Chapter XX. The Church and the State.

No injustice should be done to Leo XIII. If his position as the official head of a great Church were not sufficient to shield him against unfairness, his eminent Christian virtues should do so. Before his election to the pontificate he had acquired the reputation of being conspicuously great. He was, undoubtedly, the ablest defender of the prerogative rights of the papacy among the entire body of cardinals; and this distinction was well deserved. His arguments were then addressed mainly to ecclesiastics, and were designed to encourage them in their efforts to extinguish the revolutionary spirit which pervaded the Roman Catholic populations of Europe.

Now that he has become pope, the circle of his influence is enlarged so that it reaches the whole body of the Church of Rome through the medium of his hierarchy and priesthood; of whom it may rightfully be said, without intending offense, that they have no other spiritual work to do but what he assigns to them. That they may be fitted for this they have been deprived of all share in the responsibilities which pertain to the conduct of human affairs—all participation in the active operations of society and all those domestic associations which excite generous and kindly emotions and give to life its greatest charm. They are, consequently, molded by him into a compact organization, held in cohesion by the power of a common purpose, with the special design of assailing, in every part of the world, whatsoever he shall decide to be, under the ban of his pontifical displeasure. With such a force at his command—unitedly resisting what he shall direct them to resist, and defending what he shall direct them to defend—he constitutes such a power in the presence of the nations as exists nowhere else. Reaching, therefore, vaster multitudes of people, and possessing more potential influence than any other man in the world, nothing should be permitted to impair our obligation to become acquainted with his present pontifical opinions and purposes, as well as with the habits of thought which prepared him for his present eminent position. It can not be rightfully complained that his pontifical opinions are interpreted in the light of those previously entertained and expressed by him—more especially since his biographer has made such liberal use of them to prove his fitness to become the potential head of the Christian world.

While cardinal, he availed himself of frequent opportunities to denounce the Italian Revolution as sinful, and supported all the measures designed to suppress it. He aided Pius IX by his advice and counsel, and defended the entire series of his pontifical measures—condemning as heresy every professed form of Christianity that did not recognize the obligation of obedience to the pope as a divinely-appointed temporal sovereign. He regarded all other Churches besides the Roman as impiously pretentious—having no legitimate right to exist—and consequently as under the Divine displeasure. As he considered unity of Christian faith essential to the unity of the Church, and the temporal dominion of the pope as absolutely necessary to both, he employed much of his time as cardinal in supplying the clergy of Perugia with arguments against the revolution, and in pointing out both its spiritual and temporal consequences. As part of his pastoral work he insisted that the destruction of the temporal power of the pope would necessarily and inevitably, lead to infidelity and atheism, because it would open the door to the toleration of other religions besides the Roman, This, in his opinion, would inaugurate the reign of “irreligion and libertinism,” for the reason that there was no middle state between obedience to the pope as an absolute temporal monarch, with complete authority over the faith and consciences of his subjects, and the ruin of society. He divided society into two classes: one faithful to Christ, and therefore obedient to the pope; and the other representing Belial—that is, Satan— because of the refusal of that obedience. Upon all these points his meaning was plainly expressed in eloquent and faultless style.

Although differing from Pius IX with regard to the duration of the temporal power—fixing it at “eleven centuries,” and not as obtained at the fall of the Roman Empire, several hundred years previously—he, nevertheless, considers it a “divine institution,” conferring upon the pope. the “supreme and governing power in spirituals.” Before explaining, however, what he intends by ““spirituals,” he insists that whatsoever they are, they can not become subject to any human interference or limitation in any part of the world, but must be everywhere complete and plenary. Upon this point his biographer assumes to assist him, by interjecting between his sentences, as a key to his meaning, the idea that the temporal power is “incarnate in a manner in the Roman pontiff;” that is, that in some strangely mysterious way, it so permeates the pope as to be made providentially inseparable from his personal as well as official existence! But, seeming not to realize the ridiculousness of his bold hyperbole, he omits to explain why this same power was not incarnate in the popes before they placed crowns upon their own heads at the fall of the Roman Empire. Perhaps he imagined that the incarnate principle was in its germ during the first ages of the Church, and that the process of its development into absolute imperialism was not complete until the peaceful alliance between the Eastern and the Western Christians was sundered by the invading armies of Pepin and Charlemagne, when these sovereigns imparted a portion of their royal prerogatives to the popes and protected them by military force. Whatsoever meaning may have been intended, it is manifestly designed to convey and enforce the sentiment as part of the doctrinal faith of the Church, that because the temporal power “maintains in their unity and integrity the Church and religion,” therefore it is divine, and confers superhuman authority upon the pope over the sentiments, opinions, and conduct of mankind. “Besides,” said Leo XIII, while yet Cardinal Pecci, “can it be intelligible that the living interpreter of the divine law and will should be placed under the jurisdiction of the civil authority, which itself derives its own strength and authority from the same will and law?” To this question he attempts no specific answer, but his meaning was well understood by those to whom it was addressed; that is, by the ecclesiastics whose minds had been molded by the same training as his own. It is this: That as the authority of the pope and that of the State are both derived from the same divine law, and as the pope alone is the “living interpreter” of that law, therefore the State must accept and obey what he shall declare as “the voice of God.” Continuing, however, he embraces this same meaning in equally expressive terms. Happiness in this life he considers the only means of procuring higher happiness hereafter, and therefore the pope as “high priest” has “received from Christ the mission of guiding humanity toward the everlasting felicity;” that is, there is no other true religion than that announced and maintained by the pope; that all other forms are false and heretical; and that those who do not profess it will, in the great and unknown future, be cast into utter darkness, to weep and wail and gnash their teeth forever. And then, basing his conclusion upon this hypothesis, he breaks out in this ejaculation: “See, then, what upsetting of ideas it would be to make the high priest of the Catholic Church, the Roman pontiff, the subject of any earthly power;” as if God had so endowed all the popes— even Alexander VI (!)—with the faculty of inerrancy, that they alone, of all the ages, have had the mysteries of nature and revelation revealed to them! He never permits this idea of universal papal sovereignty to escape him without so expressing its meaning as to show that wheresoever or into whatsoever country he shall assert it, it can not become subject to any other Jaw than that which the pope himself shall prescribe. It requires but little scrutiny to see that what he intends is, that when the pope sends his ecclesiastical representatives into any part of the world, his instructions must be to them a code of laws which they must obey at every hazard, although it may become necessary to violate whatsoever conflicting laws the civil authorities may enact. If the people of the United States were to submit to this, from the moment they should do so they would cease to exist as an independent nation, and their progressive prosperity would wither and die under the spiritual tyranny of papal Rome, as other republics have hitherto withered and died under the temporal tyranny of imperial Rome. And thus that ancient city which, by its iniquities, became the Babylon of the apostolic times, would again acquire the power to rebuild by unrewarded labor the monuments upon her seven hills, and to exult at the decay of the present progressive nations, as her great prototype did when she looked out upon the miserable but obedient populations who swarmed throughout the valleys of the Tiber.

Leo XIII lays down his premise with such assumed authority as not to admit of challenge, and logically argues from it certain satisfactory conclusions, without pausing to inquire whether the premise itself is true or false. In this respect he imitates some logicians who seem’ not to realize the difference between assumption and proof. For example, he insists that Christ established an independent Church and a dependent State, so that the former does not exist in the latter, but the latter must exist in the former, in its condition of dependence. He overlooks the fact that States existed before the Church, and that instead of interfering with their temporal affairs Christ paid tribute to them, and recognized the independence of each in its own proper sphere— the one spiritual and the other temporal. “he spiritual obedience he exacted was to the divine law, in order to promote the spiritual welfare of individuals and consequently of society; the temporal obedience was to make secure the political rights of citizenship, including those of person and property. He did not consider States as capable of rewards and punishment in another life, but as mere aggregated communities who could bring them to an end by abandoning their territories. Therefore, he left the State to its own temporal government, independently of the Church, and not only obeyed its laws himself, but enjoined the obligation of the same obedience upon his disciples and followers; that is, of rendering ““ unto Cesar the things that are Cesar’s.” He gave equal independence to the Church, so that by administering to the spiritual welfare of individuals the temporal welfare of the State would be advanced and the common prosperity the better secured. And thus, by also rendering “unto God the things that are God’s,” the general welfare of the State would rest upon firmer foundations..

History, during all the ages since Christ, well attests the character of his plan. For more than five hundred years the Church and the State acted independently of each other, neither encroaching upon the sphere of the other, and Christianity progressed until paganism disappeared before it. When the ambitious popes brought on a conflict that separated the Western from the Eastern Christians, and accepted the crown of temporal dominion from Pepin and Charlemagne in consideration of the pontifical ratification of the former’s treason to France, the world was plunged into the darkness and stupor of the Middle Ages, and they became enabled to employ their power of absolute monarchism to compel obedience from the State to the Church and the Inquisition, to produce unity of religious faith. When the cloud of popular ignorance became so dense as to be scarcely penetrable, and such popes as Alexander VI could assert their own infallibility with impudent impunity, and burn at the stake those who denied it, the necessity for reform became so urgent that the period of the Reformation was ushered in with such violence that the papacy, aided by the Jesuits, was powerless to arrest it. And when the Reformation gave birth to Protestantism, and enabled it to culminate, through the influence of free religious thought, in the civil institutions of the United States, such impetus was given to the liberalizing spirit of progress that monarchism in both Church and State would be hastened to its final decay, were it not that Leo XIII has thrown the great weight of his Christian character into the scale in favor of it and against the progressive spirit which has advanced the world to its present condition of prosperity and happiness. Those who advise us to turn back from this prosperity and happiness toward the Middle Ages, under the pretense that they are produced by the triumph of irreligion and licentiousness over Christianity, are, to say the least, counselors of evil.

Leo XIII reasons within a narrow circle; or, rather, within a number of circles, reaching always the same conclusion, that whatsoever is adverse to the papacy must be opposed until it is put out of the way. His spiritual power must be as comprehensive as he desires to make it—including whatsoever of temporals he shall decide necessary to its free exercise, or to the interests of the Church; and within this cirele his jurisdiction must be so full, complete, and independent, that neither Governments nor communities nor individuals can place any limitation upon it, or violate the rules and principles he shall prescribe, without heresy. He is always explicit upon questions concerning the relations between the pope and Governments—never losing sight of the idea that he must be absolutely independent of them; so much so that while they must obey him when he shall think proper, in behalf of the Church and religion, to command their obedience, he shall be under no obligation to obey any of their laws which he shall consider in conflict with his pontifical plans or the interests of the Church. ” He must be free,” he says, “ to communicate without impediment with bishops, sovereigns, subjects, in order that his word, the organ and expression of the divine will, may have a free course all over the earth, and be there canonically announced.” Here, again, he gives prominence to the idea that he is the only interpreter of the divine will, coupling with it the additional one, that not only bishops, but sovereigns and peoples everywhere, must recognize and obey it; for obedience is necessarily implied, inasmuch as his commands would not have “free course” without it. No Government must possess the power to prohibit this, because he acts canonically; that is, his decrees, being an embodiment of the divine will, become part of the Canon law, which, having thus the stamp of divinity upon it, must be universally recognized and obeyed, no matter what Governments may do or say to the contrary. Practically it is the same as if he had said that the laws of all the Governments, touching matters embraced within his pontifical jurisdiction, must give way to the Canon law, because they are human and it is divine.

There are many methods of illustrating the effect of this papal doctrine which will occur to intelligent minds; but at this point one is sufficient. In the United States we have separated Church and State, and based our civil government upon the principle of toleration for differences of religious faith. But by papal decrees and the Canon law all this is declared to be heresy, and placed under the pontifical ban. Hence, the sovereign spiritual power claimed by Leo XIII, as pope, gives him the divine right, in the face of all our Constitutions, National and State, to anathematize the heretical form of our institutions, and to impose upon all who recognize obedience to him the obligation to oppose this heresy, and to eradicate it whensoever it is expedient to undertake it. Involved in this there is, also, the claim of additional power to reconstruct our Government so as to unite Church and State, and subordinate the latter to the former, by putting an end to all religious differences,.and establishing the religion of the pope—whatever that is or may be— as the national religion.

But Cardinal Pecci—now Leo XIII—expressed himself more plainly and emphatically upon these points, in assigning the reasons why the pope should possess, and exercise throughout the world, this extraordinary spiritual sovereignty. It is necessary, he said, in order that the pope may be empowered “to keep off schism; to prevent the spread of public heresies; to decide religious disputes; to speak freely to rulers and peoples; to send nuncios and ambassadors; to conclude concordats; to employ censures; to regulate, in fact, the consciences of two hundred millions of Catholics scattered all over the earth; to preserve inviolate dogmas and morals; to receive appeals from all parts of the Christian world; to judge the causes thus submitted; to enforce the execution of the sentences pronounced; to fulfill, in one word, all his duties, and to maintain all the sacred rights of his primacy.”

Having thus enumerated these extraordinary powers of the pope—such as exist nowhere else in the world—he goes a step further by defining the relations between the papacy and those Governments and peoples that have taken away, or refused to recognize, the existence of these powers. In this he refers, primarily, to the kingdom of Italy, which had committed the offense of abolishing the temporal power of the pope and separated Church and State; and, secondarily, to all other Governments throughout the world where the union between Church and State is forbidden; that is, where Governments of, and for, and by the people have been established. “Here, then,” says he, ” is what they are aiming at by taking from the pope his temporal power: they mean to render it impossible for him to exercise his spiritual power.” This goes to the bottom of the question, and states plainly the idea present in his mind; that is, that the spiritual power, being superior to the temporal, necessarily includes it to the extent he shall think proper to assert—limited only by his pontifical discretion—so that the latter must to that extent be kept in subordination to the former, and obey its commands. For example, the pope considers it his duty to send an army of ecclesiastics to all parts of the world, and to exact from them implicit obedience to himself, so that wheresoever they shall find temporal laws forbidding them to perform their spiritual functions as he shall define them, he and they must be endowed with sufficient spiritual power to enable them to disobey those laws and set them aside when it becomes expedient to do so. He assumes that “every Catholic”—no matter where he is—accepts this as part of his religious faith, being instructed that the pope must possess such power over both spirituals and temporals as shall make him independent of every Government upon earth in all such matters as he shall declare to be within his spiritual jurisdiction. Quoting some obscure “lodge of Carbonarism in Italy,” in order to show that where the pope does not possess the power he claims for him, irreligion, infidelity, and immorality must, of necessity, prevail, he declares that “it is no longer matter of policy; it is matter of conscience” to remove out of the way all impediments to papal supremacy, and that every Christian must stand by the pope in order to put down the enemies of religion, who are designated by him to-be those who have taken away from the pope or deny to him any or all of the above enumerated powers.

He does not fail to make his denunciation as comprehensive and sweeping as possible, by characterizing as ” irreligion and libertinism ” the progressive advancement of modern nations, which prevails where Church and State have been separated. He attaches this character to all these, because, according to him, they are not faithful to Christ, or the Church, or the pope. He denounces the revolution in Italy as “the result of conspiracy, deception, injustice, and sacrilege,” merely because it abolished the temporal power of the pope, without the least impairment of any single principle of religious faith that can be traced back to Christ, to the apostles, or to the primitive Christians. What seemed to him to be one of its deplorable and most odious consequences was the loss of power by the pope in consequence of the provision which placed the clergy upon equality with other citizens in regard to civil duties and rights, and made them responsible to the laws of the State, precisely as they are in the United States. This is a point upon which neither the pope nor the clergy will compromise, otherwise than upon compulsion. With them there is no heresy more flagrant than compelling the clergy to comply with any law requiring them to do what the pope forbids as prejudicial to the Church. The right of the pope to require of them disobedience to any such law, and their right to disobey it, is what they call independence, which, according to them, can not be impaired without violating the divine law. They submit to this in the United States, and wheresoever Church and State are separated, but always with the unchangeable purpose of securing, in the end, complete triumph for the Jaw of the Church over that of the State. Hence, when, as the result of the revolution, the law of Umbria placed the clergy upon an equality with other citizens, and made them responsible to the laws of the State, as they now are in the United States, it was denounced by the present occupant of the papal chair as a sacrilegious violation of the divine law. Is this requirement any less “sacrilege” in the United States than in Umbria? The degrees of latitude and longitude do not vary the meaning of the divine law; but the difference in conditions may account for simulated acquiescence in the one case and open protest in the other.

He saw also, in the “diffusion of pestilential books, of erroneous doctrines, and heterodox teachings” another cause for the pontifical curse, inasmuch as it impaired the power of the pope to place restrictions upon the freedom of the press, which has opened the way to liberalism-and made the crowns of kings insecure. But that which he condemned more than all, and considered the source of innumerable ills, was the fact that Church and State were separated, and each confined to its own distinct and independent sphere. Referring to the law of Umbria which required the clergy to accept this—as the clergy in the United States are required to accept it—he said: “”They are offered, as the basis of reconciliation, to accept the condemned and false system of the separation of Church and State, which, being equivalent to divorcing the State from the Church, would fogs Catholic society to free itself from all religious influence.” He manifestly intended to impress the minds of all who acknowledged obedience to the pope, whether in Europe, the United States, or elsewhere, with the sentiment that the only true religion in the world required, as a matter of faith, that Church and State should be united, with the latter subordinate to the former in whatsoever concerns faith and morals, and that where they have been separated their union should be restored. Having thus made this the solemn religious duty of “every Catholic” throughout the world, he has thereby placed himself, andis preparing them to be placed when the proper time shall arrive, in direct hostility to the principles which prevail in all modern liberal Governments, including that of the United States.

Tn all this there is no disguise—nothing equivocal. Nor is there any reason why there should have been, inasmuch as these admonitions were addressed to a population reared and educated in the faith of the Church at Rome, for centuries obedient to the commands of the pope and his clergy, and in whose minds there was supposed to linger such sentiments of reverence for the papacy as would, if vigorously appealed to, stimulate them to demand the restoration of the temporal power. Therefore, the foremost man among the clergy—he whose eloquence stirred the heart and whose virtues were universally acknowledged—was chosen as the champion of the papal cause. But for events which have subsequently occurred—more especially his election to the pontificate—and the tolerant spirit which pervades our institutions, it is not probable they would ever have reached the people of the United States. And even now, since they have done so in the pope’s biography, there are scarcely five out of every hundred thousand of our population who will ever read them, or, if they do, will turn aside from the multitude of their pursuits to investigate and scan them closely enough to discover their true meaning, plainly and fairly as it is expressed. By such investigation and discovery they would see that Leo XIII considers the following propositions irrevocably settled as religious dogmas: That God provided for the Italian people a form of civil government subject to the absolute dominion of the pope, as the only one that can be religiously tolerated; that revolution to set it aside and establish a popular and constitutional form of government in its place, violates the law of God, and is heresy; that self-government by the people is an abomination which can never obtain the sanction and approbation of the papacy; and that the people of Italy, in order to remain faithful to the Church, should continue forever obedient subjects of this imperial absolutism, no matter how severe its oppressions may become, or how much they may desire to rid themselves and their children of it. And it will be observed that the condition of Italy, in rebellion against the temporal absolutism of the pope, serves him to illustrate the principle which lies at the bottom of all his reasoning; that as God governs the world in equity, and has provided this imperial absolutism for that purpose, with the pope to preside over all that is spiritual and whatsoever temporals shall involve spirituals, therefore all other forms of government are founded upon “irreligion and libertinism,” especially such as make the whole body of the people the source of civil power.

The integrity of Leo XIII is not questioned by any one. But he might be liable to the suspicion of insincerity if he had been personally enabled to contrast the present improved condition of the people of the United States, which has been reached within little more than a century of time, with that of the peoples who have for more than twelve hundred years been compelled to submit to the authority and spiritual dominion of the papacy. At all events, it is difficult, for minds impressed by the influences of free popular government, to appreciate either the force or merits of his arguments, when he attempts to make the temporal indispensable to the spiritual power, and asserts the divine right to maintain it when possessed, and the duty of acquiring it when not possessed, as equally indispensable parts of religious faith. “The fact that the Italian people—otherwise devoted to the Church of Rome—repudiated this doctrine both politically and religiously, should have impressed his mind with its want of adaptability to the present condition of the world, distinguished as it is either by some form of progress or the popular desire for it among all the nations, Yet, instead of coming to some terms with this progressive spirit among the Italians—which needed only acquiescence in the ° loss of the temporal power—he was constrained by the united pledge of the College of Cardinals, at the time of his election, to persist in the protesting and aggressive policy of his immediate predecessor. And as he could not turn back without an entire abandonment of the temporal power, he has been likewise constrained to define the extent to which this power, if restored, must be recognized, as a matter of religious faith, beyond Rome and the States of the Church. Without this, the faithful would have been left to suppose that the restoration was designed only to force an absolute temporal monarch upon the people of Italy without their consent, and, therefore, that no religious motive for it existed. Consequently he defined the universal faith to be that, by the restoration of the temporal power, the pope would become again so absolutely sovereign and independent of all Governments that he could not ““be placed under the jurisdiction of the civil authority” anywhere in the world, so that whatsoever he shall command in his “mission of guiding humanity,” he must be obeyed, no matter what any civil authority may provide to the contrary; that is, that the laws of every State, in conflict with such religious dogmas as he shall announce, must become void and inoperative in so far as they may impede the measures directed by him. Entering upon particulars, he does not shrink from the responsibility of declaring, as we have seen, that the nope must have power to prevent schism and heresy, which includes the means necessary to suppress them; that is, to put an end to Protestantism and all that it has produced. He alone must decide “religious disputes,” and every question involving dogmas and morality, and what he shall determine concerning all these must direct and guide the consciences of all “the faithful” throughout the world. And he shall have, the right “to enforce the execution” of whatsoever judgment he shall pronounce, no matter whether against Governments, communities, or individuals. The word “enforce” is his own, evidently employed with a full understanding of its import; for the completeness of his style shows that it is not his habit to waste words, or to use them without deliberation. He could not have intended a resort to force as a primary remedy against heresy, but probably considers it justifiable when circumstances render it necessary, as in the cases of rebellious and obdurate heretics whose defiance of papal authority becomes flagrant. It is desirable, however, to follow him further, in order to become entirely familiar with the practical working of his doctrines, as he himself applied them to the state of affairs with which he was directly concerned, in carrying on the battle with “irreligion” and the revolution.

When the Archbishops and Bishops of Umbria deemed it proper to protest to the Piedmontese Government against its infringement of papal rights, Cardinal Pecci was chosen by them as specially fitted for that delicate and important work. As the population of Piedmont were Roman Catholic, and there had been no attempt on the part of the Government to interfere with what they considered the established faith of the Church upon strictly religious points, this protest was mainly intended to express opposition to the laws which regulated the relations of the clergy to the State, by requiring them to obey the public statutes, as they are required to do in the United States, and in such countries as have disunited Church and State. Up till that time they had been an exclusive and independent class, with privileges and prerogatives not enjoyed by the mass of citizens—such as exemption from taxes and from the support of the Goyernment—and to the change in these relations this protest was intended to apply. The laws then existing were considered an irreligious invasion of the liberty of the clergy; that is, of their right of exemption from all governmental obligations. Consequently the feeling upon the subject became very intense among the clergy, as was to be expected after so many years of license and indulgence; and it furnished Cardinal Pecci with the opportunity of making an admirable display of his intellectual powers and eloquence. Without preface, he came to the question directly in these words: “It is a grievous error against Catholic doctrine to pretend that the Church is the subject of any earthly power, and bound by the same economy and relations which regulate civil society. The Church is not a human institution, nor is ita portion of the political edifice, although it is destined to promote the welfare of the men among whom it lives. It affirms that from God came directly its own being, its constitution, and the necessary faculties for attaining its own sublime destiny, which is one different (from that of the State), and altogether of a supernatural order. Divinely ordered, with a hierarchy of its own, it is by its nature independent of the State.”

He makes the whole superstructure of his argument rest upon the foundation that as the constitution’ and all the faculties of the Church came from God, therefore it must of necessity have a “hierarchy of its own,” and entirely “independent of the State;” that is, the clergy must be bound to obey the pope, and released from all obligation to obey the laws of the: State, unless they also shall be approved by the pope. To require from them this obedience to State laws, “invades,” according to this protest, “the sacred province of the priesthood,” as well, also, as “the rights and liberties of the Church,” because it tempts them “away from the due subjection to their superiors,” who are governed only by the pope and the Canon law. And, in order to show that the Church can not tolerate liberalism in the form of the freedom of religious belief or of the press, this protest deplores the “licentiousness of the theater and the press, and the continual snares laid to surprise pious souls, to undermine faith by circulating infamous pamphlets and heteredox writings, and by the declamations of fanatical preachers of impiety;”? in other words, by Protestantism and Protestants. Cardinal Pecci dealt more directly with the “irreligion and libertinism” of the present age in a Lenten pastoral “on the current errors against religion and Christian life.” He here expressed himself with severe intolerance against those who proclaim that “man is free in his own conscience; he can embrace any religion he likes;” that is, he condemned the freedom of religious belief. He could not have done otherwise without causing his fidelity to the papacy to be suspected. Consequently, he made his meaning perfectly clear, so that none of the faithful could mistake it, and doubtless because the freedom of conscience is necessary to popular government, which, in serving the pope, he was obliged to condemn. Nevertheless, he was driven to the necessity of admitting that man is created “free and gifted with reason,” but sought to break the force of the admission by insisting that this natural freedom must be subject to restraint, because God has imposed obligations upon him and dictated laws fot him which he is bound to obey. He, however, gives no latitude to the individual and makes no allowance for his private conscience, but considers him incompetent to decide for himself within the scope of religious laws, and as fit only for obedience to authority; that is, the Church at Rome, and the pope who may, for the time being, preside over it. In setting forth the manner in which God has made known his laws for the direction and government of individual consciences, and how he requires them to be obeyed, he insists that they are only such as the Roman Church has announced, and that the natural right of the human reason to its freedom must be restrained into obedience to them, so that the only liberty of thought or conscience to be allowed must be that which centers in this obedience. To him any other freedom than this violates the divine law, and is heresy.

But he plainly involves himself in the absurdity of supposing that to be freedom which is the very reverse of it; for there can be no proposition more palpably true than that a man has no freedom of thought or conscience when constrained, by a force he is powerless to resist, to exchange his own opinions for those of others. It may well be doubted whether opinions formed under the dictation of authority are in fact such. Fear of consequences may induce acquiesence in them, or even their avowal; but as the laws which govern the mind and conscience have no agency in their production, they are simple utterances of the lips which are not responded to by the heart. This must be the case with enlightened minds, except where pre-existing opinions are changed by the force of argument and new enlightenment. The papacy understood this, and therefore kept in ignorance the populations within the circle of its influence and jurisdiction; and Cardinal Pecci, instructed as his mind was upon general topics, was unable to conceive any other methods of human thought than those instilled into his mind by his Jesuit education, and which his official position made it necessary for him to maintain.

Controlled entirely by the idea of unresisting and uninquiring obedience to authority, without any regard for the dictates of individual conscience or the suggestions of reason, he announced the logical result of his own and the papal teachings in these words: “Nor is it left to the free will of man to refuse it, or to fashion for himself a form of worship and service such as he pleases to render.” It does not require a man of learning to understand this; it is plain and palpable to any ordinary. mind. He could have chosen no words more expressly condemnatory of the freedom of conscience; nor could he have more formally arraigned the people of the United States for having asserted the right of every man to worship God as his own conscience dictates, and having made that fundamental in their institutions and necessary to their existence. According to him this is heresy, because it draws the people away from obedience to the pope; and no man has the right to refuse’ this obedience, or “ to fashion for himself a form of worship or service” which the pope shall condemn! He is immeasurably shocked at the idea that men should be permitted to entertain and express different religious opinions, and to reject the teachings of the pope, to whom alone implicit obedience is due! He had too much character at stake to disguise anything upon this point—leaving that to others in free countries, where the pretense of toleration may be maintained with the hope that it may ultimately pave the way to papal “intolerance. Continuing, therefore, the same undisguised denunciation of the freedom of conscience, he says: “It would be not only impious, but monstrous, to maintain every form of worship is acceptable and indifferent, that the human conscience is free to adopt whichever form it pleases, and to fashion out a religion to suit itself.” It is not necessary to comment here upon this bold and defiant assault upon our civil institutions. But it is well to remark that it ought to tinge the cheeks of those in this country who, in one breath, profess obedience to the pope who uttered the language here quoted, and in the next talk glibly about their advocacy of the freedom of conscience, which he has condemned as “impious” and “monstrous”—as an unpardonable offense against God!

He then proceeds to speak of the relation of the State to the education of the young, by saying that it is “not called upon to discharge this great parental duty, but to keep the natural educators in their work,” by permitting it to “be carried on under the direction of the Church, the depository and teacher of religious doctrines.” This is as if he had said that the State shall be forbidden to participate in the work of education even to the extent of teaching patriotism to its youth, for the reason that such State education has the tendency to substitute love of country for fidelity to the pope; and for the further reason that all education that can be tolerated should “be carried on under the direction of the Church” and confined exclusively to “religious doctrines.” He expresses the same idea more fully by insisting that all other kinds of education are “devoid of all the external practices and duties of the Christian faith, and calculated to familiarize young people with “freedom of conscience’ and indifferentism;” that is, to encourage them in the belief that popular freedom is worth striving after, and that people are more prosperous and happy when governed by laws of their own making than by those dictated by the ambition of those who claim that they alone are divinely chosen to govern mankind. He sees nothing in such religious liberty as our institutions establish but “irreligion and libertinism,” to which it has given rise, and against which he strives hard to enlist all the supporters of the papacy.

From the papal standpoint his arguments are sound and logical, because the general enlightenment of the mind, which enables it to investigate and understand the causes of things, and makes it competent to form conclusions of its own, tends to create self-reliance and opposition to oppressive laws; and has, on these accounts, been odious to the popes ever since they acquired temporal power and made the Church, by means of it, the most potent instrument in maintaining monarchism. Therefore the student of history finds that the papacy has grown weaker as the world has increased in enlightenment. But from the standpoint of our free institutions, both his positions and reasoning are radically wrong and indefensible, because they assail the freedom of conscience which our institutions guarantee to every individual, and our commonschool system, which is more responsive to the public sentiment and will than any other measure of our public policy. The plain and manifest import of what he has said is this: That if he were allowed full liberty in this country to dictate what shall and what shall not be regarded as true religion, we would have neither freedom of conscience nor public schools. And this, by his subsequent elevation to the pontificate, constitutes to-day, the greatest if not the only danger which threatens our free, popular form of government.

By his election as pope, Leo XLII occupies a different position from that filled by him as Cardinal Pecci. In the latter he defended the papal doctrines and recommended them for strict observance by the faithful; in the former he dictates and commands, allowing no discretion and submitting to no disobedience. Therefore it is manifestly proper, as well as necessary, that we in this country shall know to what extent the religious doctrines of the cardinal are embodied in the authoritative teachings of the pope. In this latter capacity he has undoubtedly flattered himself, as Pius IX did, that he has at his back and subject to his command, tavo. hundred millions of obedient subjects throughout the world, and has, consequently, availed himself of his first consistorial allocution to prepare them for submission, by announcing that he has been chosen “to fill on earth the place of the Prince of pastors, Christ Jesus!” He must have known, when these words were traced by his pontifical pen, that Christ was never the pastor of an organized Church with a constitution of either spiritual or temporal government; that when the primitive Churches were established by the apostles, they were independent of each other; that none of these ever had a bishop or a presbyter with temporal power in his hands; that this power was not acquired until after the fall of the Roman Empire, according to Pius LX, and not until several hundred years later, according to himself; and that even then it was wrenched from the people by the aid of ambitious monarchs and their armies, and maintained by the false and forged “donation of Constantine,” the pseudo-decretals of Isidore, and other means long since repudiated in all parts of the world, and not now defended except by the most mendacious. Yet, with this knowledge in his possession, he strangely complains that the “Apostolic See” has been “violently stripped of its temporal sovereignty” in disobedience of the divine law—pretending thereby that Christ exercised and possessed such sovereignty when upon earth, and that he, as his only representative, is his legitimate successor!

His mind must have been overflowing with exhilaration, when, giving full play to his imagination, he fancied himself thus elevated above and superior to all other human beings. But, like many others who indulge in similar flights and “build castles in the air,” the excesses of his fancy were checked by the conviction that the world was, at last, a practical reality in what concerns its welfare, and that the Italian people, who had for many centuries submitted to papal dominion, would not permit him to place the crown of temporal royalty upon his head. Seemingly saddened by this melancholy conviction, he found himself constrained to announce to his “venerable brothers” of the episcopacy that the papacy had been “reduced to a condition in which it can in no wise enjoy the full, free, and unimpeded use of its powers,” well knowing that it had not been deprived of any of its spiritual authority except that involved in his right to wear a temporal crown and govern the people arbitrarily asa temporal monarch. And then, under the stimulant of hope, he imposed upon them the religious obligation to labor for the restoration of this lost temporal power, by reminding -them how gloriously Pius [X had served the papacy by his efforts “ to re-establish the episcopal hierarchy ” in Scotland, in the face of the Government of England and the religious sentiment of the Scotch people. Under the influence of these mingled emotions of despondency and hope, his pontificate commenced. What fruits it is destined to bear are hidden in the womb of time. What he intends to accomplish, so far as he can, it is the duty of the civilized world to understand, not by what any cardinal, archbishop, bishop, or priest shall say, but as he himself has chosen officially to announce it. No other man upon earth besides him has the right, according to the papal theory, to prescribe a single tenet of religious faith, because he alone occupies the place of Christ upon earth!

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