A Pope to Save Rome

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Sep 13, 1906

A Pope to Save Rome

“If the Roman Church is to be saved from sinking into the depths of degradation and disruption,” says Philip Sidney, F. R. Hist. S., it must be through the election of “an energetic, English-speaking pope, who will endeavor to wrest the government of his church from the thralldom of an Italian Jesuitical clique.”

The herculean task he would lay upon the shoulders of this pope would be as follows: —

He would have to put into execution the long-delayed reforms of over a thousand years. He would have to clear the Vatican of its evil counselors and their malign influences. He would have to inspire confidence in a world which for centuries has had the strongest reasons to distrust papal diplomacy. He would have to clear monasteries and churches of spurious relics. He would have to abolish the final vows taken by monks and nuns. He would have to prevent poor people from being imposed upon by extortionate demands for the payment of sums of money to deliver souls out of the flames of purgatory. He would have to regulate the donation of indulgences. He would have to bury the bull of Pio Nono proclaiming himself infallible. He would have to surrender the last fragment of his temporal power. He would have to make a huge bonfire of the forged decretals and the contradictory bulls. The Inquisition would be abolished, and the Index Expurgatorius no longer published.

Until a pope, such as we have now described, shall sit in Peter’s chair, all schemes so constantly discussed concerning the so-called reunion of Christendom, and reunion with Rome, can never assume any practical form.

Mr. Sidney thinks he can already detect omens favorable to the bringing about of this condition of things. It is not unthinkable that an Englishman should sit in the chair of St. Peter. Neither is it beyond the horizon of the probable that Christendom should one day be united under the headship of a pope; but when Rome divests herself of all that Mr. Sidney has mentioned, she will no longer be Rome. There are signs, many and fast increasing, which indicate the bringing of this world under the influence and leadership of the Roman Church; but we have no warrant for believing that Rome will ever divest herself of any of her essential attributes in accomplishing that end.