THE " TEMPORAL POWER."
AS we are apt to take a good deal more notice of a great fire in the next street than of those vast hydrogen cyclones in the Sun, whose flames sweep over, millions of miles, so it is not perhaps unnatural that in watching the military agony of France, we have paid far too little attention to an event which is as much more important than its proxi- mate cause, as is an explosion in the centre of our system than a wee bonfire on the surface of one of its smallest planets. The relative strength of France and Germany is but the incident of a generation, which, as it has changed in one direction with the growth of one set of periodic causes, may just as well change in another direction with the growth of another set of periodic causes ; there is nothing in the great reverses of France and successes of Germany which need be more than temporary, nothing in them which marks the end or beginning of an age. But the death of the Temporal Power of the Papacy, if death, as we believe, it proves, is a phenomenon of quite another order of historic importance. Succumbing as it has succumbed, after a duration of some eleven hundred and fifty years, to the National idea,—(the question to be addressed to the people of the Papal States is, we are told, to be whether or not they desire an "Italy one and indivisible,")—an idea against which it has only made head during the last twenty years by the aid of the Emperor's French garrison, the fall of the temporal power really marks an epoch if not as important as the great political revolution epoch of the last century, or the great philosophical revolution. of the century previous, at least much more so than any which only dates the relative predominance of one nation and the• inferiority of another. The end of the Temporal Power means the failure of an experiment of great grandeur, to which all the energy of the most popular and successful of Christian Churches has been heart and soul devoted. It means the failure of ecclesiastical ideas to override the affini- ties of national and popular feeling. It means a confession of- the impossibility of making a church do duty for a nation. It means a practical demonstration that a civil government built upon a theological system and a dogmatic theory, is a civil government built upon the sand. The Ultramontanes have often told us that " the rains descended and the floods came, and the wind blew and beat upon that house, and it fell not, for it was founded on a rock,"—the rock of Peter. To this the world can now reply that at least as far as civil govern- ment is concerned their assertion is false,—for "it fell, and great was the fall of it." The " infallible " Church, after 1150 years' trial, has failed to construct a single solid society or government rooted in the conscience and affections of the people. The domestic feelings of Christendom triumphed over the Church at the time of the Reformation, for she attempted to override instead of pacifying them. The national feelings of Christendom triumph over her now, for the same reason ; she has not sanctioned and sanctified the political aspirations of nations, but, on the contrary, striven to crush them. Hence the slow dwindling of the political power of the Papacy, up to the moment of its recent dissolution. The secular power of the Papacy arose from the most natural possible causes. When the Goths and Lombards invaded Italy, the only power which stood firm and undismayed, was the power which rested on a deep spiritual faith ; and of course- around it the elements of a new secular society began rapidly to crystallize. It has just fallen from causes precisely corre- sponding to those from which it arose. Instead of exerting a creative, sustaining, and sanitary influence on the affairs of the world, it had for centuries been exerting a cramping and destructive influence upon them. Instead of standing as a fresh spiritual power among the discords of earthly passions, uttering the voice of the purest consciences, and boldly opposing the march of stately injustice, it had become a power that finessed with Courts for its own temporal safety,—that too often blessed princes who had their feet on the necks of the people, if only they supported the Pope against his enemies, that resisted despotism (as in Poland) only when despotism happened to be schismatic,—that withdrew its half-formed and faltering blessing on Italian freedom the moment it seemed likely to endanger Papal authority,—and, in a word, more than compensated the wholesome influence of the most spiritual elements in its Christian faith, by its public exhibition of political imbecility, helplessness, and time-serving towards the powers of the world. The "Vicar of Christ," as the Popes have all loved to call themselves, gained his temporal power because he could honestly say with Christ, "The Prince- of this world cometh and hath nothing in me." He lost it because, if he had had at once self-knowledge and candour, he might truly have said, at least in his capacity of temporal ruler, " The- Prince of this world hath made me his slave ; Christ cometh, and hath nothing in me." The fall of the temporal power is, in fact, the result of the loss of that spiritual power which the- Popes once exerted. When they were more truly spiritual rulers than the secular powers of the world, they grew in strength ; when they became less spiritual than the secular powers of the world, they lost in strength ; when they became• nearly the least truly spiritual of all the rulers of the nations, and began to force their affiances and to mould their policy with less real concern for the true liberty, strength, and manliness. of the people under their control, than even the most blun- dering and coarse of the popular Governments around them, their temporal power was doomed, and awaited but the fall of" a few artificial props, to expire.
But the fall of the Temporal Power is so great an event, not- merely because it marks the final failure of the first great and, serious attempt to push a spiritual theology systematically into the political and social outworks of every-day life, but- because it cannot but modify the attitude of millions towards- the authority of the only Church which wields a really great; externalauthority,—an authority independent of the spiritual truth it preaches,—over the imaginations and consciences of
men. The 'Eternal City' has been a sort of standing monu- ment to the power of that Church and her great place in history. The Pope has been a spiritual power standing apart from all the world, in the capital of that old pagan empire over which he triumphed,—nay, at the centre, we may say, of all human history,—on an island which defied the gross authority of political States. The Roman Catholics have been quite right in their almost instinctive feeling that this position of his had a great charm for the imaginations of men,that his subjection to the authority of any secular power would have dissipated that charm, destroyed his unique position, and assimilated his position to that of the ordinary religious potentates of earth, the various patriarchs and archbishops who are subject to the laws of their respec- tive States, and are unable to emancipate their minds from the influences which those laws naturally exercise. With the temporal power that distinctive position departs. Wherever he stays or goes, the Pope will have to reckon with the powers that be. Even if the Leonine city should be permanently left under his rule, he will not be able within so narrow a realm to bid defiance to the civil laws of the city and kingdom from which that realm is hollowed out. The tradition of centuries will be broken. The singular destiny which has appeared— no doubt, very falsely — to protect him absolutely from the rude interference of human polities, will be at an end. There will no longer be a spot of earth where a Roman Catholic penetrated with the ecclesiastical system in which he has been educated can live without incurring rude collisions with the actual life of the age. The protective system established over the conscience,—which, however, in the Roman States has unfortunately not proved inconsistent with such great con- cessions to the spirit of the world as the establishment of State lotteries,—will have to consult everywhere the con- ditions imposed by the morale of the political Societies amidst which the Church finds herself. Undoubtedly, one great fas- cination of Roman Catholicism will have disappeared. Rome will have become Roman as distinguished from Roman Catholic. The Vatican will be only one of the curiosities in the capital of Italy ; and foreign Catholics will criticize the " Italian " influences at work upon the Vatican. The cosmopolitan cha- racter of the Church will necessarily suffer. Those who submitted to the Roman Pontiff may hesitate to submit to the Italian Pontiff. The mere authority of the Pope must dwindle ; his spiritual authority will again begin to depend on his spiritual character, on the severity of his justice, the boldness of his resistance to wrong, the truthful- ness of his intellect, the sincerity of his humility and love. As his prestige departs, he will be driven back on his real spiritual resources, and the weak and bad and narrow-minded Popes will have less and less power to rule the Church.
Again, the fall of the Temporal Power, directly it is seen to be permanent, will strike a final blow at the theory of the Pope's infallibility. For the Pope, when " speaking ex cathedral, and in discharge of the office of Pastor and Doctor of all Christians," and defining " by virtue of his supreme apos- tolic authority," has committed himself to the view that the temporal power is necessary in the divine plan to the execu- tion of the spiritual duties of the Vicar of Christ. And now the very Pope who has expressed himself on these matters with the greatest clearness and vigour, and who has just been declared infallible in all such utterances, is deprived of the temporal power under circumstances which seem to promise that that deprivation will be final. Can there be a harder blow at the doctrine of the infallibility of this organ of the Church of God ? Can there be a heavier blow at the external authority of the Church which declared that infallibility ? Of course, it will not strike home till the world sees that the Temporal Power is gone, not to be restored ; but this, we imagine, it will begin to see very soon. That the Roman Catholic Church may continue to live, in some sense or other, by its theology, and its doctrine, and its social spirit, after the assumption of final authority which has hitherto been its great distinction from all other Churches, is universally rejected, we think very probable and desirable. But the death of the present and visible organiza- tion must precede such a resurrection. It must die to dog- matic authority before it can live again to spiritual influence.
The history of the Temporal Power of "The Vicar of Christ " has, indeed, been a strange parody on the history of him whose Vicar he claims to be,—of him of whom it is written that when he " perceived that they would come and take him by force to make him a king, he departed into a mountain himself alone." His " Vicars," on the contrary, as they proudly term them-
selves, when they have seen the people coming by force to take away their kingdom, have summoned all the powers of the world to defend and fortify the mountain on which they are enthroned,—not alone, but among palaces and courts. Hitherto there has almost always been some one of these powers which thought it its interest to lend that aid. Now, for the first time, that aid seems likely to be permanently withheld. The sceptre is departed from the Pontiff and the lawgiver from between his feet ; and he has to learn once more the lesson of the Early Church, how to leaven with spiritual leaven a world in which he exerts no external power. It will be a hard trial, and one that will lead to the decomposition and reorganize, tion of the Roman, and perhaps many other, Churches, before its full effects are seen ; but still we will believe that the death of the Temporal Power will issue in the resurrection of a truer spiritual power than Europe has had any experience of during centuries of petty ecclesiastical tyrannies, and not very much less petty ecclesiastical rebellions.
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