Abbildungen der Seite
PDF
EPUB

"I have good ground for thinking that he had not only devised a healing policy, but had even prepared to publish it to the Catholic world in his first encyclical letter issued on his attaining the Pontificate; but that happy and holy inspiration, which would have pacified Italy, and given a new and fruitful direction for her religious life, was suffocated and rendered barren by the causes above sketched. The obscure councillors to whose judgment deference was shown remain unknown, and are not called upon in the least to answer before the world for a course of action for which the man who least desired it is regarded as accountable.

"A worthy and reliable ecclesiastic tells me, that the director of one of the principal Catholic journals in Upper Italy, coming at that time from Naples to Rome, declared that he had read in the rough copy that encyclical letter (in Rome it was also read by some Prelate), which was to have been published on the following Saturday (it was then Tuesday), and he appeared greatly alarmed at it, uncertain whether he ought to suspend the publication of his own journal, or simply to change his front.

"Meanwhile that Saturday passed without the publication of the expected encyclical letter; three or four other Saturdays passed, and after about a month there appeared an encyclic of a totally different character, which every one read-not unworthy, indeed, of a successor of Leo the Great or Gregory the Great, but in this particular vague, hollow, and pointless, leaving matters as they were, except that it infused into them a disdainful virulence.

"It was afterwards known that that first letter had been set aside by the nearly unanimous dissent of the Cardinals, and by the dislike shown to it by most of the Prelates and by the Court. If Leo XIII, had found established a different Catholic opinion, less noisy, but more wise and moderate, there is no doubt that in that he would have sought the basis of his operations; as it did not exist, one would almost say that he was waiting for its appearance during those long months when the measured wisdom of his public acts was so much admired. But by the prudence of some-not a godly prudence, but a fear for their own interests-some whose duty it was to deal openly, yet who went about whispering together, and mumbling in twos and threes at the corners of streets; and by the bold arrogance of noisy opinion, which flung itself upon its opponents with relentless wrath-by these mean and unprincipled artifices the Pontiff was driven to regard Catholic opinion as essentially one and

the same, when it was only made to appear to be so by means of unworthy stratagems. Then he deemed it convenient to bend somewhat more before this supposed Catholic opinion in his speaking; and hence sprang the abrupt change which he has exhibited in some of his later acts, in which the reader will-I do not say encounter, but will, I am certain, be obliged, even against his will, to call to mind his predecessor.

...

"When they had succeeded in making him believe that the opinion of the zealots was the universal opinion, or nearly so, of Italian Catholics, Leo XIII. naturally feared that some grave scandal would arise if he made a declaration on refraining from taking part in politics, in the only sense possible according to the dictates of reason and of the Gospel. To brand citizens as guilty of deadly sin for sharing in the public life of their own country, would be such an enormity as could never gain the approval of any conscience, sacerdotal or Christian, and I undertake to say no pope will ever do it. On the other hand, to declare that there was no harm in taking part in politics, and, still worse, to exhort people to take their parts in them, would arouse the contempt and fury of the zealots, who would fill the world with their complaints and reproaches, accusing the Vicar of Christ of having made a bargain with the Revolution, and having betrayed the Holy Church. Amongst other follies brought into fashion on this subject some years since, this was one, that the Pontifical office belonged strictly to all and each of the Catholics, so that the Pope would have been merely its guardian pro tempore, under the supervision of two hundred millions of men, exercised, it will be understood, by the Catholic Press. And this degraded press takes to itself the right of directing men to the way in which to restore the Pontifical estate-and woe! if he does not abide by their injunctions! Wonderful independence, indeed, thus doled out to the Head of the Church! Whenever the ideas of the Catholic journalists are set aside, though they know their own insignificance, and understand that any agitation on their part would only be as a storm in a tea-cup, yet they threaten schisms, heresies, nay, the very end of the world, as the consequences of so horrible a step.

"The Nestor of the Ultramontane journalists in France, in the first months of Leo XIII. thus expressed himself: 'It is said that the new Pontiff, on the subject of the Temporal Power, and of questions connected with it, will enter upon a different path from that trodden

by Pius IX. We do not believe it; but whenever such a thing should occur, we should take care of the interests of the Church.' WE! That is to say, laymen, Frenchmen, and journalists!

"I heard about a month ago that poor Louis Veuillot had become childish, and I was grieved to hear it; but I believe the misfortune must have befallen him at the latest the day before he allowed such nonsense as that to fall from his pen. In 1849 I knew him intimately in Paris. I regard him as a good Catholic, and a surpassingly brilliant writer and journalist; but I always considered him to be as deficient in sacred knowledge as I am in astrology. Still, if he were in possession of his senses when he penned that folly, we should pity him on account of his past services, and not disbelieve his sincerity. However, with those dangers and threats before him, it is no wonder if the Pontiff thought it well not to open his mind on a question which it is not absolutely necessary for him to solve; nor did he open it on the 24th April, when he did but leave in force the direction given by the late Pontiff. Certainly, as matters stand, to refrain from saying "It is lawful to vote," would seem almost to amount to saying "It is unlawful;" and yet the zealots, doing their utmost to prevent him from speaking, persist all the while in provoking him to speak. They do it in order that his silence may gain more and more the semblance of a prohibition. But this does not alter the real value of his act, which is no more than the non-utterance of his opinion on a subject on which he is not bound to speak, and that for reasons which he regards as of the utmost moment."-Chap. v., sects. 5, 6.

R

[ocr errors]

LEO XIII AND ROSMINI.

OSMINI was one of the best philosophical writers that Italy has produced. He was in great favour with Pius IX. But a change came, and as the Jesuits gained power he was looked on with suspicion. His celebrated work on the "Five Wounds of the Church was put in the Index in 1849, when his opponents had already been working nine years to get his works prohibited. They have been repeatedly examined in Rome, and in 1854 the Congregation of the Index, with the Pope's assent, came to the conclusion, "Dimittantur opera Antonii Rosmini," a formula which was then

From the Deutscher Merkur.

declared, and has always been held to mean, that they contained nothing deserving of censure. The Jesuits, however, continued to attack him and to declare him to be a heretic, till, in 1876, Padre Gatti, Master of the Sacred Palace, published a declaration in the Osservatore Romano, forbidding his works to be found fault with, and commanding silence on the subject.

This appeared like a complete victory for Rosmini, and an entire overthrow of the Jesuits. But they had no intention of laying down their arms. They wrote pamphlets. The Bishop of Pavia, now Cardinal Archbishop of Bologna, interceded in behalf of the Osservatore, and at length in June, 1880, obtained from the Congregation of the Index the explanation that the word "Dimittantur" signified not that the works were found free from fault, but only that they were not prohibited. This explanation was approved of by

Leo XIII.

This authentic explanation does not explain much, but it is enough for the Jesuits. The Civiltà and the Unità Cattolica say that the meaning of the word “Dimittantur" was once doubtful, but is so no longer. "Roma locuta est." The Pope himself has approved of the explanation. "Lis finita est." They are now free to declare Rosmini a heretic if they will. Leo has not the personal regard for Rosmini that Pius had, and he is a devoted admirer of S. Thomas Aquinas the Jesuits are already beginning to represent Rosmini's philosophy as the antipodes of that of Aquinas, and it is easy to imagine what will be the probable result.

FIVE LETTERS.

I. Letter from Rome.

THE HE grand canonization of four saints came off yesterday, and if I can get hold of a decent account I will send it to you; but the papers cast ridicule upon the whole thing, and the journalists mix up the Almighty and our holy faith with this "manufacture of saints," as they call it, so as to make reading such accounts quite painful. Two Sundays ago a Roman Catholic priest abjured the Roman Church in Dr. Nevin's church. Dr. Nevin read his recantation, while the poor man stood up alone in the chancel. In these days, when religion is so often mere profession or fashion, it does one good to see men who are so in earnest, and have the moral courage to come out from their brethren, bearing not only the anger of their superiors, but what must be worse almost to bear, the coldness, if not the wrath, of relations and old friends-breaking up every tie of their old lives; and it gives one hopes that we may live to see a Reformed Church of Italy, and earnest work begun amongst a

people who have so long been left in error and superstition. The more you know Italians the more interest you must feel in a people who have struggled through such great odds to liberty, and are now struggling for light and truth. And you must live amongst them to know the harm that the Roman Church has done them, through the immorality of the priests and the superstitions and additions to the doctrine of the true Church, which have ended by choking the truth, covering it over until it is difficult to those who have never been taught to distinguish the false from the true; and has not only been a stumbling-block, but actually alienated educated and thinking men from the Church, till not knowing what to believe in, they, alas! believe in nothing at all. The great difficulty also is, Where are they to worship-who is to teach them? But these frequent abjurations will, we hope, lead to a real reform, and be the germ, please God, of an Italian Church.

There is a great opening, and a good work might be done by any earnest clergyman, whose delicate chest compelling him to seek a warmer climate, and give up parochial work for a time, and having means sufficient to enable him to live quietly here, would come and study the Italian language; study it, as a missionary studies, with a view to knowing the language thoroughly, and then should, with the help of the thorough knowledge, which of course he would gain by practice, lay himself out to make the acquaintance of the priests who are seeking for the truth, explaining to them what the doctrine of the Church of England really is. They are most extraordinarily ignorant on this score, being taught there is no real difference between us and any class of dissenters, and in turn teaching the people that we are not even Christians. But to do any real and lasting good this clergyman should live amongst Italians, learn to look at things from their way of thinking; thus enter into their difficulties, and not get information secondhand, nor be swayed by already formed opinion; because party-spirit and jealousies so colour the opinions of even the best, that often unintentional harm is done. My idea is, for educated men like Enrico di Campello to have our doctrine explained to them; but he, and men like him, require to be treated with tact and courtesy, and have their nationality and their difficulties respected. In this way a man apparently cut off from useful work, obliged to abandon his parish and give up preaching even, might serve God's Church nobly, first by quiet study and then by judicious quiet teaching; and I think it would be a glorious mission to be the instrument to bring light to these poor souls, and a help in advancing the cause of God's Church in Italy The work must be disinterested, and entirely amongst

Italians.

December 9, 1881.

II. Letter from Lombardy.

DID you read the Pope's discourse on the 16th of October at Rome? Truly I cannot understand how it is that ordinary common sense does not show the Pope that the unreasoning attacks which, after his predecessor's example, he makes on Italy, must end in his leaving the Vatican and his native country. It is like a delusion sent upon him for his ruin. This undignified anger offends not only religious people, but indifferents and politicians. Being addressed also to a crowd of ignorant pilgrims (3000), blindly led by a few zealots, it is the more dangerous. It is evident that Leo XIII. has yielded to the influences round him, and is being carried down the stream. He appears ready to stir up all the

« ZurückWeiter »