TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE POPE'S NEW POSITION.
IF the decree of Infallibility were to be passed at all, it would have been a wise thing on the part of the Vatican Council to choose a Pope of special prudence and sagacity under whom it should have been first inaugurated. It is quite true that the Roman Catholics themselves attach no new importance at all to the mere opinions of the Pope, whether publicly or privately uttered, so long as they are not formal declarations of doctrine officially uttered by the Pope as teacher of the Church. Still as a matter of fact it cannot be doubted that the declaration of the dogma has attracted a quite unusual attention to all the Pope says. Protestants can't help reflecting that what the Pope drops in conversation with Cardinals or deputations, he may perhaps also be moved to embody in a formal docu- ment which will bind the conscience of the whole Roman Catholic Church. We heretics, at all events while the no- tion of an infallible individual organ of truth is novel to the world, and full of the piquancy of a new interest, may naturally watch all the Pope's sayings as at least sign-posts which may lead to something that all the great Roman Catholic world will be forced to believe. Admit if you please that it is not through any supposed inspiration of the Pope, but solely by the same Providence which is said to watch over the fall of a sparrow, that his official utterances are supposed in the Catholic sense to be preserved from error. That, no doubt, is the Roman Catholic view. But then it will be admitted probably that the Pope's own opinions afford in a human sense some criterion of what he is pretty sure never to declare, and a clue at least to the subjects on which,—at all events if invited from without,—he might be likely to desire to " teach " the Church his own convictions. It is im- possible that the immediate neighbourhood of infallibility,— even though it be a purely instrumental and Providential, not a rational or intellectual infallibility,—can be watched without profound interest by those who are sceptical of human infallibility altogether ; and it is natural and human, even if in the Roman Catholic sense an unjustifiable sort of conjecture, to draw inferences from what the Pope says out of his own inmost convictions, as to what he may some day be tempted to say as an ex-officio teacher of the Church. Looked at in this light, we cannot help thinking that Roman Catholics must feel annoyed that the strong concentration of attention on the Holy See which is due to the declaration of the dogma, should have occurred in the lifetime of a Pope who cannot be said to have anything of the statesman in him, and hardly anything even of the wary and acute ecclesiastic who studies "the economies" of divine government no less than the moral and spiritual aspects of divine truth. A few years ago the utterances of the Pope were hardly glanced at by Protestant States on any subjects not particularly affecting the relations of Rome with the local hierarchies of other nations. But now, and all in consequence of this sudden blaze of light necessarily turned on all indications of views which it may become incumbent on a great many millions of men to accept bond fide, everything the Pope says is telegraphed all over Europe, and scanned with an eagerness and sometimes with a passion that must make the conversa- tional remarks of his Holiness quite uncomfortably im- portant.
Within the last few days the Pope has made two remarks, only one of which, indeed, can be in any sense called doc- trinal, and which are neither of them, we suppose, ex cathedrd, and neither of them therefore at all imposed on the con- sciences of Roman Catholics, but which nevertheless seem likely to exercise a most important and most prejudicial influence on the chances of the Church with wavering Protestants. The first is the Allocution pronounced on December 23, before twenty- two Cardinals, in which the German persecution of the Church was mentioned and inveighed against in a fashion which has made Germany boil with almost hysterical resentment, so much does the word " impudenter," applied to the assertions of the German statesmen, lacerate the feelings of the loyal German public. For our own parts, we wonder a little at the excitement which is expressed. The Pope has always made a habit of scolding very freely all whom he thought his enemies, and the language applied to the German statesmen is mild compared to that which has been a hundred times fulminated against Italian statesmen and their master. Moreover, the fact of the German persecution of the Roman Church cannot be denied, whoever may be to blame for it ; nor do we under- stand how the Emperor-King can be personally included ire the number of those who are said to have "shamelessly asserted that the Holy Roman Catholic religion has suffered- no harm from the measures taken,—as we are not aware that the Emperor himself has ever made such an assertion.. Still the Germans, — whose sensitiveness just now is the more curious, that we are accustomed to think extreme sensitiveness the sign rather of a restless and uneasy- sense of diminishing dignity, than of such political grandeur as they have undoubtedly attained,—are unquestionably in a, white heat of rage at the language used in the following- passage, in which, after referring to the cruel persecutions (" saevae persecutiones,"—the Pope of the time of Diocletian, would hardly have called these persecutions " saevae"), —to which the Church is now subjected, the Pope adds :—"Maxime in novo Germanic° Imperio ubi non occultis tantum machinationibus sed apertit quoque vi, illi funditus subvertendae adlaboratur.. Siquidem vizi, qui non modo non profltentur sanctissimam religionem nostram, sed nee ipsam norunt, potestatem sibi vindicant praeflniendi dogmata et jura Catholicae Ecclesiae. Et darn earn praefracte divexant, impudenter asserere non dubitant- nullum illi a se inferri detrunentum;—imo calumniam ac- irrisionem addentes injuriae, saevientem persecutionem vitio. vertere non verentur Catholicorum ;—scilicet quod eorum Praesules et Clerus una cum fldeli populo praeferre renuant civilis Imperil leges et placita sanctissimis Doi et Ecclesiae legibas, et a religioso officio suo desciscere idcirco recusent."" That is in Pio Nono's usual style of somewhat querulous anct decidedly acrimonious comment on his enemies. It certainly is not diplomatic language ; but he at least has never affected to- describe the hostilities waged against the Church in diplomatic- language; and we are quite sure that if he had described like- British conduct in like terms, nobody would have taken much more notice of it in this country than of a similar charge from Cardinal Cullen. The Germans are certainly in a wonder- fully hysterical state. They inaugurate a national campaign- against the Roman Church and the Jesuits with a great flourish of trumpeta and universal joy at the greatness of the under- taking, and then they take bitter offence because the Pope- scolds them in angry Latin, calls it shameless in their leaders to say that what they have done does not hurt the Church in Germany, and remarks that it is adding insult to injury to- turn a severe persecution into a fresh accusation against. the Catholics, because, forsooth! the Catholic authorities and clergy, acting with the people, decline to prefer the law anct edicts of a civil empire to the laws of God and the Church. We certainly should not have expected the Pope to say less on an occasion of that sort, looking to his usual habits of very free speech. But we cannot doubt that the want of self- command observable in this Latin objurgation,—the 'impuden- ter ' really does remind one of the kind of adverb a woman flings. at her departing antagonist out of the window, or what is- much the same thing, of the.bepraised invective of Cicero'e Ora- tions,—has been emphasised a hundred times by the importance which the dogma has lent to all the Pope's recent utterances. That an authority who on any occasion whatever can say that the statesmen of the German Empire do anything shamelessly should be regarded as the chosen Secretary of Infallible- Wisdom by a large portion of their fellow-subjects, irritates, them to an unendurable degree. Of course they don't believe this themselves. Still it adds a sting to the Pope's unpleasant adverb to think that in the opinion of many millions, the adverbs are—sometimes at least—chosen for him by a. direct exercise of didactic omniscience.
But the second of the Pope's recent observations is far more likely still to injure the Roman Catholic Church. The German ill-humour will blow over ; and even if it does not, even if Lieutenant Stumm never goes back to Rome, it is by no means certain that the German Romanists or- hesitating Protestants will take much account of the impu- denter ' launched at Prince Bismarck ; but how about this remark of the Pope's to the Roman nobles,—a remark absurdly misreported by Mr. Renter's Roman agent,—that "Jesus loved the aristocracy, and had willed to be born a noble," —i. e., a. descendant of the royal house of David ? Now, though Joseph is alleged to be of that house by both the genealogies of the Messiah, unless the Virgin Mary were also of the house of David, —a conjecture, but a mere conjecture, for which there is not a. particle of evidence,—Christ, though he would have had the legal privilege of the heir of David, would not have had any per- sonal connection with the noble ancestry that the Pope claims for Him. Does not Christ, indeed, himself half disclaim the lineage of David, at the same time that he claims a greater lineage, when he points out, that David in the spirit calls the Messiah his Lord, and not his son But putting that point aside, the allegation that Jesus loved the aristocracy amounts almost to a dictum of a doctrinal kind, for surely any statement as to the personal affections of the Saviour of the World would be doctrinal, though we cannot conceive any statementmore destitute of specific evi- dence in the Gospels. If there be a marked class-bias at all in the teachings of Christ, it is towards the poor and wretched. "Blessed be ye poor, for yours is the kingdom of God." "But woe unto you rich, for you have received your consolation." "It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God." There is not a trace either in Christ's own language or in that of his disciples of respect for high birth or any of the concomi- tants of high birth. St. Paul expressly avers that "not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble (62 EvE7c), are called." And the whole bias of the New Testament is unquestionably arid very naturally,—as well perhaps as very supernaturally,—a bias against wealth and rank. The Pope, therefore,—occasional organ of Omniscience though he is supposed to be,—seems to have touched the confines of a public dogmatic error. But that is not the worst. It is not simply a blunder of the Pope's, it is a blunder which is one of the most unfortunate kind, in the present age of the Church. Let him say, if he will, that an aristocracy strengthens a throne, and that thrones which have no aristocracies between them and the people are weak. That is a bit of very doubtful political philosophy, which the recent history of Belgium, so far as it goes, does not support, and which the whole history of Russia, and by the way of the Roman Empire itself, cer- tainly tends to refute. Still the Pope may make his casual blunder in political philosophy if he will, the Church will not suffer. But for a Pope of this day,—the head of the Church whose strongest Western support is in America, where there is no aristocracy, and in Ireland, where the aristocracy is certainly not its strength, the Church which is at war with the State in Poland, on the direct road to separation from the State in Germany, and on the eve of separation in Switzerland ; which, as all its keenest advisers have been urging for some time back, must look for its future in the hearts of the people,—for the Pope of such a Church as this to be preaching to the world, contrary to all evidence, that Jesus loved aristocracies —in some special sense of course, or the phrase would have no meaning—that he chose to take up—not the lot of a Galilean peasant and artificer, but that of a scion of a royal house, out of special love of rank, seems to us the very insanity of Papal gossip. Not long ago we quoted from Bishop 17llathorne the very statesmanlike and judicious remark, "Drive the Bishops from their palaces, they will find a refuge in the poor man's cot- tage. Snatch the jewelled crozier from their hands, and they will grasp a staff of wood. If ever a Catholic Bishop was strong, he is strong in this hour of the world. He is strong, because he lives a simple and frugal life. He is strong in the affection and devotion of his people, and in the exercise of that loving ministry, on their part, which make both the truth and its representatives even more precious and dear to their souls." Bishop Vaughan the other day at Manchester went very nearly as far. And now half the effect of appeals such as these to the popular character of Catholicism is to be countermined by the Pope's 'declaration that Jesus Christ did not choose to be born out of the ranks of the aristocracy from his special love for aristocracies Was ever a remark, whether true or false, more mal a propos in a statesman's sense ? Will not the very friends of Papal Infallibility begin to feel uneasy as they hear it, and bethink themselves that they have at least, whether reluctantly or not, lent a great stimulus by the Dogma to the self-confidence of the most inefficient statesman in Europe, and that this is the result ? Surely the new wine of Infallibility should have been poured into a new bottle. Surely it is already fermenting in the old bottle, and threatening to burst its antique case ?
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