Untitled article | AdventAI

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Third-day, January 14, 1868

The Pope as King.

The “Italian question” is neither settled nor likely to be settled for a long time yet. The French army remains at Civita Vecchia, the port of Rome; Tuscany is a camp with an army of fifty thousand Italians; Menabrea and his ministry are denounced and despised; the cities received and buried their dead citizens from the late battle-fields with the most solemn and universal respect; and the party of action feel that they have lost the King, with all the advantage that he was to them. The Pope remains at Rome, virtually guarded by France. But while the feeling of the people is profoundly excited, there seems to be no leader who can wield Italy with sagacity and power. There is all the familiar rhetoric of revolution and reform; but the Papal throne still stands, and while it stands Italy can not “do for herself.”

The difficulty is not simple. It would be so if it were a question of politics merely. In that case nothing could be more preposterous than France summoning a European Congress to settle the Government of Italy. But it is a combined political and religious question. It is a question of the political status of the head of the Roman Church, and the Italian statesmen are traditionally Romanists, while the Italian people are actually so. They are at once ignorant and superstitious, and it is impossible for them to regard the question as political merely. It is, indeed, often so regarded elsewhere. Intelligent journals ask why, in the name of justice, PIUS THE NINTH should be King of Rome if the Romans do not want him as King? But they forget that the King of Rome is the father of the French and Austrian and Spanish and Italian faithful, and that the Governments of all those countries do not wish to alienate the priesthood which directs the faithful, and must, therefore, incline toward the policy which is agreeable to the priests. Now, the priests feel that a certain visible royalty is very essential to the due impression of the supreme Pontiff upon the minds of the faithful; and those minds, therefore, regard a movement against the temporal sovereignty of the Pope as irreligious and wicked.

That there are many enlightened Romanists even among the Italians who believe that a separation of Church and State would be better for both, is very possible. But that is the result of sound political thought and study, and how could they prove it to be the mass of the people against the influence of the priests? The Pope, therefore, remains upon his throne not because his seven hundred thousand subjects wish him to remain, but because Romish Europe is unwilling that he should become in external position what a bishop or archbishop is. And not only is there this ecclesiastical reason for his remaining, but his abdication or removal would be so momentous a step out of the traditional and established order that none of the existing Romish governments wish to take the chance. It would be opening the gates, and what the result may be without who can tell? The proposition which is sometimes gravely made that the question shall be put to a vote of the Roman people is, under the circumstances, very much like a suggestion that the people of the District of Columbia should decide whether the President should continue to reside in Washington, or Congress to make the local laws. These are national not District questions. And with a similar conviction European Romanists feel that the temporal position of the Papacy is not a question for the seven hundred thousand of Romanists in Rome, but for the millions and millions of Romanists all over the world.

Whatever Louis Napoleon’s theory or motive may be, France has lost Italy as an ally. The Francesi are becoming as hated as the Tedeschi were. Louis Napoleon has outraged the party of action, insulted the Government, and attached himself solely to the extreme reactionists; the ultra Tories; the children of the Holy Alliance. In the quarrel between France and Italy, Bismarck remains passive, for he at last appreciates the force of the religious view, and has no wish to precipitate a religious war.—Harper’s Weekly.