CONSUMING

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Mar 20, 1879

Though the prophet said of the papacy that they should “take away his dominion, to consume and destroy it unto the end,” Dan. 7: 26, it would hardly seem necessary that every power in Christendom which had ardently supported it, should, to fulfill the prophecy, withdraw its support and leave the papacy to itself. And if all these powers should take this course, every one would say at once that the prophecy was surely and emphatically fulfilled. Well, precisely this is the condition of the papacy to-day with respect to the powers of Europe. There is not one which can really be counted on as a supporter of that power. The following from Harper’s Weekly of March 22, 1879, is a testimony worth marking on this point:—

Are there any longer “Catholic states” in Europe? is a question of moment to the secular as well as the religious world. It has been said in this journal that the Catholic powers are slipping out of the hands of the Chief Pontiff, and the fact is now reluctantly admitted by Church writers. The London Tablet confesses, with regard to France, Austria, Spain, Italy, Bavaria, Belgium, and Portugal, that whatever propriety there may have been in designating them as “Catholic” in former times “has almost entirely disappeared.” The only one of them all in which the government is influenced by the Church is Spain, and even there, says the Tablet, “the Catholicism of the state is superficial and formal; and nothing like a warm support of Catholic interests at home or abroad is to be looked for from those in power.” In France, once called “the eldest daughter of the Church,” five of the present ministers of state are Protestants, and of the remaining four not one “is a practical Catholic.” Since Austria, says this same paper, became a constitutional state, “the government can no longer be said to have any particular religious character.” Portugal, from the days of Pombal, has jealously watched the Church; the same may be said of the policy of Bavaria; and the Belgian liberals have made a successful campaign against Catholic control of the government.

The Tablet takes, therefore, a gloomy view of the prospects of Europe. Whether this apostasy of the Catholic powers “is a precursor of the last days of the world's history” it does not know, but fears that the end is coming. More likely the signs indicate the end of the Church of Rome as a political power, but not necessarily the termination of its energy as a spiritual force.