WINNING THE “RESPECT” OF A “LIBERALIZING WORLD.”
By G.
Well may we ask of the acknowledged leaders of church thought in these days, “How is it that ye do not discern the signs of the times?” The men of whom Christ asked this pointed question could “discern the face of the sky and of the earth”—scientific propositions—but the trend of spiritual things were not discernible to them. Altho they made great spiritual profession, the Lord called them “hypocrites.” See Luke 12:54-57. One of the most striking evidences of a lack of discernment that has come to our notice is the following comment of the Interior, a leading Presbyterian organ:— Leo XIII has won the respect of a constantly liberalizing world by a liberalism of his own, utterly unwonted in the pontifical palace. To be sure, he has wrought no revolution in his granitic and immobile church, but the marvel is not that so little sign, but that so great sign of his progressive instincts can be discerned through an almost solid surrounding wall of Jesuitic Cardinals, pledged by both interest and prejudice against any reform of ancient dogma or relaxation of ancient prerogative. Where the very constitution of the Roman See has heretofore made it the constant apologist of autocratic civil government, Leo has approved popular rule in both America and France. In the latter country he has actually restrained an angry army of friars from making open rebellion against the republic. He has virtually conceded the principle of separate Church and State by congratulating the Catholics of the Philippines on the freedom into which they have come by the accession of the United States to sovereignty there. In terms that no previous pontiff would have used, he has recognized the essential Christianity of Protestants by referring to them as “separated brethren.” Reversing the trend of centuries of ecclesiasticism, he has sanctioned a society formed to distribute the Bible among the common people of Italy in “the vulgar tongue.” He has countenanced scholarship and science as no pope before him ever did, and has assiduously sought to make his church responsive to the developing social consciousness of the times, where the example of all the popish line would have taught him to resist the movement to the last. Verily, “blindness in part is happened” to the editor of the Interior, or he would be able to discern the force of his own presentation. The very fact that “no revolution in his granitic and immobile church” has been wrought by Leo XIII, but that it is in harmony with all his apparent liberalism while remaining “immobile,” ought to convince any one with even ordinary discernment that no change in Rome’s character or policy is designed by the pope. He is laboring persistently, and consistently with all Roman Catholic precedent, to build up the church, whose boast is that it “never changes.” Leo XIII is not only surrounded by a “wall of Jesuitic cardinals,” but he is himself, in principle, a Jesuit of the Jesuits. Intolerance and inflexibility of purpose is not the only, or even the leading, feature of Jesuitism; the most effective weapon of that element—the leading element in the church—is “cunning,” of which Leo XIII is the personification. He is the first pope who ever thought it possible to utilize a nominal republic to the same extent that he could manipulate a monarchy. Of course it is a longer process, for the reason that the government can not be reached directly through intrigue with the administration as in the case of a monarchy; it must be done through inculcating the people with a spirit of compromise. And this can be done only through an appearance of liberality and an apparent leaning to republican principles. Leo was quick to discern that it was better policy to utilize a republic than to have its opposition, and he has worked on that policy. His policy has been to tacitly indorse, in political or social policy, but not in religious principle, that which he can not overcome directly. He never yields a religious point, however; make a note of that. He put his blessing on the cause of Spain in the Cuban war, but when Spain failed, the pope simply strengthened his profession of friendship for the United States. He has in marked degree the faculty of conceding what he can not retain, and makes the concession with a grace that leads people to infer that he does so from choice. While apparently conceding the separation of Church and State in the Philippines, he gained a point for which he has long been playing, a point that is of more value to Rome’s ambition than all the concessions that he has made to republicanism. He inveigled the government of the United States into direct dealings with the Vatican—the governor of the Philippines being sent as the representative of the United States into the very halls of the Vatican, to deal diplomatically with the pope. While he has used “terms that no previous pontiff would have used” in recognizing the “essential Christianity of Protestants,” he has gained more than a hundredfold in Protestant recognition of Roman Catholic Christianity. While he has encouraged education in the United States, it is because he has been obliged to do so in order to gain and maintain the prestige of Roman Catholicism in an enlightened country, whose people have to be won over from Protestantism to sympathy with and eventual support of Rome. But note, All the education that Rome encourages in the United States is under the auspices of Roman teachers. So also, the encouragement of Bible distribution in Italy; it has been forced upon the Roman Church by the encroachments of Protestant colporters distributing the Scriptures in modern translation. Leo is cunning enough to keep up with the times, and thus to make the world believe that Rome is leading in liberality, while she is really saying to the Protestant fly, “Come into my parlor.” And the “foolish little fly” is buzzing about the door displaying a wonderful admiration. G.