The Pope and Europe by Editor

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Apr 9, 1872

The Pope and Europe.

By Editor

A CORRESPONDENT of the New York Tribune, in the city of Rome, writes that “even to-day the pope, an infallible pope to boot, has become a mere curiosity” there.

The spectacle presented by the Vatican court is indeed an anomaly in political history. The pope is self-imprisoned in his palace. The neighboring court of Victor Emmanuel has possession of the city, as well as of the nation; the pope and his phantom court is tolerated, and quietly stultified by being tolerated. Some of the European Powers maintain ambassadors at the latter, but they are hardly more than diplomatic puppets.

All the Powers have also ambassadors at Victor Emmanuel’s court, except France. She has stood sullenly off, in her ruins, and the successive government of Italy has not troubled itself much about her failure in this particular. But now even France feels that her conduct is not only powerless to produce any effect in favor of the Vatican, but that it has become ridiculous amidst the universal acceptance by the other Powers of Europe of the state of things in Italy. Old Thiers, therefore, has at last transferred his minister at the court of Sweden to the court of Emmanuel at Rome. A curious diplomatic anomaly, however, grows out of this fact. France and other similar Powers have now two ambassadors in the same capital at two different and tacitly antagonistic courts! Such is one of the absurdities attending the “connection of church and State.” History sometimes avenges itself thus against the folly of rulers by an irony which becomes more effectual than the artifices of policy.

This preposterous example cannot last. If not its double expense, yet its transparent nonsense will compel the European States to get rid of it as soon as they politely can. They cannot but perceive, also, that it must be attended with disagreeable, if not dangerous liabilities. The obstinacy of the ecclesiastical court will lead to new complications and differences with the civil one; and the twofold embassies may present some very curious contrasts and contradictions. The only safety for the foreign States is to withdraw from the pretended court, and treat the real one as they do all others. This must inevitably soon be their course, and then the shadow of the papal court will vanish.

A further policy, however, is still requisite for the safety of European States—namely, to get rid, once and forever, of the whole system of their medieval ecclesiastical relations. Bismarck, as we lately showed, begins to see this. Modern civilization renders toleration necessary; toleration renders variations of religious opinion inevitable; varieties of religion render governmental patronage or control of religion impracticable. Independence of church and State is, therefore, a primary condition—an axiom of normal government in this age. It is not only an axiom of just and free government, but of true religion as well. The church is really enfranchised by its divorce from the State. For nearly a hundred years the United States has exemplified this fact before the nations. There has, perhaps, been no more momentous demonstration made by American history, for it embraces alike the essential liberty of government and religion. And here, under the great experiment, religion has had greater activity, and more beneficent achievements, moral and philanthropic, than anywhere else in the contemporary world. Europe has been silently gazing at our example, so anomalous, at first so incredible, to her rulers and people. They have come at last to see in it a grand advance of government and civilization, and they are gradually tending toward it. The abolition of the civil papacy is apparently about to put the State ecclesiasticism of Europe alongside of her feudalism—among the things that are past, and are never to return.—The Methodist.