CHRISTIAN DEMOCRACY

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jan 29, 1901

“CHRISTIAN DEMOCRACY”

In connection with the Vatican there is one who signs himself “Innominato,” who is the regular correspondent of the New York Sun. By his connection with the Vatican, what this correspondent writes is as nearly official as could easily be without being actually so.

In the Sun of December 30 is a letter from “Innominato,” under the heading of “Christian Democracy.” He says that the pope will soon issue an encyclical on the subject of “Christian Democracy.” It seems that this encyclical has already been prepared, for the letter says that “the encyclical was announced for September 30,” last; and that “the encyclical was about to crown and sanction the labors of the International Congress of the Third Order when unexpected resistance was discovered. The announcement was made that very powerful pressure was being used to put off the promised document sine die.” And the letter says that “some persons who should know think that they can assert that the German Episcopacy demanded officially the withdrawal of the encyclical.” And this because, “as is well known, an intimate alliance is being formed between the bishops and the kaiser. The emperor promises all sorts of benevolences provided the Church in Germany will place its forces at the disposal of the Weltpolitik [world-politics], in the expectation of the establishment of the empire of the West, that brilliant phantasm of the imperial fancy.” And “by every means he is endeavoring to enlist on his side the great universal movement which is carrying Catholicism, under the direction of the pope, into social peace, order, justice, and fraternity.”

Yet though the encyclical has thus been held up, it is said that it “will be promulgated soon.”

From the letter, and, indeed, from the title of the announced encyclical, it seems plain that what the pope is going to write upon as “Christian Democracy” is exactly what is especially carried on by Protestants in the United States, under the name of “Christian citizenship,” and which the Protestant and Catholic scheme of Church federation is but a means of making effective.

And even this “Christian democracy” idea of the pope finds its impulse in the United States. The letter says that the meeting at which the encyclical was to be promulgated September 30, was arranged with a certain “Cardinal Vives y Tuto, M. Léon Harmel, and the generals of the Sons of St. Francis, in order to make it the starting point for a great social action.” This Cardinal Vives y Tuto, the letter says, is “the youngest member of the Sacred College.” He was formerly a monk in Guatemala, whence he “was obliged to flee from persecution;” and in his flight “he took refuge in the United States, where he came into contact with the exuberant American democracy.” He has also “a fervent admiration for the program of regeneration of Leo XIII, with the object of bringing together the Church and the people.” “Settling down in Rome, for long years he placed his soul and his knowledge at the service of the papacy and its central ideas.” And now “he is one of the main working levers of the papacy. Whenever the pope and Cardinal Rampolla have to carry out a delicate affair, they entrust it to Cardinal Vives.”

Thus the influence of the United States is being exerted not only in the United States itself, not only in the United States and Japan, but in the United States, in Japan, and in the papacy itself, and thus around the world. And thus it is beginning plainly to appear, even upon the surface of things, that that other Beast of Revelation 13, which came up out of the earth, and which is to exercise all the power of the first Beast, in his sight, is already exercising some of the power of that first Beast, in his sight.

These are important times. Striking events are occurring day by day. And we shall wait with interest for the actual publication of that papal encyclical on “Christian Democracy.”