ADVICE GRATIS TO THE POPE. -T HE Papacy : a Revelation
and a Prophecy," is the title of an article in the Contemporary Review which might equally well have been christened " The Kernel and the Husk." For the Prophecy, which stands in the place of the husk, has this in common with other husks, that it exists for the sake of the kernel,—the Reve- lation. If the writer had not had something to reveal, he would not have assumed the prophet's mantle. His object in wearing it is plainly to give an air of importance to what he has to disclose. He who can look farthest into the future may be supposed to know most of the present and the past. Unfortunately, it is always possible to take this inference in the reverse order, and to infer possible ignorance of the future from actual ignorance of the present. This seems to us the pro- cess which is likely to bring us nearest to the truth in the present instance. The Papal Question is treated by the Contemporary Reviewer as though it were a mere incident of the Irish Question. Out of twenty-six pages, only ten are concerned with the Papacy ; the remaining sixteen are devoted to Monsignor Persico's mission,—not forgetting the inevitable " Richard Pigott of the Times." We are led on through an interesting preface to the distant vision of an interesting conclusion, but midway a deep ditch opens before us, which we have to get over as best we can. The " Revelation " may be dismissed in a very few words. It is founded on an entire misconception of the manner in which the need for the Papal Rescript arose. The Roman confessional depends on the existence of a supreme authority which can determine a moral controversy. So long as those on whom the guidance of souls ordinarily devolves speak with a united voice, there is no need to appeal to this supreme authority. But when they differ, when what is pronounced wrong in one diocese is pronounced right in another, there must be some one to decide which of the two views is the true one. If all the Irish Bishops had been of one mind about "Boycotting" and the " Plan of Campaign," the Pope might never have heard of them. It was when one or two Bishops denounced them as immoral, and therefore necessary to be renounced as a condition of absolution, that the Pope was compelled to intervene. The Contemporary Reviewer, like so many others who write or speak about Irish affairs, cannot bring himself to believe that the ordinary laws of morality are not suspended on behalf of his clients. If the Pope says that an Irish tenant is morally bound to pay his rent, the Pope must be ill-informed.
Demonstrations of this kind are but too familiar to us. Moral heresies cease to be attractive when they are reduced to practice. But though the kernel of the article is thus dry and dusty, it would be a mistake to leave the husk unread. The writer has at least the merit—rare now in all countries, specially rare, perhaps, in England—that he appreciates the greatness of the subject. He sees the permanent dignity of moral forces, their superiority in real in- terest to material forces, however imposing. He gives a really impressive account of the Pope's daily life, and admits, in momentary forgetfulness of Monsignor Persico, that " the spectacle is almost ideal." The mass Leo XIII. says and the mass he hears, the single glass of coffee that breaks his fast, the throng of visitors from every corner of the Catholic world that occupy his morning, his frugal dinner, his afternoon drive or walk in the gardens of the Vatican, the evening Rosary, the late interviews with the Cardinal Secretary in the room " where, by the light of the midnight lamp, Leo watches and thinks and prays for the welfare of the Church," are excellently de- scribed. The writer understands, too, what Englishmen so often forget, that " absolute independence is an indis- pensable condition for the free exercise of the spiritual power," and he sees that in Italy, " where the State is practically a rival Church, quite as determined to perse- cute as Torquemada or Calvin," this independence cannot be obtained by " the abandonment by the spiritual power of all temporal claims, and the recognition by the secular government that it has no authority in the spiritual realm." It is not strange to him, therefore, that " to the Pope it seems as part of the ordinance of God that he should dwell in Rome, and being resident there, that he should reign in the Eternal City as its temporal lord." He does not fall into the common error that Leo XIII. thinks this " because he cares for the sceptre of secular dominion " ; it is only because nothing short of sovereignty can, under the circumstances, secure him the freedom necessary for the exercise of his spiritual prerogatives." Though, " waking or sleeping, the idea of restoring the lost temporal dominion of his predecessors never leaves him," it is solely as the indis- pensable condition of the consolidation of his dominion over souls. But the writer's clear-sightedness in this respect does not prevent his seeing that the temporal sovereignty of the City of Rome would be an intolerable burden if it were restored. "Leo XIII. would find him- self hopelessly at a loss to discharge the duties of the position for which he sighs. None of the indispensable instruments of government are ready to his hand In less than a week the bad elements that lurk in every great city would have made a revolution, and in a fortnight the Italian troops would be enthusiastically welcomed as the only force by which Rome could be rescued from anarchy and bloodshed."
The Contemporary Reviewer is not the kind of man to- put up with a deadlock. He has a way out of the difficulty which would secure the spiritual independence of the Pope, by transplanting him to a region in which " the abandonment by the spiritual power of all temporal claims, and the recognition by the secular government that it has no authority in the spiritual realm," would become possible_ This abandonment and this recognition are alike English ideas. " Consequently the centre, the capital, the mother- city of the new world which Catholicism must conquer or perish, is not-to be found on the banks of the Tiber, but on the Thames." This change seems the more natural to the Reviewer because be has satisfied himself that the world " is passing into the hands of the English- speaking races ;" that in a hundred years " Italian, Spanish, and French will be but local dialects ;" that English ideas, English laws, English civilisation have the future to themselves ; and that if the Catholic Church has a providential mission, its " supreme affirmation will be the enforced hegira of the Pope from the Latin to the English world." It is, we confess, with a certain sense of bathos that we come down from this glowing picture to the statement that if the Pope is to win, it must be by a frank adoption of the principle—of local self-govern- ment. It is hard to say which of the writer's conditions will be the hardest trial to the Pope's patience. To give up the Latin world is to part from those who for three centuries have been almost his only friends. To adopt local self-government is to throw away the most perfectly centralised organisation that the world has seen. We cannot but feel that the Contemporary Reviewer would never have imposed this last sacrifice on Leo XIII. had it not been for Monsignor Persico. Home-rule being eternally righteous, a righteous Pope must of necessity be a Home- ruler. Centralisation must be forbidden even in morals, because in no other way can the right of Irish tenants to make their own moral code be placed beyond question. The whole character and future of the Papacy must be trans- formed in order to prove that Mr. Balfour cannot govern Ireland. Since the Chinaman gave up burning down his house to get roast pig, there has been no more striking example of disproportion between means and ends.
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