LETTERS TO THE EDITOR.
THE "BLACK" POPE AND THE " WHITE " POPE. [To THE EDITOR OP THE "SPECTATOR."] Stn,—May I point out that in your interesting article on "The ' Black' Pope and the ` White' Pope," in the Spoctator of December 31st, the position you refute is not that taken up by the advocates of Papal independence in the present state of Italy ? That the Law of Guarantees is insufficient to secure for the Pope real independence—which is what Catholics maintain—is a proposition not refuted by your contention that at present the Pope is "perfectly free to exercise all his spiritual functions." For at present the Pope does not accept the Law of Guarantees. What is maintained is that it is in virtue of hie attitude of protest that the Pope has preserved the measure of independence which he still has, and which is a condition of the moral power he wields. The Law of Guarantees is revocable by Parliament ; and some of those who know Rome best, consider that if the Pope did accept it, its days would be numbered. It could never really work, and the Pope would soon find the law repealed, and himself in the position of a subject.
But even apart from this contingency there remains the grave issue stated by the Rome correspondent of the Times last week (December 26th) in a telegram by no means friendly to the Vatican. The greatest danger feared by the Vatican, should it accept the Law of Guarantees, is, he says, "that of arousing the suspicion of foreign Catholics that the Vatican was about to become more Italian than Catholic, and that the Church was in danger of being used as an instrument of Italian political aims."
Surely this is a very real danger; but the writer in the Spectator omits to consider it at all among the motives at work at the Vatican. If Frenchmen had regarded the Pope's exhor- tation that they should "rally" to the Republic as due to the influence of the Italian Government, his words would have failed to command respect. It is imperatively necessary that Catholics should be satisfied that the Pope's action is independent, and this is the essence of the demand of the Vatican. Daring a recent visit to Rome I conversed with many men of various ways of thinking ; and I found none who would demand on the Pope's behalf, as a condition of reconciliation with the Government, the restoration of the old Papal States, or who would ask for the revival of the old form of ecclesiastical government which existed up to 1870. The demand generally formulated by advocates of the temporal power is for the Pope's independence as Sovereign of Rome, together with a strip of land leading to a sea-port. But I have heard persons of great weight express the opinion that something less than this would be accepted were it offered, and that the Pope would consider in a con- ciliatory spirit any really earnest attempt at such a modus rivendi as would secure his independence in the eyes of the Catholic world. The intransigeance, it is maintained, is not on the side of the Vatican, but of the Italian Government, which is either unwilling or unable, in consequence of the anti-clerical majority in the Chamber, to make a serious attempt to solve a problem of which its ablest members certainly recognise the gravity.—I am, Sir, &c.,
WILFRID WARD.
[Our contention was that the Pope is ill advised in striving to become again "Sovereign of Rome, together with a strip of land leading to a sea-port," or of any other territorial possession carrying temporal power. Mr. Ward tells us that this is not the opinion of the persons with whom he conversed in Rome, which was what we assumed and deplored. Granted that the status quo is preferable to the Law of Guarantees, why cannot the Vatican maintain the status quo without pursuing a policy of attempting to injure the Italian King- dom wherever possible?—ED. Spectator.]
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