THE PERIL OF THE ROMAN CHURCH.
NO one who reads carefully Mr. St. George Mivart's letter in the Times of Tuesday will regard us as using the language of exaggeration when we speak of the peril of the Roman Church. We are anxious not to embarrass Mr. Mivart by Protestant praise and sympathy in his brave and able protest against the direct action of the leaders of the Roman Catholic Church in France, and the toleration, if not actual approval, accorded to them at Rome, but we cannot forego a word of admiration for his manliness and courage. Remember that Mr. Mivart is a sincere and devout Catholic, and yet because he thinks his spiritual leaders in the wrong he has not hesitated to speak out, and to speak out strongly on a point in regard to which the rulers of his Church are specially sensitive. It must, we do not doubt, have cost Mr. Mivart much pain to write as he writes, but he may have the consolation of feeling that he has given the best possible answer to those who declare that Roman Catholics always make their spiritual and religious ideas and opinions depend, not on the dictates of conscience, but on the orders of the Hierarchy above them.
Mr. Mivart, after stating, and stating, as we believe, correctly, that the majority of English Roman Catholics (he goes further indeed, and says of Catholics generally outside France) have reprobated the Anti-Dreyfusism and Anti-Semitism of the French Bishops and clergy, proceeds to deal in detail with his two points, " the cause of the recent French madness as it appears to us," and " the Pope's amazing and appalling silence." With his first point we do not propose to deal on the present occasion, though we may just mention his account of the great injury done to Roman Catholicism in France when the Church supported the coup (Mat and the "un- mitigated despotism " of the Second Empire. That which he holds "Catholics have far the most cause to lament is the Papal silence." To keep silent, he declares, " may often be to participate in the evil left undenounced." " How eminently, how, above all, must this apply to him who stands up as the supreme ruler of the Christian conscience and the direct and immediate representative on earth of the God of truth, goodness, and justice ! " But it is not only the absence of any condemnation, "it is the recep- tion, not only without any public censure, but with positive commendation, of the Redemptionist miscreant, Bailly of La Croix ! So scandalous a circumstance all Catholics must deeply deplore; and what a lost oppor- tunity for doing incalculable good ! This, too, as a priest writes to me, is the moment chosen by Leo XIII. to disparage the " National virtues " in his American letter —i.e., truth, honour, justice, and fair play.' " Apologists say that Leo XIII. was silent because he did not like to offend France ! " Offend France ! God's vicar to refrain from telling men what their duty is, for fear of conse- quences ! As if God could not he trusted with the con- sequences of any acts done in fulfilment of his behests ! " After mentioning how the Pope and the Cardinals misled the world in the case of Galileo, he points out that Dreyfus is the Galileo of the nineteenth century, " and through him authority has now misled the world with respect to morals, with the probable result that other millions of Catholics will, one by one, abandon Catholicity." Next Mr. Mivart asks how can we account for the Pope's recent conduct. His answer is that the Pope's mouth is closed by the "Roman Congregations," " the highest and the worst" of which is "the Holy Office—the Inquisition." In effect, Mr. Mivart infers that the Pope is in the posi- tion of the Mikado forty years ago, only the Shogun is not an individual, but a Committee of Cardinals, who do their work in secrecy and with despotic power. They strike but they do not hear the victim, and they strike in the name of the Pope and of the Church. Mr. Mivart then dwells fiercely upon the injury done by mistaking abstractions for concrete realities, "and this emphatically applies to that abstract term ' the Church.' In sober truth 'the Church' has no existence anywhere in the world, but only a number of men and women who have real relations to their surroundings ; just as no such thing as the horse' exists, but only a number of variously coloured and shaped real, concrete horses. Amongst the many men who by their real relations constitute the so-called Church ' a very small minority are ecclesiastics ; and defer- ence' and ' obedience to the Church' really means deference and obedience to these men. Now the symbol used by Christ of Himself as 'the Good Shepherd' is a beautiful and appropriate one ; but it may be useful, now and again, to bear in mind that sheep' are amongst the Most stupid of animals and that they are preserved and cared for in order that they may be fleeced and fed on." The Roman Congregations, he goes on to say, consist of men who have obtained more or less " of what most men care for, influence, power, and some ways and means.' Doubtless many of them are excellent and holy men, actuated by the best intentions ; but it is only natural that, as a body, the Curialists should try to move heaven and earth to keep the advantages they have obtained. I have a suspicion, however, that their dogmatising in the name of an abstraction is a process rapidly approaching its end." Mr. Mivart ends his letter by expressing his regret that so excellent and venerable a Pope as Leo XIII. " should thus find himself hampered and ensnared by the neglect of his predecessors to reform their judicial proce- dure, as those of all other Courts have been reformed, instead of continuing in a condition profoundly abhorrent, not only to Englishmen, Americans, and all English. speaking people, but to the whole civilised world."
We do not doubt that Mr. Mivart is right in attributing a good deal of the peril in which the Roman Church now stands to its use of the effete and tyrannical machinery employed by the Curia, nor do we think that he exag- gerates the condition of ferment, unrest, and angry pro- test into which a large part of the Roman Catholic world has been thrown by recent events. One side of that fel.; ment is shown by a communication made to our corre- spondence column this week. But though we admit that the Congregations fully deserve the condemnation se liberally dealt out to them by Mr. Mivart, they are only the proximate cause of the Church's peril. The ultimate cause is infinitely deeper and more serious. What in the last resort has prevented the reform of the Curia, and has been the cause of the offences both of omission and commission of which Rome has been guilty in connec- tion with the Dreyfus case, is the adoption of a peli- tical instead of a spiritual ideal. What has so deeply injured the true work of the Roman Church during the last quarter of a century, what has culminated in the scandal of the past year, is the indulgence of the lust for worldly power and influence. The Cardinals of the Curia, the men who speak and act in the name of the Pope and the Church, instead of attending to the interests of religion, have had their thoughts fixed on the regaining of the temporal power. When they should have been yearning and striving to compass the Kingdom of God upon earth and the regeneration of mankind, they have been scheming and plotting how once more to domineer in a city of some hundred thousand inhabitants. It is its servitude to political aims that has put the Roman Church in peril. Let the men who rule the Church cease to be politicians, and learn once again to be fishers of men instead of conspirators against the unity of Italy, and the Roman Church may once more be strong. The civilised world was shocked to find the Curia doing nothing to suppress the evil passions aroused in Catholic France by the Dreyfus case ; but the Curia no doubt honestly thought the demand most unreasonable. They them- selves had been working with, or at any rate not dis- couraging, Socialists and Republicans and every form of malcontent in order to put down the King of Italy, salving their consciences with the thought that these disagreeable things must be done if one is to carry out a great policy. Hence they no doubt thought it the most natural thing in the world that Bishops and priests should stand shoulder to shoulder with M. Henri Rochefort and M. Drumont, and that La Croix should adopt the artifices of the most outrageous and most venomous of secular newspapers. The Roman Church is in peril because she has given her heart to political ambition, and has neglected the things of the spirit. As a matter of fact, Italy offers her the amplest security for her independence and her wealth, but even if the Pope were reduced to a friar's habit and the humblest cottage, and the members of the Curia were no longer to be allowed their purple and fine linen, the Papacy would be an infinitely stronger force than it is now. Even at the risk of being told that we show 'the habitual impertinence and ignorance of the Protestant' we would implore the Roman Catholics of England and America and Germany to take a wide and fearless view of the situation, and to do their best to insist upon the Vatican abandoning for ever her claims to temporal power. If that is done, and the politicians are banished from the Vatican, or forced to change their protocols, their special reports. and their secret understandings into sermons and theological treatises, the Church may be saved from her present perils. If not there can be bet one end. She will not perish, of course, but she will vacate her high place, and leave the religious future of the world in other bands than hers. To be concrete, she will become the Church of the Latin races, and of the Latin races alone, and will share their narrowing fortunes. If, on the other hand, she throws off her politics and her politicians, and becomes at the centre and the heart a reformed and spiritual entity, her strength and vitality may still become as great as at the very best periods of her history.
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