Noteworthy Catholic Admissions
By L. A. S.
Has Rome changed? Is the old intolerant Rome of history a thing of the past, and is the Rome of to-day actuated and guided by the liberal spirit of the present age, as most Protestants now seem to believe? The best answer to this question is that which Rome herself gives, since Rome admits, and even boasts, that she has not changed in character during the centuries of her history, but maintains the same principles and claims to-day as of old. Degenerate Protestantism is the source of the idea that Rome has changed, that the Rome which multiplies churches and schools and makes fair speeches in the American republic is not the intolerant Rome which established the Inquisition and sent to torture and death such as dared stand for freedom of conscience in the days of her supremacy. Rome herself, by the testimony of her own spokesmen, frankly declares her enmity toward freedom of conscience and of speech in this twentieth century, the same as in the twelfth, and maintains her old-time claim to be the rightful civil as well as spiritual ruler of the world. Here is the testimony of two such spokesmen on this subject called forth by the present controversy between state and church in France. One of these, Anatole France, a well-known member of the French Academy, says in a Vienna journal, the Neue Freie Presse:— The Roman Church is at once a temporal and a spiritual power. She rests her right to rule the world upon the canonical evangelists, upon the tradition of the primitive church, upon the concession of Constantine, upon the sacred canonical books and the sacred decretals. Whether the Roman Church now possesses a territorial domain or simply dwells in a palace, she is a state. She is a temporal power distinguished from the powers with which she negotiates in that the latter have set boundaries to their sovereignty, whereas the church can recognize no boundaries to her sovereignty without repudiating her origin, changing her nature, without betraying herself and contradicting herself. . . . The very nature of this institution, as the church expounds it to us, invests her with civil and political authority over the whole world. Because she is a spiritual power, she is a temporal power. Because souls should be subject to her, she undertakes to subject bodies to herself. And, in fact, it is difficult to imagine a domination of the spirit without a domination of the flesh. . . . The church makes it her mission to save the world, and to this end she has prescribed certain formulas and customs, has set forth rules of life for the union of the sexes, for food, days of rest, feasts, and education of children, the right to write, speak, and think. To make sure of the carrying out of these rules—which, so far from affecting the purely spiritual domain only, come to a great extent within the police power of the state—the church must exercise a right of control over the government of all nations, and hence must assume a place in the government of all peoples. According to the papal claims, Rome may make treaties with any other power, but is not bound to observe them, since no other power has any right to negotiate with Rome, but only to obey her. On this point this Catholic authority says:— What relationship is possible between Catholic Rome and the modern state? Rome is the good, and the states are the evil. Rome is life and truth; the states are lies and death. How can truth negotiate with falsehoods? how can life conclude pacts with death, a Rome negotiate with the French republic? Here, indeed, we must differentiate. Here we must have the guidance of canon law to estimate the earthly power according to that which it does, and that which it is. If we judge the worldly power by its deeds, it may be found abominable and worthy of condemnation. But if we regard it as a thing in and for itself, it is divine. And Pope Leo XIII admitted in his encyclical of 1892 that the government of M. Carnot was a divine arrangement. Bad princes as well as good ones are invested with divine rights, and Rome can at her pleasure negotiate with the one as with the other. . . . As the church embraces the whole world, she can have, properly speaking, no foreign affairs. Negotiations with the nations are really district affairs. The church certainly negotiates in all good-will with existing powers. She gently endures the severest ordeals. She endures humiliations with humility. She yields to power. She will always have the right to recall concessions wrung from her weakness. She can always say that she, coerced or overpowered, has yielded. Every power that negotiates with her overpowers her and coerces her from the simple fact that it negotiates instead of obeying, that it contends with the robbed queen instead of kissing the dust from her feet. She will always have the right to say that she was not free. She is not free as long as she does not command. The Literary Digest, for whose columns this testimony was translated from the French, quotes also from the official organ of the Vatican, the Osservatore Romano, regarding the papal view of the relations which should subsist between church and state. This official spokesman of the Vatican says:— Separation of the two perfect societies, constituted such by God, is a monstrosity, and to this monstrosity the church can not adjust herself in Catholic states, and has to combat it. But has not the Catholic Church become a liberal church? On this point the Vatican organ says:— Freedom of the press is an error condemnable and condemned. It is contrary to sense in philosophy, and in theology a monstrosity, in the same manner as freedom of worship and of conscience and of thought. But while the Catholic Church condemns freedom of conscience, of speech, and of thought, she tolerates it, as a matter of policy. The “maxim of toleration of freedom of the press, of worship, and of conscience on the part of the church,” is “acceptable,” says this authority; but “toleration is one thing, approval is another.” Following this statement, the Osservatore Romano defines just what is meant by Catholics when they say that their church favors freedom of speech and of the press. Very often is this assertion heard in the speeches of Catholic orators in this country, and read in the Catholic press. This is what they mean, if Rome’s highest official organ speaks the truth:— Certainly, if you say simply: “Is freedom of the press, of worship, and of conscience admitted philosophically and theologically?” you will not find any Catholic who is at all cultivated who will reply to you, or who can reply to you, affirmatively. But if, instead, you put the question: “By hypothesis, is it possible to admit toleration of freedom of the press, of worship, and of conscience?” you will not find any cultivated Catholic who can reply to you, or who will reply to you, negatively. Such is the character of Rome to-day, by her own showing, and she seems not averse to a bold statement of the truth.