A REASON FOR PAPAL SOLICITUDE.
By Editor
The papers and press despatches have reported that the pope is well-nigh prostrated because of the present war with Spain, and that he greatly grieved because of the slaughter of the Spanish soldiers in the battle of Manila. That all this loss of life is a cause of sorrow to every true lover of humanity goes without saying; but we have never noted that the Vatican expressed itself grief-stricken or prostrated over the thousands of pitiful deaths from famine and fever in Cuba, nearly all of whom were presumably Catholic. But a brief sketch of a few years of past history will help our readers to see a great cause of papal solicitude. This sketch is happily furnished in the May number of the Review of Reviews. After referring to the anxiety of the financiers over the war, the Review of Reviews turns to the distribution of the Spanish debt, and says:— “In the early part of the present century, the property of the church in Spain had so accumulated that it might be said almost without exaggeration that the ecclesiastical establishment had absorbed the wealth of the country. Whereas there are now perhaps 35,000 priests and monks in Spain, there were in 1820 not less than 150,000 of these Spanish clergymen, not to mention the thousands of nuns (of these are now only about 15,000). Clericalism has played a very large part in the struggle of dynasties, factions, and parties in Spain throughout the entire century. The success of a particular dynastic faction in 1835 meant the defeat of the clerical party; and this was followed by sweeping confiscatory decrees [by which church property was confiscated to the government], which led to a protracted quarrel between the Vatican and the Spanish Government. This quarrel was kept up for nearly a quarter of a century, and was finally compromised in 1859 by a new concordat between the Spanish Government and the pope, in accordance with which a large amount of church property was sold off, and there was issued to the church several hundred millions of dollars of interest-bearing Spanish bonds. This huge block of securities held by the Roman Catholic Church to-day must of necessity make that ecclesiastical organization especially anxious for the maintenance of Spanish credit. A war with the United States means Spanish bankruptcy almost beyond a peradventure; and it is hard to see how the holdings of Spanish bonds by the Catholic Church could be protected in the general break-up of Madrid finances. The particular plan by which the church came into possession of the chief part of the Spanish internal debt was arranged with the Vatican itself, and it would be strange indeed if the Vatican should not now, in this critical time, have felt very keenly its responsibility for doing everything in its power to protect what it had been able forty years ago to save out of the far greater possessions formerly held by the church in Spain. All this was reasonable enough.” Yes, it was reasonable enough that the pope should desire to save the property, but why not let his solicitude stand on the proper basis? It is reasonable to believe that he will do all he can to secure the church, tho Spain should fall; and it will be a wonder indeed if Spain does fall if pressure is not brought to bear upon the United States Government to secure in some way Spain’s debt to the church. This war means more than a mere civil conflict. It is well to watch events from the prophetic heights of God’s Word.