WISEMAN ON THE CONCORDAT.
WHEN Cardinal Wiseman tells us that the language of the Papal Concordat is a Latin "peculiar to Catholic ecclesiastical diplomacy, the words of which have a meaning different from that of ordinary Latin," we cannot but feel how unfortunate it is that Roman Catholic authorities should so frequently fall into this non-natural and therefore unintelligible language. It prevents the public from
rceiving the relation between the Roman Church and its head. e general interpretation of the Austro-Roman Concordat, the Cardinal tells us, is so unlike the real purport of the document, that it m as different as if it had been some miserable fiction, or a romance, or a laughable production. Now it has been generally represented in this country as aiming to restore, or rather to esta- blish throughout the Austrian empire, a supremacy of Papal au- thority totally destructive of civil liberty or of civil equality for the subject before the law : but that conception of it, the Cardinal asserts, is "a miserable fiction," "a romance " ; so that the real in- tent of the Concordat must be something different, or even oppo- site. If so, it is to be regretted that the Cardinal did not give us the key—that he did not show us where the Concordat protects the liberty of the subject, waives the supremacy of the Church, and confirms the freedom of the State. But his own lan- guage, we suppose, is as non-natural as the peculiar Latin to
which he refers ; for we find no explanation, we only perceive a very solemn rebuke for venturing to judge in haste, when authori- ties so high as the Council of the Austrian empire and the Pope have been engaged for two years on the clauses of the Concordat. The subject is altogether new to the English, he says; it is clothed, too, in the peculiar language of Catholic ecclesiastical diplomacy ; yet." a newspaper editor, with a dashing and flowing pen, writes an indignant article, blowing the whole thing to pieces." We have seen many articles on the Concordat in the newspapers, though perhaps not all, and it appears to us that they are remarkably spe- cific ; while the whole argument of the Cardinal, so far as it is pub- lished, is as strikingly devoid of any specific statement whatsoever. He defends that which we called interference of a foreign power during the Papal aggression, five years ago ; he deprecates our "interference," at present, " in the matter of this Concordat, which is purely an affair between Austria and the see of Rome, with which we have nothing to do"; while he returns thanks to the Divine goodness for this fresh boon to the Church and " His faith- ful disciples." For the Pope to claim authority in a foreign land is not " interference" ; but for us to notice what he does abroad, to talk about it, or even look at it,—that is "interference." The Ca- tholic authority may steal our horse, but we must not look over the hedge at the Catholic while he is preparing himself for his enterprise. But what cannot be done, when you once adopt the non-natural principle ? Let us concede that to the Cardinal, and there is no- thing that would not follow from it. Reading the language of the Concordat in its natural sense, we gather from it certain provisions securing privileges to the priesthood as a class. Let us take one example. Great privileges are secured to the priesthood, secular or regular, under the operation of the criminal law, throughout the Austrian dominions. If a priest be arraigned, his bishop must have notice of it ; the accused is to be confined separately ; if he be sentenced, the bishop must take part in the punishment as to spiritualities ; the accused must still be confined in a separate place, and if it be only for a misdemeanour, in a monastery—that is, in a home of his order. If he have property, unlike a lay felon, he will be free to dispose of it; and as the Church is open to the reception of any property, though it is closed against the aliena- tion of property, we can easily understand what felons under such circumstances might do with their lands and goods. This, how- ever, is only the natural interpretation of the clauses in tlal Con- cordat : but the Cardinal says that we must take them in some non-natural sense—as not intending to have the practical force which the words appear to have. If we read that there is to be separate confinement, special privileges, even for felons, and a cer- tain complicity between the felon and the Church, so that the felon be a consecrated person, an anointed rogue, that is all a mis- take. Again, if there be an appearance of handing over the ma- nagement of schools to the bishop and the clergy, that also is only the natural, not the non-natural or right interpretation. But they report to us from Hungary, that Protestant schools have just been suppressed because they have not been licensed by the State; the Concordat, be it remembered, having become law from the date of its promulgation. Again, a man who is accused of some triflins offence by the Police at Bologna has been claimed by the Inquisi- tion, not on the score of his innocence, but on the score of his " pertaining " to the Holy Office. Apart, then, from the text of the Concordat, what are we to do with these practical operations of ecclesiastical authority ? Are we to read them in a " non- natural" sense ? Has Galletti, the offender at Bologna, been sur- rendered only in the body and in some mystical manner, but not surrendered in fact? Have the schools been suppressed only doc- trinally, but kept up in fact ? Are the realities non-natural, as well as the Apostolic instrument? It is the old Tale of a Tub over again. If this piece of bread is not good wholesome veritable mutton, you, Martin and John, are condemned to eternal perdition. In vain you say that it is only bread—that it tastes like bread, feels like it, and has the smell of bread : that is only the-natural interpretation. Being given you from the hands of Peter, you must accept the bread in a non-na- tural sense—suppose that it has the gravy imputed to it, the sa- vour of ozmazone, and relish it in your heart of hearts with a pious conviction of the butcher although your senses would refer it to the baker. This is easy on paper, but how difficult is it in sub- stance ! The wonderful casuistry it must require to convince the mortified temporal Police of Bologna that Galletti has not been given up by the civil power in a natural way, but that, by some hocus-pocus, the civil power still is independent, and has its own securities. In Hungary it happens that the population is Pro- testant, and the schools are suppressed by an alien clergy ; yet the parents, we presume, in consistency with Cardinal Wiseman's doctrine, are to receive their discharged children home in a non- natural sense—are, as it were, to consider them still at school re- ceiving the education that is their right, and not dispersed by epis- copal authority under a Romanist dictation. This is the difficult part of the Papal casuistry. Martin and John, the contrasted Pro- testants of Peter's tale, found it actually impossible to construe the bread into mutton : how much more difficult to construe sup- pression of schools into maintenance of schools, oppression into freedom, privileges of the clergy before the law into equality be- fore the law, progressive grasp of property by the great Church as security of property for laics generally !
It is this substantial part of the matter that States on the Con- tinent, even Catholic States, find it so very difficult to swallow ; so impossible, even in Austria, in Vienna, not less than m Hun-
gary, Bohemia, and Northern Italy. It is this form of difficulty that makes the people choke. Already they cough at the Con- cordat in France, and clinch their teeth against it in Belgium. It may be wicked of them ; but they foresee that if they admit the principles which the Pope has succeeded in establishing throughout the Austrian empire, they will find priests who can maltreat them and then escape to a spiritual sanctuary : they will find their property glide from them, their official rulers become corrupted by this complicity with the Church, and their material welfare, as well as their political and personal independence, ex- tinguished. It is commonly considered that Austria has been misled by the Pope : we believe in the Papal allocution when it represents the Emperor as having obtained the treaty by his own solicitations. On reflection, we perceive it is Austria which gains by the con- spiracy. The Catholic Church is recalled to the false position which its over-ambitious Popes have made for it. It attempts a tyranny impossible to Popes, though sometimes realized by Users. It provokes a reaction, which threatens under this Concordat to make the most important Catholic countries protest ; it risks the integrity of the Church, by embodying it in the coarse fabric of a temporal power. Could the Church adopt the principle of self-re- liance, could it retreat absolutely upon its spiritualities, there is proof that the long tenure of the Pope, his direct succession from Peter, the difficulties of Protestantism, and the attractions of the Catholic ceremonial, would preserve to him a full share of allegi- ance. The fidelity displayed by the adherents of the Church is not less where it is honorary and unenforced by the law, as in Eng- land, than where it is obtained under coercion. Sardinia itself is a signal instance of voluntary fidelity to Rome notwithstanding national independence. The voluntary principle is difficult for a church so essentially bound up with national institutions and landed tenure as the Church of England; but it would seem to be the true principle of vitality for Popes, whether they date their allocutions from the Vatican, the Grass-Market, or Exeter Hall.
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