Chapter XXV: Catholic Organization

In conclusion, it is proper that I should say a word to you upon the attitude of the Church, at the present moment, in the face of the forces of the Organized Atheism of the world. That organization has now arrived at the perfection of its dark wisdom, and is making rapid strides to the most complete and universal exercise of its power. It has succeeded. Through it the Church is despoiled. The Vicar of Christ is a prisoner, and has been so for over fourteen years. The religious orders are virtually suppressed in nearly every country of Europe. Freemasonry is supreme in the governments of France, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Switzerland, and works its will in nearly all the republics of Southern America. It rules Germany, terrifies Russia, distracts Belgium, and secretly gnaws at the heart of Austria. Everywhere it advances with rapid strides both in its secret movements against Catholicity and the Christian religion generally, and in open persecution according to the measure of its opportunity and power. No hope, humanly speaking, appears on the horizon to warrant us at this moment to look for a change for the better. But God has promised never to desert His Church. That promise never can be broken. When the darkest hour comes, it is not for Catholics to look for dissolution, but for life and hope. The crisis in the conflicts of Christianity is the hour of victory. This has been realized more than once since the combat began between Atheistic Masonry and the Church. What hour could be darker than that which saw Pius VI. taken prisoner to France in the white heat of its Revolution, and dying abandoned and forsaken in the dungeons by the Rhone? The Temporal Power after an uninterrupted peace of nearly four centuries, during which the disturbances common to it in the middle ages, had absolutely ceased, passed at a blow and apparently for ever. Rome’s treasures of art and religion were carried in triumph to grace the capital of Infidelity, or scattered throughout the earth. The Cross and Keys were without a defender, and the tricolour floated in triumph over the palace of the Popes. The crisis had arrived when God’s promise should be realized. In the twinkling of an eye, a strange force, under a strange commander, Suwarrow, descends like lightning upon Italy. The power of the Revolution passes like an uneasy morning’s dream. Rome belongs to the Pope, and Pius VII. sits calmly, as if nothing happened, upon the throne of his banished, I may add, martyred predecessor. Another event more strange occurs. The temporal power falls again, and the legions of the strongest potentate Europe had seen since the days of the Cæsars holds it as the heritage of his only son. The Pope is once more a prisoner—for years a persecuted circumvented prisoner. Napoleon mocks at his feebleness, and laughs at his predictions. The temporal power of the Popes was, he says, but never will be. The condition of the world is changed—the Empire returned. Is it so? The crisis has come for the hundredth time. The very cardinals are taken from the side of the Pontiff. He is alone in the power of his base tormentor as much as St. Peter on Montorio was in the power of Nero. Things cannot be darker. The light must dawn; and it does. In a month, God’s elements blast the power of the tyrant; and while millions applaud the return of the Pontiff to the Chair of St. Peter and to his power at Rome, Napoleon passes to his solitary dungeon in the midst of the waters, to ruminate on the verification which in his case, as in the case of every persecutor of the Church, attends the predictions of Peter. In our day, the Atheistic Conspiracy is as determined as ever to destroy, but it is wiser. Slowly it has surrounded God’s Vicar. It has taken care so to master the councils of every European country that help to him, when it assails, may be impossible. Under pretence of guaranteeing his independence, it has stolen from him everything. His trustiest servants are torn from his side, stripped, despoiled, degraded, scattered. His resources have been astutely lessened to the lowest possible point. A prisoner of the Infidels, as much as Pius VI. or Pius VII. in the strongholds of France, under the appearance of being free, he is really bound hand and foot and rendered completely impotent. His power is cancelled under pretext that his city is necessary to the unification of Italy. No other city will suit Italian jealousies as the capital of the new nation. And who will sacrifice the welfare of the new nation to the wants of the Pope? Astuteness is now the characteristic of the Revolution, determined and callous as ever. But hope again appears. To the persecutions of Pius IX., many and grievous as they were, God opposed a Pontiff simple as a dove in the snares of the spoiler. He took away from the ruffian hands of Masonry its only real argument. But now when all is gone, help appears in the person of another Pontiff, whose greatest characteristic is wisdom, and whose wisdom, slowly but surely, is telling upon the nations. No Pontiff has been more firm in maintaining the rights of the Holy See, violently wrested as he found them, by the force and upon the pretexts used by Freemasonry. Despoiled of everything, he has, nevertheless, drawn together the scattered strength of the Church. Commencing with the foundation of all Christianity, its teaching, he has caused philosophy to be so purified, and so based on sound principles, as to be in reality a true handmaid to theology and a deadly foe to rationalistic, Atheistic, and infidel theories of whatever kind. He has caused the teachings of St. Thomas to assume more than at any past period, their supremacy in Christian schools. He has mastered the difficult, tangled web of European diplomacy. He has found out the true wants of Christian peoples. He has satisfied them: and then, finally, by his immortal Bull, _Humanum Genus_, he has dealt a death blow to the progress of Freemasonry, and elevated into a system the means by which the guides of God’s people are for the future, to save these people from the evils of our days.

According to my humble ability, I have endeavoured as best I could, this evening, to carry out the first part of the instruction of Our Sovereign Lord, Leo XIII., who is for me and for over two hundred millions like me, as much a Monarch, as if he reigned in the Quirinal instead of Humbert II. That is, I have endeavoured to show you what Secret Association was, and is, and ever will be, till the end. I am persuaded, that if the evils of secret society plotting have succeeded so far, it is mainly, because from one reason or another, the mask was permitted to be worn by Freemasonry. Voices were raised, I know here and there, now and again, against it, and against Secret Societies of every kind; but they were either not heard at all, or, if heard, were very soon forgotten. The utmost efforts of Freemasonry of every kind were exerted to keep itself hidden, and that it had power to remain hidden is looked upon by Monsignor Segur, and Monsignor Ketteler, and others, as one of the most remarkable evidences of its real power. It had and still has means to silence all who may proceed against it. It murdered, as we have seen, in this very century, a free citizen of America, who attempted to write a book in which only the least part of its secrets—its absurd ceremonial, its grips, passwords and oaths, were revealed to “the profane.” It threatened and used the dagger, or calumny, or bribery, or whatever suited against those who attempted to expose it. Exposure is its death—the death at least of its influence over its intended dupes amongst Catholics. Therefore, comes the word of command to us all, from the great Vicar of Christ—“Tear the mask from off Freemasonry;” and consequently, it becomes a plain duty, a duty not to be performed in any desultory manner, but in season and out of season, to expose Freemasonry. The Supreme Pontiff, despoiled though he be, will find in the generous devotion of the children of the Church who fear no power of man or demon in the discharge of duty, not one but ten hundred thousand voices ready for the task. Thank God! the labours of devoted, Christian men—bishops, priests, and learned laymen—have resulted in enabling us to know the real character of Masonry, and enabling us to “tear the mask” off the horrible thing with ease. Nor is this confined to the Continent or to ecclesiastics. The work has been nobly inaugurated already in our midst by Mr. O’Donnell, M.P., and I trust will be continued by him and by many more. The religious orders will, in the solitude of their cells, make a special study of the machinations of the terrible sects, the secular clergy in their Colleges and home retreats, and above all, the Catholic press will not cease to expose the malignant hydra in constantly recurring references and discoveries. The whole host of God is needed to march and to act against the foe in the manner indicated by our Holy Father; for the question is one of the salvation of the world, of the spread of the Gospel, of the happiness of families and individuals, of civil society, and of man. Surely upon such a movement the benediction of Heaven will descend. The means to obtain that divine blessing are also pointed out by the Holy Father. He says to those whom it concerns, “unite the Catholic people in good societies and pious confraternities.” He indicates, specially, the Third Order of Saint Francis and the confraternity which practices the recital of the Holy Rosary. Father Anderledy, the newly appointed General of the Society of Jesus, who plainly says he speaks as he does with the knowledge and desire of the Holy Father, asks the Fathers of his Society to renew the holy habit of uniting those committed to their care in societies formed to honour Our Lady. Behold, then, the true remedy for the ills that fall upon the world. That world is rushing wildly, madly, away from religion and true happiness. Who, under God, can be conceived more powerful to restore it to reason than Mary the Virgin Mother of God, who amongst many other holy titles, is honoured by the Church as the special dispenser of the invaluable gift of Good Counsel, a gift She so wonderfully displayed in Her holy life, and which She obtains for God’s people by Her powerful intercession. She too is called upon in the liturgy of the Church, to be glad and to rejoice, for that She alone has destroyed all heresies throughout the whole world. Her power destroyed them singly in the past, and doubtless will also destroy their united force and malignity, as exhibited in Freemasonry and its kindred secret societies, in the future. Societies in honour of God’s Mother cannot be too widely established. All should be under Her benign protection, as is the Catholic Young Men’s Society of Edinburgh. But there is one branch society of this Catholic Institute which I cannot help singling out for special praise. It is the—