Part 35
The _modus vivendi_ then reached, and soon consecrated by a series of concordats, has remained substantially the basis of the dealings of Catholicism with the governments of the Old World. Only one formal and permanent violation of this legal situation has taken place, the violent and unjust dispossession of the Holy See by the government of the House of Savoy, in flagrant violation of every title that could be invoked by a legitimate civil power. Elsewhere Catholicism has undergone much suffering, both in the states of the Old World and in the republics of South America. But, the above vital conflict apart, the old century closed with no very acute or intolerable condition of things, although there is much that does not reply to our ideas of fairness and justice.
THE VATICAN COUNCIL
The chief event of the century, from the point of view of Roman Catholicism, is undoubtedly the holding of the Vatican Council. Since the Council of Trent the bishops of the Catholic world had not met in common under the guidance of the Bishop of Rome. The gravest interests of religion seemed at stake after more than a century of public infidelity and the overthrow of all former safeguards of faith. The character of doctrinal authority and its visible tangible possessor were declared by the dogma of Papal infallibility. The genuine relations of reason and revelation were set forth in unmistakable language.
The troubles that followed the close of the Council in some parts of Europe were neither serious nor long-lived, since its teachings were in keeping with the general sense of Catholicism. It promoted, notably, mutual respect and concord among the bishops and gave to the multitudes of Catholics in the Old and New Worlds a new sign of the unity and internal vigor of the Church. The scenes of the Council are indelibly fixed in my memory, for I was the youngest and humblest of the six hundred and sixty-seven bishops who composed it.
A General Council is the very highest act of the life of the Church, since it presents within a small compass, and at once, all the movements that have been developing in the course of centuries, and offers to all the faithful and to all outside the Church straightforward answers to all the great ecclesiastical problems that come up for settlement. Had the Vatican Council been finished it would have taken up the grave subject of ecclesiastical discipline. That is reserved for the reopening of the Council at some future date.
THE MISSIONS OF CATHOLICISM
It is incumbent on the Catholic Church to spread the teachings of Jesus Christ, and this by His own divine command: “Going, therefore, teach all nations.”
In this last century she has not been unfaithful, any more than in others. No portion of the vineyard has been neglected; the martyr’s blood has watered some parts more abundantly, but in all the missionary has toiled without ceasing, has spent himself. In the Far East Catholic missions have been carried on in India, China, Thibet, Tonkin. In every part of Africa, northern, central, and southern, the priests and nuns of the Catholic Church have preceded the explorer or followed the trader and the miner with the blessings of religion. In the still pagan parts of North and South America her missionaries are found all through the century. They have kept up their vigils in the Holy Land, and in general have made a notable progress.
The inventions of the age have been beneficial by opening up new lands and by making transit easy and rapid, thus recalling some of the conditions which conduced to the original spread of the religion of Jesus. A multitude of noble souls have devoted all to the enlightenment of the barbarian and pagan world. And while I disparage no land, and do not undervalue the good intentions and efforts of those outside our pale, I cannot pass over in silence the French nation, which has given more abundantly than any, perhaps more abundantly than all others, of priests, sisters, and funds for the essential duty of Catholicism. The work of the Propagation of the Faith and the Seminary of Foreign Missions at Paris deserve a special souvenir as often as Catholic missions are mentioned.
THE POPES OF THE CENTURY
Six Popes ruled the Church in the nineteenth century: Pius VII., Leo XII., Pius VIII., Gregory XVI., Pius IX., and the present venerable pontiff, Leo XIII. In the person of Pius VII. they have known what martyrdom was like, also the shame and humiliation of being subject to a civil power absolute in its character and prone to unwarrantable interference with the ecclesiastical power, even to contempt of its most ancient and venerable rights. In Gregory XVI. and Pius IX. they learned the purposes and the power of those who in Europe have succeeded to the men of the French Revolution. In Leo XIII. their line, the oldest line of rulers on the earth, can boast of a most enlightened mind and a very sympathetic heart. Long time a bishop of an important see before he was made Pope, he has been at the level of every task imposed upon the Papacy.
In a particular manner he has been the patron of ecclesiastical studies, by his scholarly encyclicals on philosophy, Scripture, history, and other branches of learning. A noble specimen of this activity is his late letter to the bishops of France on the studies of the clergy. His spirit is the Christian spirit of reconciliation and concord, yet without sacrifice of the immemorial rights and the solemn obligations of the Apostolic See. He may not live to see the restoration of his independence, and the reparation of the wrong inflicted upon the Holy See, but he can maintain a protest that will forever invalidate among Catholics the claim of the actual government and keep open the Roman question until it is rightly settled.
Catholics cannot forget that the Pope for the time being is, according to Catholic doctrine, the successor of Saint Peter in all his rights and privileges as the visible head of the Church, appointed by Jesus Himself. Hence, among other duties, he has to safeguard the approved traditions and the general legislation of the past, to protect the status of the Church as given over to him, and to hand it down undiminished to his own successor. Precisely because he is the head of the Church he may not licitly alter its organic and regular life, or arbitrarily abandon the almost sacrosanct ways along which his predecessors have moved, or give up lightly the institutions in which religion has gradually found a setting for itself.
I venture to say that this element of fixity in the attitude of the Apostolic See will be more appreciated in another age, more constructive and architectonic than the past, less querulous and destructive, even if less daring and brilliant. Forever to pull down and scatter, and never to build up and perfect, cannot be the final purpose of human society. It is perhaps worth remarking that the average reign of the Popes was much longer in the nineteenth century than in any other, being over sixteen years, and that two successive reigns, those of Pius IX. and Leo XIII., represent fifty-four continuous years of Church government at Rome, a phenomenon not witnessed since the foundation of that Church by Saint Peter and Saint Paul.
THE CATHOLIC HIERARCHY
During this century the Holy Father has been able to restore the Catholic hierarchy in England, Scotland, Holland, and to create it anew in India. This means the orderly management of the works and the purposes of the Catholic religion, since the episcopate is the divinely instituted organ for its spread and its administration. In many lands a numerous episcopate has sprung up. In our own beloved country it has grown almost at the rate of one see for every year of the century. The apostolic activity of the episcopate has been usually beyond reproach. The care of souls, the creation of parishes, building of churches, convents, schools, and charitable institutions has gone on in every diocese of the Catholic world. Some bishops have distinguished themselves by their sanctity of life and their love for the poor; others by their learning and their skill in their writing works of utility for the faithful; others by their holy martyrdoms, both in pagan and Christian lands; others by devotion to great works of common charity and utility—nearly all by their exemplary lives and the conscientious performance of their duties.
No nation has a monopoly of this outpouring of the highest sacerdotal devotion; and no nation or people, as far as I can learn, has been without a steady succession of remarkable bishops, men who would have done honor to any age of Christian history. I believe that it is the constant and edifying service of the episcopal body which is chiefly responsible for the improvement in learning, morality, and laborious enlightened zeal on the part of the clergy, diocesan and monastic, which it seems just to claim for the nineteenth century. In some lands the episcopal office is freer than in others, and its beneficent activity is more immediate and visible. In all the bishops have kept the bond of unity, often at no inconsiderable sacrifice of personal comfort. Neither schism nor heresy of any formal and noteworthy nature has been connected with the episcopal office. It would ill become me to discriminate where the merits are so equal. I may, however, be permitted to rejoice with my countrymen at the end of the century that the life and the teachings of a Carroll, a Cheverus, a Bruté a Neumann, a Dubois, have not been without salutary effect, and have set a shining mark for the imitation of all coming generations. Particularly have such men inculcated habitual courtesy and charity in dealing with all those who did not share the faith of Catholics. They were fresh from the storms of foreign religious hatred and infidel intolerance, and knew by personal experience the benefit of mutual good understanding and personal respect.
In the United States, particularly, the Catholic episcopate has been very active in providing for the most fundamental spiritual needs of their flocks—churches for religious services, priests for the administration of sacraments, schools for the preservation of the revealed Christian faith, orphanages for the little waifs and castaways of society. Whether short or long, the periods of government of these Church rulers have never been idle nor marked by self-indulgence. Almost every one has left some monument of faith as a contribution to the general good of Catholicism. I would neither exaggerate nor boast, yet it occurs to me, after many years of service, travel, and observation, that few ages of Christianity can show a more laborious and elevated episcopate than the nineteenth century.
The recruiting of the diocesan clergy has been the gravest duty of this episcopate, for religion lives by and for men. It can get along without wealth or monuments, but not without intelligent teachers of its tenets and faithful observers of its precepts. In keeping with the decrees of the Council of Trent diocesan seminaries have been opened where it was possible, and elsewhere provincial institutions of a similar character. Both flourish in the United States, and grow more numerous with every decade. The older clergy, long drawn from the venerable schools of Europe, have left a sweet odor among us, the purest odor of self-sacrificing lives, of devotion to poor and scattered flocks, of patient, uncomplaining contentment with the circumstances of poverty and humility. There is no diocese in the United States where there cannot be heard tales of the hardships and brave lives of the ecclesiastics who laid the foundations of religion. We remember them always, and hold their names in benediction. The younger generation of our clergy enjoys advantages denied to their predecessors; but we consider that they owe it to those predecessors if they have a degree of leisure to perfect the culture of their minds, and a faithful Catholic people to ask for the benefits which must accrue from greater learning, if it be solid and well directed.
Yet I cannot admit that our older clergy were deficient in the learning of the schools. The names of England and Corcoran are at once on our lips, not to speak of a long array of others almost equally entitled to distinguished mention. If the external conditions of the diocesan clergy have improved, their relations to the Church authority have been safeguarded with even greater earnestness and efficiency. The dispositions of synods, provincial councils, and the three plenary councils of Baltimore have, we are happy to say, had little to do with questions of doctrine. They have all been held for the improvement of discipline and notably for the welfare of the clergy. In the same direction, also, have tended the numerous decisions and instructions from the Roman congregations, whose wisdom has never been invoked by us in vain, and whose sympathy for our conditions we gratefully acknowledge.
THE CONGREGATION OF THE PROPAGANDA
Any account of the good influence of the Holy See on our ecclesiastical conditions would be unjust and incomplete if the Congregation of the Propaganda Fide were omitted. To it we owe an unceasing surveillance, full of prudence and intelligence. From its offices have come to the bishops regularly counsel, warning, encouragement, co-operation. It has been eminently just and fair, also fearless in the application of the principles, the spirit, and the letter of canonical discipline. Its action is a calm and grave one, marked by reticence and patience and that composure which belongs to the highest judicial decisions. But the Catholic Church in the United States and in Canada owes it an undisputed debt of gratitude. The most learned cardinals of the century and the best ecclesiastical talent have co-operated in the creation of its legislation, which need not fear the criticism of any learned and honest judicial body of men.
RELIGIOUS ORDERS AND COMMUNITIES
In the religious orders and communities the Catholic Church possesses a very ancient auxiliary force that has rendered incalculable help during the century. By their numbers, their strong inherited traditions, their central government, their willing obedience, and their other resources they have come everywhere to the aid of the bishops and the diocesan clergy. Often they bore alone and for a long time, and at great sacrifices, the whole burden of religion. Their praise is rightly on all sides, and their works speak for them, when their modesty and humility forbid them to praise themselves. The missions of Catholicism in this century, as in others, have largely fallen to them. They stood in the breach for the cause of education when the churches were too poor and few to open colleges. They have given countless missions and retreats, and in general have not spared themselves when called upon for works of general utility. They and their works are of the essence of Catholicism, and they ought rightly to flourish in any land where they are free to live according to the precepts and the spirit of their founders, who are often canonized saints of the Catholic Church.
I shall not be saying too much when I assert that among the invaluable services rendered to the Church by Catholic women of all conditions of life—no unique thing in the history of Catholicism—those rendered by the women of religious communities are of the first rank of merit. Primary Catholic education, in the United States, at least, would have been almost impossible without their devotion. It is owing to them that the orphans have been collected and cared for, the sick housed and sheltered, the poor and helpless and aged, the crippled and the blind, looked after regularly and lovingly. They surely walk in the footsteps of Jesus, doing good wherever they go. The perennial note of sanctity in the Catholic Church shines especially in them. Content with food and clothing and shelter, they devote their lives, often in the very flower of youth and health and beauty, to the weak and needful members of Christian society. He must needs be a Divine Master who can so steadily charm into His service the purest and the most affectionate of hearts, and cause them to put aside deliberately for love of Him even the most justifiable of human attachments. This argument for Christianity is not new; it was urged by Saint Justin the Martyr on the libertine world of the Antonines.
THE UNITY OF CHRISTENDOM
Throughout this century the Roman Church has desired and sought by all practical means the restoration of the former unity of Christendom. Each succeeding Pope has appealed to the ancient but separated Churches of the Orient, reminding them of the past oneness and the need of union with that see which all their records proclaim the rock and centre of unity. Similarly, appeals have been issued to the divided Christian communities of the West, as when Pius IX. wrote to the members of the Protestant world before the Vatican Council, and when Leo XIII. lately addressed his famous encyclical on the Unity of the Church to all men of good will within the Anglican pale. Such efforts may seem perfunctory; but they have in our eyes a deep meaning. They proclaim the doctrine of unity that is clearer than the noonday sun from the teachings of Jesus; they make a first step in the direction of its restoration; they keep alive the spirit of charity in many hearts, and they stir up countless prayers for the consummation of an end that few believing Christians any longer consider unnecessary. Already the canker-worms of doubt and indifference are gnawing at those last foundations of the old inherited Christian religious beliefs that still worked beneficently outside the pale of Catholic unity, but are now disappearing from the public consciousness because, too often, they are no longer elements of private conviction. In the realm of faith, as in that of nature, there is an after-glow, when the central sun has spent its force; but in both that glow is the herald of coldness and darkness. To those who no longer allow in their hearts any Christian belief, Catholicism has strongly appealed in the nineteenth century by its teachings on the right use of reason in matters of faith, the claims of religion on the mind and the heart of man, the benefits of Christianity, and its superiority over all other forms of religion—in a word, by the constant exposé of all the motives of credibility which could affect a sane and right mind that had divested itself of prejudice and passion.
CONVERSIONS TO CATHOLICISM
Not the least remarkable share of the history of Catholicism is seen in the stream of conversions that began in the very stress of the French Revolution and has not ceased to flow since then. From every land of the Old and New Worlds hundreds of thousands have returned of their own volition to the ancient fold wherein we firmly believe is kept the sacred deposit of saving truth. They have come to us from the pulpits of opposing religions and from the workshops of an unbelieving science. Every condition of life, and both sexes, have sent us numerous souls. Very many of these conversions have been unsolicited and unexpected. Some of them meant an accession of wealth or social prestige or high rank. Others brought with them the beloved tribute of uncommon intelligence, experience of life and men, acquired erudition, the highest gifts of style and oratory. Very many have come from the middle walks of life, and signified no more than a great weariness of pursuing shadows for the reality of divine truth, and the excessive goodness of the Holy Spirit of God which bloweth where it listeth. Of this army of converts some have been drawn by the conviction that the Bible alone, without an interpreter and a witness divinely guaranteed, could not suffice as a rule of faith. Others have been moved by the incarnation in the Church of the spirit and functions of authority without which no society can exist. Still others have come back to the Mother of all churches, through a deep heart-weariness at the endless dilapidation of divine truth outside the Roman Church. Some have sought and found through the study of history the open door to the truth. Others again through the study of art and its functions in the Christian Church. In whatever way they returned to the unity of the original sheepfold, they are an eloquent witness to the innate vigor and the immortal charm of the Christian truth as preserved in Catholicism. For they have come in unconditionally. Their return has worked beneficially, not only for themselves, but for those of the Catholic faith, whom it has consoled and encouraged for their steadfastness, while the non-Catholic world cannot but feel that that religion is worthy of respect, even of study, which can forever draw so many men and women out of the ranks of its adversaries, even at the sacrifice of many things which are usually held dear by society.
THE RELATIONS WITH CIVIL AUTHORITY
Being a genuine and world-wide religion, Catholicism could not but come into contact with the powers in which rests the social authority.
In many cases the fundamental relations of both have been settled by documents of a _quasi_ constitutional character known as concordats. They are binding on both parties, yet in more than one case the supreme authority of Catholicism has had reason to complain of their violation either in letter or in spirit.
Important points like the freedom of episcopal elections, the management of ecclesiastical revenues, the freedom of access to and communication with the Holy See, have been tampered with or openly abolished. In a general way Catholics are far from being content with the actual administration of these _quasi_ treaties between the civil and the ecclesiastical powers in the Old World and in South America—yet they respect them and desire to live up to their requirements. It is to be hoped that in the new century there will be less suspicion of the truly beneficent intentions of the Church, and less hampering of the common organs of her existence and work. In a century filled with revolutions as no other the Catholic Church has comported herself with dignity and equity, and managed to find the correct _via media_ in this great tangle of opposing and mutually destructive forms and theories of government.
THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND THE UNITED STATES
In our own beloved country we have every reason to be thankful that the liberty to worship God according to the dictates of conscience is guaranteed by the Constitution, and has entered deeply into the convictions of our fellow-citizens. The Catholic Church, by her own constitution, is deeply sympathetic with our national life and all that it stands for. She has thrived in the atmosphere of liberty, and seeks only the protection of the common law, that equal justice which is dealt out to all. She is the oldest historical and continuous government on the earth, and it is no small index of the value of our institutions and their durability that they make provision for the life and the work of so vast and so aged a society. It would also seem to show that, through a long course of centuries, Catholicism held as its own genuine political teachings only such as were finally compatible with the most perfect and universal citizenship known to history.
When this nation was forming, the first Catholic bishop in the United States, and my first predecessor in the see of Baltimore, John Carroll, accepted and performed satisfactorily the gravest public duty of a citizen, an embassy to another people for the benefit of his own country. Thereby he left to us all an example and a teaching that we shall ever cherish, the example of self-sacrifice as the prime duty of every citizen, and the teaching that patriotism is a holy conviction to which no Catholic, priest or layman, can hold himself foreign or apathetic.