Having treated, as fully as I could in one lecture, of the nature of
that secret and powerfully organized Atheism, which now for over a
century has waged a fierce and sleepless war with the Church of Jesus
Christ, and which means not only to destroy that Church but every form of
Christianity and Christian civilization, I come this evening to speak,
according to my promise, of a special feature in that war; namely, its
intense hostility to the Vicar of Jesus Christ, and its determination
to deprive him of every human means of exercising his divine mission
with the view of thus preventing the government of the Church and the
extension of the Kingdom of Christ in the world. This feature in the
Anti-Christian war of Freemasonry and its attendant sects, has, as we
have seen, been manifest from the very commencement. Scarcely had its
adepts obtained power at the period of the first French Revolution, when
they aimed and dealt, too, a deadly blow at the temporal power of the
Pope, hoping thereby to cripple and eventually to terminate his spiritual
ministrations. The blow was repeated under Napoleon, attempted frequently
after the Revolution of July 1830, and again dealt with the effect of
banishing the Pontiff from his See by the Italian Conspirators of 1848.
The Papacy, however, with that perennial elasticity which marks its
history since the days of St. Peter, returned to Rome, and made good
in a short time the evils which its absence had created. The Revolution
seeing this, seems to have no longer determined to drive Christ’s Vicar
from the Vatican; but, while permitting him to remain there, practically
a prisoner, to deprive him of every means necessary or useful for the
exercise of his ministry for the benefit of the millions committed to his
keeping by God. Power having come into the hands of the Freemasons of
Italy, by means which I shall glance at further on, they have taken, step
by step, possession of his temporal kingdom, until finally, in violation
of every right, human and divine, they seized forcibly upon the City of
Rome, and confiscated to their own purposes even its religious treasures.
They promised at the time to respect such Institutions and persons in
that City as all Catholics knew to be necessary for the government of
the Church spread not only in Italy, but throughout the whole earth.
For instance, though by law, the Religious Orders were suppressed in
Piedmont, in the rest of Italy, and in some other countries fallen
unfortunately into the power of the Atheistic secret sectaries, they were
not suppressed with us, nor, geographically speaking, in the greater part
of the world. Now, the Pope is sole Superior of all Religious Orders
in the Catholic Church. They are all instituted to serve him specially
and devotedly, and they depend directly upon him. None know this better
than the Italian Freemasons, who forcibly took possession of Rome.
They declared that though in the rest of Italy, Religious Orders and
other Catholic Institutions were by law suppressed, yet even these and
everything else needed by the Supreme Pontiff for the government of the
Universal Church, should be sacredly respected by them in Rome. We know
how they have kept this promise so far as the governing staff of the
Religious Orders were concerned. They respected the Generals and their
assistants by casting them out from their convents upon the streets. They
took possession of these convents for secular purposes. They confiscated
the whole revenues of the religious, and denied to the successors of
the same religious the miserable pensions granted to those whom they
brutally and ignominiously expelled. But we were told that this was to
be done only to the religious, and that the rest of the Institutions of
Rome necessary for the service of the Pontiff, for his dignity, and,
above all, for the government of the Church, should be most scrupulously
respected. His person was to be as much honoured, and to be as inviolable
as that of the King. The one residence left him in Rome was to obtain the
privilege of extra-territoriality, and his means were to be protected on
the pledged faith and honour of the Italian King and Parliament. We know
how the honour decreed by law to the Supreme Pontiff was respected by the
Government, in the miserable insults offered by a body of hired ruffians
being permitted, if not more than permitted, to outrage the venerated
remains of Pius IX. on their passage at night from St. Peter’s to the
Basilica of San Lorenzo. The Pope refused, of course, the ostentatious
pension his plunderers voted him in lieu of the spoliation of his States.
But this gain did not satisfy them. They proceeded, whenever they could,
to violate or make null their own laws of guarantee in his regard; and
they succeeded. For instance, they made a law by which the real property
of the Church should be all sold and converted into the bonds of the new
Italian Government. These bonds, at best, are only worth whatever the
solvency of the Italian Government may be rated at, upon the markets of
Europe. But the Church was not to be permitted to have the advantage of
ordinary bond-holders. These latter could sell out their bonds at market
value. The Church was not permitted to do this. The bonds purchased
by the sale of her farms and houses were made a debt of the Italian
Government, it is true—but a State debt due to the Church only—a debt
apart, which could be dealt with at pleasure, and regarding which any
dealing the Italian Parliament might think well to apply, could not in
any sense affect the solvency of the nation in the markets of Europe.
Regarding the payment of these bonds the Church has to depend absolutely
upon the word of a body of men who have broken faith with her constantly,
and whose promises were made, only to be broken at the first favourable
moment. No man, therefore, values much the security of the money of the
Church, depending upon the will of the Italian Masonic Parliament, for
the payment of interest.
Now, amongst other necessary Institutions, the Pope had, for several
centuries, in Rome, a well known and most beneficial corporation, endowed
by the piety of the Pontiffs, and of Churchmen and pious laymen of every
rank and nationality in the world. Its funds were destined not for Italy,
but for us, and for the Catholics of every English-speaking land, and
for the maintenance of the Faith and the extension of Christianity and
civilization in all parts of the world, where as yet these blessings
had not penetrated. If any funds could be secured from the grasp of the
Masonic Italian Government, those funds ought. If any fidelity was to
be kept in the observance of the laws which guaranteed the independence
and free exercise of the universal spiritual mission of the Supreme
Pontiff, it should be shown, by respecting scrupulously the funds of
this institution. The very worst of the Italians, on entering Rome,
protested loudly that the guarantees were real, and they pointed out the
inviolable condition of the Propaganda as an instance of how sacredly
these guarantees were regarded. There might be some confusion of ideas
regarding the property of the religious orders in Rome, but regarding the
Propaganda there could not be that confusion. They continued to point it
out for years, to every stranger, as a proof of their fidelity. Victor
Emmanuel, bad enough, in all conscience, respected it. In his lifetime
it could not be touched. That would prove too flagrant a violation, even
for him, of the guarantees given by himself and his Parliament. But the
moment he passed away, the mean, sordid cupidity of the governing sect
in Italy manifested itself, and an attempt was made, almost before the
dead King was cold, to subject the real estate of the Propaganda to that
law of conversion to which the property of every Italian ecclesiastical
corporation was subjected.
Two millions sterling was too much to remain unmolested by the Italian
“Left” in power. It was too much for their weak fidelity to principle.
It meant the sale of desirable lands which those sectaries who made “an
honest penny” somehow, by the change of affairs in the country, wanted
to buy. It meant the addition to the not overstocked exchequer of the
country, of money which Ministers could dispose of as they best knew how.
It meant, finally, a profit to the revenue of thirty per cent. on the
sale—a profit taken by various machinations of the Italian Fiscal laws
for the benefit of the “Department of Finance.” It meant the reduction
of that great Institution to the condition in which the finances of the
smallest Italian Diocesan, or other Chapter, is reduced by the forced
sale of its real estate and the conversion of its money into “vinculated”
Italian Government bonds—bonds that cannot be sold, and may be any day
discarded by the Italian Parliament.
This, in brief, is the condition to which the estates of the Catholic
Propaganda have been reduced by the action of the Italian Government.
It is a veritable spoliation which not only reduces the actual revenue
of the Institution to a great extent, but which imperils the very
existence of the rest of that revenue. Now this confiscation would be
bad enough, if it were only a violation of pledges solemnly made to the
Supreme Pontiff. But it is worse. It is a violation of international
right, and no people in the world are more concerned in the maintenance
of that international right than the Roman Catholic subjects of Her
Majesty Queen Victoria. We are in fact the principal sufferers in this
act of spoliation, for not only are our religious rights, most justly
acquired, interfered with, but the making good of the damage which the
Freemasons of Italy have done the Institution, will practically fall on
our shoulders. The Propaganda for us means the actual exercise of the
authority of the Vicar of Christ in our regard. By means of its funds it
has carried out and borne the whole expense of the care and government
of the Church in our midst for over two hundred years. It has done much
for our ancestors, as we shall see. It has done much more for ourselves.
We cannot do without it, so far as we are concerned, and then neither
can we be, nor are we, insensible to that which it does for others.
For us—for the Catholics of the world—the Propaganda is all that which
the whole circle of richly endowed, zealously advanced “Missionary
Societies,” “Bible Societies,” and “Evangelical Societies,” are for the
Protestant world. Our honour is connected with its maintenance, and we
cannot without a supreme struggle permit it to perish. Nor shall we.
But there is no reason that we should have to do this if our Government
be willing to protect our interest, and if that Government has not taken
any steps to protect us, I am perfectly sure it is because they have
not comprehended the wrong that is done us. In fact, the Propaganda has
discharged its onerous duties so noiselessly by the side of the Vicar
of Christ, that we ourselves came to look upon the beneficent effects,
which we experienced from it, as we look upon the light of the sun or
the air about us. We did not advert to the means which piety had, in the
past, placed at its disposal, and of which we and our fathers received
the fruits. It is the loss which causes us to know, to the full, the
value of the benefit—a benefit, I say, so great, and so much a matter of
course to us, that even we ourselves remained ignorant of the sources
from which it was derived. When, then, even amongst ourselves there is
not a full knowledge of what its history, nature, and the nature of its
resources now endangered, are, how can we expect that our statesmen, who
are not Catholics, can know these things? It is, therefore, to enlighten
them as well as ourselves; to inform, in fact, our fellow-citizens of
every denomination, of the great international wrong done to us, and
thereby awaken true sympathy and co-operation, that I have undertaken the
task of entering, this evening, as fully as the time at my disposal will
permit, into the whole question of the spoliation of the Propaganda—into
the nature and history of that noble institution doomed to perish by
local greed, it is true, but still more by the anti-Christian hate and
policy of those ruthless sectaries whose one aim is to destroy—root
and branch—everything not only that advances, but that even fosters
Christianity in the slightest degree. Their hate is not less for
Protestantism than for Catholicity. Their aim is to eradicate the very
Christian idea from the minds and the hearts of mankind. Now all this we
shall proceed to see by a consideration, first, of the history and nature
of the sacred Institution, and, secondly, by a review of the means taken
to destroy it. From both, to-night, I am sure, all here, will come to the
conclusion that it is a clear duty of our own Government to take some
action for the preservation of the rights of British Catholics, and that
in any case it is a sacred obligation on the part of Catholics in every
land, but especially in countries benefited by its ministrations, not to
let the great work of the Propaganda perish.