WORK OF THE PROPAGANDA.

At the very first meeting of the Cardinals, held by order of Gregory

XV., to settle upon the means of forming the Sacred Congregation of the

Propaganda, it was resolved that the heads of all the religious orders

should be written to for statistics relative to the state of the missions

confided to their subjects in every part of the world. It was further

resolved that the papers of the Provisional Congregation called together

by Gregory XIII. should be obtained from the Bishop-Secretary. These two

acts established the identity of the Sacred Congregation with the vast

work carried on by the Roman Pontiffs for the spread of the Faith in

preceding ages, and especially with the work of those Cardinals called

in to assist Gregory XIII. The new Congregation set instantly to work at

the immense amount of labour placed upon its members. Its responsibility

was very great. It had to look to the East and to the West. The Church

in the lands once Catholic, now committed to its keeping, was everywhere

in ruins. Four-fifths of the population of the earth wandered still

“in darkness and in the shadow of death” outside the narrow boundaries

of Christendom. The interior of Africa remained a closed book to the

European, and within it millions groaned in slavery under rulers who

deemed it a sacred duty to offer human victims in thousands annually to

idols. Budha and Vishnu held half the human race captive. Savage hordes

wandered over the steppes of Asia, through the forests of America,

and peopled the innumerable islands of the Pacific with races almost

as destitute of the knowledge “of a God in this world” as the lower

animals upon which they subsisted. Where a semi-civilization created

caste-prejudice, as in India, or refined materialism, as in China,

mankind in its masses descended into depths of degradation still lower

and more worthy of commiseration than the wild tribes in savage life.

There was no mercy. The weak “went to the wall.” Little children were

slaughtered without pity, the poor were regarded as the accursed of

God, and the helpless were trampled upon without hesitation or remorse.

Islam had extended its ravages over the fair Christian States which once

extended from the Pillars of Hercules to the Red Sea, and from thence

through Syria to the waters of the Bosphorus. It was supreme in Persia,

and spread its Crescent over all the lands from the crests of the ranges

of Thibet to the Chersonesus. It had fixed its seat in the city of

Constantine, and its sway was undisputed throughout the Balkan Peninsula,

and in the Isles of Greece and of the Levant.

One of the first duties of the new Sacred Congregation was to look after

those Christian peoples who yet retained any vestige of Christianity

in the nations subjected by Islam. They had become timid and abject

slaves under the persecuting lash of their masters. It was difficult for

missionaries to reach them at all, and then there was another difficulty

to be met with before Catholic missionaries could minister to them.

The Orientals were generally schismatics of various rites and nations,

imbued with a fanatical hatred for the Church from which their fathers

had seceded. Great zeal was therefore needed amongst these sects. The

Missionaries of the Propaganda had to make their converts either from

Islam, which punished what it called apostasy, with terrible severity,

or from Christians made vile by ignorance and slavery in the lands of

their ruthless conquerors. Yet the grace of God prevailed to a wonderful

extent, and innumerable souls were reconciled and became Catholic.

The Armenians, the Maronites, the Melchites, the Copts, the Nestorians

themselves, sometimes abandoned in a body, their errors and schisms, or

individually passed over to communion with the Holy See. In consequence,

to-day, we have a Roman Catholic Archbishop in Athens, another at

Naxos; and Catholic Bishops, Priests and flocks at Skio, Pinos, Andros,

Santoria and Lyra, and other places in schismatical modern Greece. In

the Turkish Empire in Europe and Asia, there are no less than sixty-six

dioceses of various grades at present, not including those in formation,

which amount to thirteen, under Vicars or Prefects Apostolic. The great

Christian Community of the Armenians have also, by the constant care

of the Propaganda, been kept in large measure from schism, and in the

graces which spring from union with the Church. Incredible pains have

been taken for the spread of the Faith in Egypt, Nubia, and the old

Christian State of Abyssinia. Apostolic prefectures have been established

in the remotest regions of Africa; and the spread of French and other

European influences in Algeria and Tunis promises to renew the Faith of

the great St. Augustine in the once fertile Christian Provinces which

he enlightened by word and pen when he ruled the famous See of Hippo.

A special congregation of Cardinals under the Cardinal Prefect devote

themselves to the numerous, difficult, and important questions which

arise from this department of the work of the Propaganda. Under it are

also two flourishing Colleges—one for the Greeks, and the other for

the Armenians—which latter was founded by Leo XIII. under the able and

zealous presidency of the late Cardinal Hassan.

Further to the East, the Sacred Congregation directed during the period

which has passed from the opening efforts of St. Francis Xavier in India

and Japan, to our own days, the missionary enterprise of the Church.

Under its care, Jesuits, Dominicans, and Franciscans penetrated to China,

and worked the wonders we read of during the long reign of Kang-he, and

later on of Keen-lung. Innumerable and bloody were the persecutions

its Missionaries had to suffer there, as well as in Corea, Thibet,

Cochin-China, and other nations bordering upon the Celestial Empire. The

Propaganda, besides, looked with ceaseless solicitude upon the changing

fortunes of the missions in India, and nourished them amidst the wars and

diplomatic arrangements which transferred power from Portugal and France

to Great Britain, or to her East India Company of traders. In America

it never ceased to follow the tracks of the red man in his forests, and

those of the poor negro in his slavery. The history of Indian tribes

from Canada to Patagonia, is the history of its Missionaries, of their

labours, travels, and martyrdom. It sent with equal zeal its Apostolic

men to the islands of the Southern Seas, as these became known by the

exertions of successive explorers. And in those vast regions, where

barbarous or uncivilized man yet walks in the darkness of paganism and

idolatory, it never ceased its exertions until now its bishops may be

numbered by the hundred, its priests by the thousand, and its converts

by millions. In all, it spread the knowledge of Christ; and orphanages,

hospitals, schools, and other pious institutions, conducted by Catholic

brotherhoods and sisterhoods of various forms, now give to the pagan a

knowledge of the earnest zeal and devotion of genuine Christianity.

But interesting, as this account is, of its labours—how easy and pleasing

it would be to prolong the record if time permitted!—it is not more

interesting than that of the work done by the Sacred Congregation for the

salvation of the nations which lapsed into heresy at the period of the

Reformation, and for the Faith in this country, and in every land that

speaks our language.

If the Faith has again penetrated into Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Iceland,

and those Northern regions whence it was long banished by a vigilant and

persecuting heresy, it is owing entirely to the zeal of the Propaganda;

and we have only to recall the history of the Church in England, Ireland,

and Scotland, to know how sleepless was its care of our fathers exposed

to such long-continued persecution in the three kingdoms. Up to 1700,

the law of the land prohibited a Catholic priest to put his foot into

Scotland. Yet the few Scotch Catholic clans of the Highlands and the

still more scattered Catholic families of the Lowlands, were never

wholly without the ministrations of religion or the means of a Christian

education. We have only to look at the annals of these dreary but sadly

interesting times, to know that it was the care and the funds of the

Sacred Congregation that kept both priest and schoolmaster in this

country and so kept the Faith alive and in progress, until at length

it needed a Superior over the missions, and at last, a Bishop, to take

charge of the gradually increasing flock. The increase consequent upon

the influx of Irish immigrants who swelled the Church to the proportions

of greatness, continued to occupy the zealous attention of the

Propaganda, until at length the moment came when our present Holy Father

was enabled to restore to the land evangelized by Columba and Aidan, its

ancient Hierarchy.

Ireland occupied so distinct a portion of the care of Propaganda,

that I have been frequently led to think the Sacred Congregation was

chiefly, if not entirely, occupied with her concerns. And Ireland indeed

deserved it all, for she has proved to be amongst all nations, far the

most faithful daughter of the Holy See. Since the days of the terrible

peace which followed the long struggle of Hugh O’Neill and O’Donnell for

her freedom, and her ancient Faith, the Propaganda applied its whole

energies to cure the woes of the Catholics of the country, to minister

to them and preserve their Faith. Not only during the brief interval of

national triumph secured by the Confederation of Kilkenny, when enormous

assistance was given to Ireland through the Legate, Cardinal Rinuccini,

but before and after that transient gleam of sunshine on the Church

in Ireland, the assistance given to the country by the Propaganda was

ceaseless. It took care that in Rome and out of Rome, in many Colleges

and Convents, her Clergy should be educated gratuitously. It gave large

and well sustained grants for education, the nature of which has been

shown by my own Archbishop, who was himself at one time Professor of

Hebrew at the Urban College, and had access to authentic documents

proving that point, which, as an Irishman, so much interested him.[25]

His uncle, Cardinal Cullen, who besides being for many years Rector of

the Irish College in Rome, was also for a period Rector of the Urban

College of the Propaganda, has more than once evidenced the same. The

Propaganda, besides, found funds for the support as well as for the

education of the Clergy. And Ireland, I believe, is the only country

which, having Colleges of her own, both in Rome and in other countries,

obtained a right to a certain number of students in the Urban College.

Of this number, at various seasons, were many of the most distinguished

ecclesiastics of the Irish Church. Cardinal Cullen was a Propagandist,

and so was the late Delegate Apostolic to Canada, of whom the Irish

Church and Rome herself had such high hopes, Monsignor George Conroy,

Bishop of Ardagh and Clonmacnois.

In England, the history of its Church since the death of Elizabeth, is

inseparably bound up with the Propaganda. The unwearied care which it

bestowed upon that Church rendered so desolate by the action of the

rulers—not, we must always remember, of the people—surrounding Elizabeth

and James, is worthy of all attention. It never ceased that care from the

appointment of the first single Bishop till it saw the ordinary Hierarchy

of the country restored to something like its pristine glory. I need

not say, that with the same care it followed the children of Ireland,

who went forth to found the Churches of the United States, of British

Canada, of Australia, and the other dependencies of Great Britain. Even

at the present moment the Church in those regions, is not only equal to

what she had been in the foremost Catholic States of Europe, but the

wonderful zeal, energy, and generosity of her children, compensate for

what Catholicity loses in older States, through the action of the Infidel

Revolution.

But besides the continued works of zeal which the Propaganda has never

ceased to foster since its foundation, there is another work which it

carries on just as ceaselessly. The Church needs not only to be founded,

but when founded in any locality or nation, it has to be administered and

cared for. This forms no small portion of the labour of the Propaganda.

The zeal of its missionaries in many lands, the providential increase

of the faithful in others, the self-arising return in response to the

invitation and grace of God, in the cases of individuals everywhere

within the borders of its jurisdiction, has rendered its work in our

own days far beyond what it was at the commencement, or for many years

afterwards. If we only consider the one duty of selecting the Bishops for

the various dioceses in these Islands, in Canada, the United States, and

Australia, we may form some idea of this work. We know how frequently

priests and people are much exercised with ourselves regarding these

appointments. Conflicting interests get at work. Public and private

affairs are effected. Interminable correspondence arises, for grave

issues are at stake. All this work must be settled by the Propaganda

before it is presented for final solution to the Vicar of Christ, with

whom of course rests the ultimate responsibility. Now, peoples of

whose affairs we know absolutely nothing, have interests as dear to

them, to be solved in the same way by the Propaganda. The Sees which

concern them spread from the rising to the setting of the Sun. Then

come questions affecting religious orders, in general and in detail.

Everywhere there are important interests to be settled or conciliated;

for it is wonderful how pious people can see the glory of God and the

good of souls in directions so very opposite one to the other; and the

more sincere and holy the parties on either side are, the more sure are

they to be obstinate, for reasons of the most conscientious kind. If the

Propaganda was not there with the patience and experience it possesses,

and with the power of the Supreme Pontiff at its back, there would be no

settlement for such disputes as sometimes arise between the most sincere,

devoted, and best intentioned people in the world. For what else but

an authority that cannot be disputed could settle issues between people

obstinate for conscience sake, and only too happy to endure martyrdom

for conviction. Such people in our midst, who are not Catholics, break

up the little section of Protestantism to which they belong into still

smaller fragments, whenever they happen to be much exercised by opposite

religious views; and hence we see over one church door the “Free Kirk,”

and over another “Kirk of Scotland.” Indeed a certain good soul who

became very solicitous for my own salvation invited me in a passenger

car to join the Church of Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, established

in a suburb of London, in the year of Grace 1884. “Annual subscription

£1, to be paid quarterly in advance.” As I already belonged to a Church

of that title established in an upper room in Jerusalem in the year of

Grace 33, I declined the invitation. It was, I suppose, a miniature “Free

Kirk” which differed and broke off from some other, there being no one

to settle the difference. But all differences in the Catholic Church are

settled by an authority from which there is no appeal, and that authority

is exercised for four-fifths of this world, materially speaking, by

the Sacred Congregation of the Propaganda, with a patience, skill, and

knowledge which no words of mine could adequately express.

And here you will permit me to quote what I wrote on this subject upon

another occasion on the Propaganda:—

Over the minutest as well as the gravest concerns of the

immense expanse of its jurisdiction, the Propaganda has

always watched with a sleepless vigilance. Sustaining, with

an instinct and a power that must be surely largely infused

by the Holy Ghost, the divine principle of authority, it has

never been blind to the slightest manifestation of its abuse.

The humblest missionary, the humblest child wronged any where

in the vast extent of its care, is certain to receive from

its officials a just and a paternal hearing, and, if wronged,

is certain of redress. There is not, and there never was on

this earth, a tribunal more just, more patient, more kind to

all committed to its keeping. Then, too, it watches over the

interest of souls with constant assiduity. The most difficult

questions are daily submitted to its judgment, and find

invariably a solution which cannot be given except where the

Vicar of Christ reigns and rules.