The Papal Question

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Sep 17, 1872

The Papal Question.

The occupation of Rome by the King and Government of Italy was the first act of a drama which grows in intense interest with every month. It was a blow to the Papal temporality which, after the downfall of the “Eldest Son of the Church,” was inevitable. Ever since a secular arm thus possessed itself of the sacred city, the Pope has resided in sullen protestation at the Vatican, claiming, but still refraining from, the exercise of the sovereign power in Rome. Time has only rendered the situation of the successor of St. Peter more precarious and his ambition to recover the lost patrimony of the Church more hopeless; until now the Papacy is threatened with double evil of absorption by the Kingdom of Italy and the imposition of a nominee of Protestant State upon the throne of the Popes. An account has recently appeared of an interview with Prince Napoleon, in which that shrewd and brilliant Frenchman declares that the only true policy of the Holy Father is to come to terms with Victor Emanuel. Prince Napoleon is no ordinary man, and his words are not idly spoken. He is one of the most original and liberal of French thinkers, one of the most forcible of French orators, and one of the keenest of observers of the politics and public characters of the age. While a partizan of the Empire of his cousin, Napoleon III., he yet suggested reforms, and boldly favored a progress towards liberal institutions. An actor in many of the principal events of the last quarter of a century, he understands the complications and difficulties of European politics as thoroughly, perhaps, as any man living. He has peculiar qualifications for judging wisely of the Papal question, for while he is a citizen of the nation which above all others best merits the title of “defender of the faith,” his family connection with the King of Italy inspires his sympathy for the newly-created sovereignty of the House of Savoy. Prince Napoleon deplores the obstinacy of the Pope and his counsellors, and urges that unless some arrangement is soon effected with the Italian Government, it will be too late. The Pope may, by persistently shutting his eyes to things as they are, not only not regain Rome, but lose his present refuge of the Vatican.

Prince Napoleon’s advice to Pius IX. and his Ultramontane counsellors is all the more wise and timely because Bismarck is preparing to impose the will of a Protestant power on the College of Cardinals. It is his plainly declared intention to effect such an election to St. Peter’s chair, on the death of its present occupant, as shall be satisfactory to the Protestant Court of Berlin. He has gone so far as to propose a compact to this end to the principal European powers, and the remarkable statement is made that Italy, Austria and Spain—but a few years ago the three great pillars and bulwarks of the Papacy—have responded favorably to the German chancellor’s appeal. Bismarck intends to have a non-political, an exclusively ecclesiastical Pope; there shall be no Vatican influence to teach the Poles to be rebellious, or nourishing conspiracies in German convents. The war is not only declared by the great Pomeranian statesman, but it has begun in good earnest. Six months hence no Jesuit is to be allowed to breathe German air. Prelates and priests who refuse to accept the rule of Wilhelm I. as paramount to all authority, sacred or secular, whatever, are to be dealt with in the summary fashion which Bismarck has made an art. This danger which so seriously threatens the Papacy, of being forced to receive a head chosen by a Protestant and a persecutor of Catholics, can only be averted by the seasonable submission of Pius IX. to the inevitable. The conciliation of Italy is necessary, and might be efficacious in preventing the execution of Bismarck’s design; indeed, should the Papacy cease to be temporal, or to claim temporalities, this would to a large extent deprive Bismarck of the motives of his proposed action. These are truly troublous times for the Church; and the nineteenth century will be fatal to it unless its venerable head acknowledges and submits to the changes which the nineteenth century has wrought.—Ex.