News and Miscellany

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Dec 11, 1866

News and Miscellany.

Can ye not discern the signs of the times? Matt. xvi, 3.

Last Days of the Temporal Power.

ACCORDING to the convention concluded two years ago between the Emperor of France and the King of Italy, the French troops must evacuate the States of the Church on the 11th of December. The Italian Government re-iterates its design, immediately after the withdrawal of the French troops, to occupy the Papal frontier and rigidly prevent any of its subjects from crossing into the States of the Church for the purpose of aiding in insurrectionary movements. It will leave the solution of the Roman question altogether in the hands of the Roman people. What this solution will be is no longer doubtful. The unprecedented unanimity and enthusiasm with which the people of Venetia have just voted in favor of their annexation to Italy, foreshadows the fate of Rome and of the remainder of the Papal territory. The national aspirations in Italy are a torrent, which, with irresistible force, sweep away all obstacles. As in Venetia republicans and ultramontanes sacrificed their party predilections by voting, the one for a constitutional king, and the other for an excommunicated prince, thus it will be in Rome, notwithstanding the threat of excommunication against all who may take a direct or indirect part in the overthrow of the Papal power. The legion of foreign mercenaries which the Papal Government has enlisted will avail no more against the people of Rome, than they did a few years ago against the Italian troops.

Public opinion everywhere is almost unanimous in regarding the downfall of the temporal power as immediately imminent. The battle which the Papacy has so long waged against the steady advance of modern civilization is fully decided. It is characteristic of the blindness and obstinacy of the Popes, that Pius IX. even now persists in his hostility to his native country. Instead of conciliating public opinion in Italy, which, in spite of all threats of excommunication, insists upon the abolition of the temporal power, while it is still far from denying the authority of the Church of Rome in matters purely religious, the Pope finds only words of severe censure and unconditional condemnation for this great unity movement to which all Italians are so firmly attached. He has issued another allocution on the relation of the Italian Government to the Papacy, which is a match for the notorious bull against modern civilization. We again meet in it with the old complaint that the State passes laws on education and on marriage, affairs over which the Church of Rome claims absolute control to the exclusion of all State legislation. The allocution studiously avoids a recognition of the Kingdom of Italy, and gives to the Government of Italy the name of “Subalpine Government.” It is especially severe on “those frenzied voices” which declare that, “the city of Rome must share in the unhappy Italian perturbation and rebellion—nay, become its capital.” The Church, it says, will never be overpowered, but one particular nation, like Italy, may lose the true faith. In conclusion it adjures the sovereigns to prevent, with all their strength, “the torch of faith from being extinguished from among them.”

The comment of the Italian press on the Papal allocution again shows that its only effect has been to exhibit the utter want of influence of Papal manifestos over the Italian mind. The longer the course now pursued by the Pope shall be persisted in, the wider the breach between the Italian people and the Church of Rome must necessarily become. The mass of the people naturally cling to the hereditary religion of the country; and a patriotic attitude of the clergy, like that observed at the plebiscite in Venetia, might at any time lead to a revival of the Roman Catholic sentiments of the people; but the Papal anathemas hurled against what is so dear to every Italian, shakes the entire Papal authority.

It appears probable that, in the case of the annexation of Rome to Italy, Pius IX. will leave the city, and take up his abode elsewhere, perhaps in Malta. This change of residence cannot fail, however, to be most injurious to the interest of the Roman Church, and cannot, therefore, last long. Though the Roman Catholic Governments of Europe may combine to obtain for the Pope as great an independence of the Italian Government as possible in the administration of church affairs, virtually the Pope will soon be a subject of the King of Italy. This change in the external relations of the Papacy will do more than anything that has occurred for many centuries to break the influence of the Church upon modern society. Roman Catholicism will soon become what it is in the United States—a merely religious association, without political prerogatives, and it will have to dispute the progress of Protestantism in the Roman Catholic countries by merely ecclesiastical weapons. These weapons, we dare say, will not do as good service in Spain, Italy, and other countries, as the Inquisition and the Secular Arm.—The Methodist.