PIO NONO, ON THE DECAY OF HIS TEMPORAL POWER. THE
civil power of the Pope has departed, and the present occu- pant of the Papal chair is the most vehement in proclaiming the fact. Is there no discreet person at Rome who can persuade his Holiness either not to deliver speeches to his cardinals, or to take care if he does so, that they shall not be reported to a profane world. If one did not pity, one must ridicule the spectacle of agonized helplessness which Pio None presents at this moment. Surely, a Pope may be reduced to painful straits and yet preserve his dignity. The prisoner of Savona had to deal with the most relentless and imperious mind developed in this century, yet he fought a good fight with his unscrupulous foe. Pio Nono, poor man, knows not either to yield with gracefulness or contend with dignity. He does not fold his robe as he falls, but he sits on the prickly seat prepared by the eldest son of the Church, weeps aloud, and rends his garments. Peter was warned against the use of the sword. The successor of Peter, whose predecessors would hold the sword and use it, in spite of the divine injunction, is torn with agonized feelings, because the forbidden implement is snatched from his grasp. It is a most painful, most pitiful sight. What could he do more if he were deprived of his spiritual power, and denied his spiritual supremacy ? There may be parallels for the Allocution of December the 17th,
but it would be easier to find contrasts. Did any other Pope ever make this confession ? "In fact, we have to deplore the have- alien of perverse doctrine which, sprung from the principles of the disastrous Reformation, has acquired almost the force of public law." This is a cry of terror. There are "impious men who proclaim themselves the sons of the Church," but the Pope "must call them sons of darkness." In many, he dreads to say how many countries of Europe, "the most pernicious errors on the power and rights of the Church" have penetrated. His Holiness finds an universal protest against the sacred dogma that a Pope may do what he likes with his own.
In one country, men labour incessantly to invalidate a Con-
cordat; in another, they endeavour to shut out Ceneordats alto- gether; in a third, they set them aside. In Baden, for instance, contrary to all justice, the Grand Duke, yielding to an opposition in the Chamber, has audaciously substituted for the Concordat a law "in the highest degree contrary to the liberty of the Church ; " which has been ingeniously defined as the liberty to take liberties with other people. Yet, while Pio None claims a power above the civil authority of every country, he issues no bull of excommunica- tion not even against the Duke of Baden.; he refrains from placing him and his subjects under an interdict. This is an unwilling homage to that perverse doctrine which has acquired almost the force of public law. And while he is troubled with this Baden business, lo, M. Cayla publishes his pamphlet proposing to endue the Emperor Napoleon with the headship of the Roman Catholic Church of France, and, it is hardly credible, yet it is true, the Pope actually descends to notice M. Cayla, and denounce and im- pute his pernicious suggestions. "What injustice," he naïvely exclaims, "does the author of the afore-mentioned pamphlet not do to the most illustrious French nation, in believing that that na- tion, the most attached to Catholic unity, could let itself be drawn into sohismatical errors 1" Alas, his Holiness forgets that the most illustrious nation, only seventy years ago, set up a Goddess of Reason ; at a later date, it deprived a predecessor of his Holiness of his power, his territory, making him a prisoner ; and that even now the Romagna, Umbria' and the Marches, have fallen away from his Holiness with the tacit consent of the chief of that illustrious nation.
The fact is that all the Pope deplores is the loss of civil power and temporal dominion. Quite as intolerant as any Pope, and as every Pope is bound to be, he puts forth the most sweeping claim to power, and allows it to be seen that what he deplores is the fact that outraged humanity has torn the sword from his grasp, and no longer will permit it to be wielded with ruthless severity for tempdral purposes, on the plea that thereby his spiritual obli- gations are fulfilled. He draws no distinction between spiritual and temporal, but boldly stigmatizes the destruction of his tem- poral power as the destruction of "religion." No stronger evi- dence of the decay of the Papacy, as a political power, could be afforded than this Chinese-like Allocution. Whatever good the Papacy may have done in ages of barbarism, for the last three hundred years, and in all parts of the world, it has been produc- tive of nothing but the direst misfortunes to mankind. Every nation has suffered from its pretensions, and where it has most power, there exists the greatest desire to see it decently extinguished. A correspondent of our own has recently pleaded for the preserva- tion of the Papal seat at Rome. To this we see no objection, providing the 'Pontiff be deprived there and elsewhere of every vestige of civil authority. There is not, says an able writer, "the smallest reason why those who regard a Roman primacy as essential to the idea of a true Church, should not have their primacy left them, so that only it is not left in a condition to east a continual leaven of secular disturbance amongst a people mor- tally sick of ecclesiastical secular sovereignty." And with the primacy, a palace for its abode--" the Vatican and a garden "— but no more power to enforce its pernicious laws at the point of the temporal sword. The Allocution of December the 17th reads like a last dying speech, and we heartily trust it may prove the last dying speech of the temporal power of the Popes.
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