Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 6.djvu/376

362 (as it is called), or by other means, constitutes a supremo law, independent of all divine and human rights." It denounces "the impudence" of those who presume to subordinate the authority of the Apostolic See "conferred upon it by Christ our Lord, to the judgment of the civil authority." In 1868, Pius IX. issued a bull convoking an Œcumenical Council to meet at Rome, December 8, 1869, and its sessions lasted till July, 1870. The decrees of the Vatican Council, carried by 451 out of 601 votes, asserted the infallibility of the Roman pontiff, and defined the relations of religion to science. Many opinions were solemnly condemned, and their holders anathematized. Among others:

The gauntlet was thus thrown down by this august and powerful religious body to science, independent inquiry, and the whole spirit of modern civilization. The old conflict was revived with no narrowing of the issues. The Archbishop of Westminster, Dr. Manning, in his late inaugural address to the Roman Catholic Academia, referred to "the modern skepticism, free thought, and so-called scientific teachings of the day in relation to Catholic teaching; and, for an illustration of the style of thought, he would refer them to Prof. Tyndall's address the other day at the Belfast meeting of the British Association." He furthermore said: "Within the last twenty-four hours it had been intimated to him that the Catholic world was threatened with a controversy on the whole of the decrees of the Vatican Council. From this and other matters which had come to his knowledge, he could see that they were on the very eve of one of the mightiest controversies the religious world had ever seen. Certainly nothing like the controversy on which they were about to enter had occurred during the last three hundred years, and they must be prepared. If they would only prepare themselves, he did not fear for the decrees of the Vatican Council, or for the Vatican itself. But they must have no half-hearted measures." The expected stroke came in the shape of an able pamphlet from Mr. Gladstone, in which he asked of English Catholics what they are going to do about the demands of the Vatican Council in regard to their allegiance to the pope in matters of civil authority. The document of the English statesman has been extensively diffused, has made a profound sensation, and precipitated vehement discussion in all quarters.

But Mr. Gladstone has only touched the surface of the subject. He takes a politician's view of the influence and tactics of the Church; yet this is by no means its most important aspect. With the decline of the temporal power of Rome, spiritual control is substituted for secular control, and the pressure taken off of the state is put upon the individual. While Mr. Gladstone's imputation that Catholics are lacking in loyal allegiance to government is resented by the representatives of the Church with indignation, no question is raised as to the invincible purpose of the Roman power to resist the advance of free thought and the progress of liberal opinions. And this is immeasurably the most important aspect of the subject. The right of the pope to sit in judgment upon the civil power may be still asserted for consistency's sake; but, his right to coerce the individual conscience, to repress free investigation, to decide what