Brownlow in 1869, and which will contain
the substance of De Rossi’s recently-issued third volume, is in
preparation. We shall heartily welcome it. The present little book
contains a great amount of information in a convenient, attractive, and
well-written form.
MATERIALISM: A Lecture by P. J. Smyth, M.P., M.R.I.A., Chev. Leg.
d’Hon. Dublin: Joseph Dollard. 1877.
This is a strong and outspoken defence of Christianity by a layman from
the lecture platform against the attacks of materialism on religion as
addressed to popular assemblies under the cloak of science. The lecture
reaffirms the primitive convictions of the soul and the common consent
of mankind against the unsupported assertions of the modern materialist
school. The Irish people have heroically withstood the assaults made
against their religious faith—assaults more cruel and persistent than
have been even charged upon the Spanish Inquisition—and that, too, from
a nation which boasts of being the champion of religious liberty. It is
a cheering sign to see that they are fully able to defend their faith
with personal intelligent conviction against the materialism of the
demagogues of science. Ireland has a class of thoroughly-educated
laymen, and when religion is invaded from every quarter, as it is in
our day, it is time that men who have deep and strong religious
feelings should speak out in words which are fraught with the power of
intelligent conviction and in tones which will make themselves heard.
Mr. Smyth’s lecture is solid, manly, and eloquent, and we hope to hear
from him again and often.
RECORDS OF A QUIET LIFE. By Augustus J. C. Hare, author of _Walks in
Rome_, etc. Revised for American readers by William L. Gage. Boston:
Roberts Brothers. 1876.
The author of this volume, in presenting the picture of the Hare
family, labored under the impression that he was revealing a model life
to the public. Confined to non-Catholics, perhaps he and the writer of
the American preface were not mistaken, and this class of readers will
derive profit from its perusal. The Hares were Anglican clergymen, in
charge of parishes, and with families. The volume furnishes pictures of
the performance of their parochial duties, the life of their family
circles, and the characteristics of their members. The Hares were above
the common run of men of their class in intellectual gifts and
scholarly attainments. They appear to have done their best to fulfil
the duties of their position with the incoherent fragments of Christian
truth which their sect teaches. A Catholic feels after reading this
volume as if he had been passing through a picture-gallery of
second-class artists. Our counsel to non-Catholic readers is: read
these _Records_, and then take up the _Life of the Curé of Ars_, or
_The Inner Life of Père Lacordaire_, or _A Sister’s Story_, or _The
Life of Madame Swetchine_, and you will understand, if not fully
appreciate, our meaning.
IS THE HUMAN EYE CHANGING ITS FORM UNDER THE INFLUENCES OF MODERN
EDUCATION? Edward G. Loring, M.D. New York. 1878.
This is a very clever _brochure_ upon a very vexed question—namely,
does compulsory education of the young under certain bad hygienic and
dietetic conditions produce ocular deformity, and is such deformity
hereditary? Dr. Loring produces certain eminent German oculists who
state that myopia (near-sightedness) is certainly hereditary. The
doctor only partially agrees with the German _savants_ whom he cites,
and believes that no organ having reached its highest state of
perfection, as has the human eye, can be changed by hereditary
transmission, unless under conditions that affect the human organism as
a whole, and that it would take ages to accomplish this under the most
favorable conditions. The doctor explains why educated Germans as a
rule are myopic by stating that the German forcing system for children
under fifteen is radically wrong, and, moreover, that Germans as a
nation are not fond of out-door sports. He further argues that their
manner of cooking and sanitary arrangements are bad; all which, under
certain conditions, will tend to produce hereditary myopia. Americans,
it is stated, exhibit in some respects an inclination to follow the
German plan rather than adhere to the traditional educational system of
our ancestors of the English race.