Chapter I: State of the Question

Having treated, as fully as I could in one lecture, of the nature of that secret and powerfully organized Atheism, which now for over a century has waged a fierce and sleepless war with the Church of Jesus Christ, and which means not only to destroy that Church but every form of Christianity and Christian civilization, I come this evening to speak, according to my promise, of a special feature in that war; namely, its intense hostility to the Vicar of Jesus Christ, and its determination to deprive him of every human means of exercising his divine mission with the view of thus preventing the government of the Church and the extension of the Kingdom of Christ in the world. This feature in the Anti-Christian war of Freemasonry and its attendant sects, has, as we have seen, been manifest from the very commencement. Scarcely had its adepts obtained power at the period of the first French Revolution, when they aimed and dealt, too, a deadly blow at the temporal power of the Pope, hoping thereby to cripple and eventually to terminate his spiritual ministrations. The blow was repeated under Napoleon, attempted frequently after the Revolution of July 1830, and again dealt with the effect of banishing the Pontiff from his See by the Italian Conspirators of 1848. The Papacy, however, with that perennial elasticity which marks its history since the days of St. Peter, returned to Rome, and made good in a short time the evils which its absence had created. The Revolution seeing this, seems to have no longer determined to drive Christ’s Vicar from the Vatican; but, while permitting him to remain there, practically a prisoner, to deprive him of every means necessary or useful for the exercise of his ministry for the benefit of the millions committed to his keeping by God. Power having come into the hands of the Freemasons of Italy, by means which I shall glance at further on, they have taken, step by step, possession of his temporal kingdom, until finally, in violation of every right, human and divine, they seized forcibly upon the City of Rome, and confiscated to their own purposes even its religious treasures. They promised at the time to respect such Institutions and persons in that City as all Catholics knew to be necessary for the government of the Church spread not only in Italy, but throughout the whole earth. For instance, though by law, the Religious Orders were suppressed in Piedmont, in the rest of Italy, and in some other countries fallen unfortunately into the power of the Atheistic secret sectaries, they were not suppressed with us, nor, geographically speaking, in the greater part of the world. Now, the Pope is sole Superior of all Religious Orders in the Catholic Church. They are all instituted to serve him specially and devotedly, and they depend directly upon him. None know this better than the Italian Freemasons, who forcibly took possession of Rome. They declared that though in the rest of Italy, Religious Orders and other Catholic Institutions were by law suppressed, yet even these and everything else needed by the Supreme Pontiff for the government of the Universal Church, should be sacredly respected by them in Rome. We know how they have kept this promise so far as the governing staff of the Religious Orders were concerned. They respected the Generals and their assistants by casting them out from their convents upon the streets. They took possession of these convents for secular purposes. They confiscated the whole revenues of the religious, and denied to the successors of the same religious the miserable pensions granted to those whom they brutally and ignominiously expelled. But we were told that this was to be done only to the religious, and that the rest of the Institutions of Rome necessary for the service of the Pontiff, for his dignity, and, above all, for the government of the Church, should be most scrupulously respected. His person was to be as much honoured, and to be as inviolable as that of the King. The one residence left him in Rome was to obtain the privilege of extra-territoriality, and his means were to be protected on the pledged faith and honour of the Italian King and Parliament. We know how the honour decreed by law to the Supreme Pontiff was respected by the Government, in the miserable insults offered by a body of hired ruffians being permitted, if not more than permitted, to outrage the venerated remains of Pius IX. on their passage at night from St. Peter’s to the Basilica of San Lorenzo. The Pope refused, of course, the ostentatious pension his plunderers voted him in lieu of the spoliation of his States. But this gain did not satisfy them. They proceeded, whenever they could, to violate or make null their own laws of guarantee in his regard; and they succeeded. For instance, they made a law by which the real property of the Church should be all sold and converted into the bonds of the new Italian Government. These bonds, at best, are only worth whatever the solvency of the Italian Government may be rated at, upon the markets of Europe. But the Church was not to be permitted to have the advantage of ordinary bond-holders. These latter could sell out their bonds at market value. The Church was not permitted to do this. The bonds purchased by the sale of her farms and houses were made a debt of the Italian Government, it is true—but a State debt due to the Church only—a debt apart, which could be dealt with at pleasure, and regarding which any dealing the Italian Parliament might think well to apply, could not in any sense affect the solvency of the nation in the markets of Europe. Regarding the payment of these bonds the Church has to depend absolutely upon the word of a body of men who have broken faith with her constantly, and whose promises were made, only to be broken at the first favourable moment. No man, therefore, values much the security of the money of the Church, depending upon the will of the Italian Masonic Parliament, for the payment of interest.

Now, amongst other necessary Institutions, the Pope had, for several centuries, in Rome, a well known and most beneficial corporation, endowed by the piety of the Pontiffs, and of Churchmen and pious laymen of every rank and nationality in the world. Its funds were destined not for Italy, but for us, and for the Catholics of every English-speaking land, and for the maintenance of the Faith and the extension of Christianity and civilization in all parts of the world, where as yet these blessings had not penetrated. If any funds could be secured from the grasp of the Masonic Italian Government, those funds ought. If any fidelity was to be kept in the observance of the laws which guaranteed the independence and free exercise of the universal spiritual mission of the Supreme Pontiff, it should be shown, by respecting scrupulously the funds of this institution. The very worst of the Italians, on entering Rome, protested loudly that the guarantees were real, and they pointed out the inviolable condition of the Propaganda as an instance of how sacredly these guarantees were regarded. There might be some confusion of ideas regarding the property of the religious orders in Rome, but regarding the Propaganda there could not be that confusion. They continued to point it out for years, to every stranger, as a proof of their fidelity. Victor Emmanuel, bad enough, in all conscience, respected it. In his lifetime it could not be touched. That would prove too flagrant a violation, even for him, of the guarantees given by himself and his Parliament. But the moment he passed away, the mean, sordid cupidity of the governing sect in Italy manifested itself, and an attempt was made, almost before the dead King was cold, to subject the real estate of the Propaganda to that law of conversion to which the property of every Italian ecclesiastical corporation was subjected.

Two millions sterling was too much to remain unmolested by the Italian “Left” in power. It was too much for their weak fidelity to principle. It meant the sale of desirable lands which those sectaries who made “an honest penny” somehow, by the change of affairs in the country, wanted to buy. It meant the addition to the not overstocked exchequer of the country, of money which Ministers could dispose of as they best knew how. It meant, finally, a profit to the revenue of thirty per cent. on the sale—a profit taken by various machinations of the Italian Fiscal laws for the benefit of the “Department of Finance.” It meant the reduction of that great Institution to the condition in which the finances of the smallest Italian Diocesan, or other Chapter, is reduced by the forced sale of its real estate and the conversion of its money into “vinculated” Italian Government bonds—bonds that cannot be sold, and may be any day discarded by the Italian Parliament.

This, in brief, is the condition to which the estates of the Catholic Propaganda have been reduced by the action of the Italian Government. It is a veritable spoliation which not only reduces the actual revenue of the Institution to a great extent, but which imperils the very existence of the rest of that revenue. Now this confiscation would be bad enough, if it were only a violation of pledges solemnly made to the Supreme Pontiff. But it is worse. It is a violation of international right, and no people in the world are more concerned in the maintenance of that international right than the Roman Catholic subjects of Her Majesty Queen Victoria. We are in fact the principal sufferers in this act of spoliation, for not only are our religious rights, most justly acquired, interfered with, but the making good of the damage which the Freemasons of Italy have done the Institution, will practically fall on our shoulders. The Propaganda for us means the actual exercise of the authority of the Vicar of Christ in our regard. By means of its funds it has carried out and borne the whole expense of the care and government of the Church in our midst for over two hundred years. It has done much for our ancestors, as we shall see. It has done much more for ourselves. We cannot do without it, so far as we are concerned, and then neither can we be, nor are we, insensible to that which it does for others. For us—for the Catholics of the world—the Propaganda is all that which the whole circle of richly endowed, zealously advanced “Missionary Societies,” “Bible Societies,” and “Evangelical Societies,” are for the Protestant world. Our honour is connected with its maintenance, and we cannot without a supreme struggle permit it to perish. Nor shall we. But there is no reason that we should have to do this if our Government be willing to protect our interest, and if that Government has not taken any steps to protect us, I am perfectly sure it is because they have not comprehended the wrong that is done us. In fact, the Propaganda has discharged its onerous duties so noiselessly by the side of the Vicar of Christ, that we ourselves came to look upon the beneficent effects, which we experienced from it, as we look upon the light of the sun or the air about us. We did not advert to the means which piety had, in the past, placed at its disposal, and of which we and our fathers received the fruits. It is the loss which causes us to know, to the full, the value of the benefit—a benefit, I say, so great, and so much a matter of course to us, that even we ourselves remained ignorant of the sources from which it was derived. When, then, even amongst ourselves there is not a full knowledge of what its history, nature, and the nature of its resources now endangered, are, how can we expect that our statesmen, who are not Catholics, can know these things? It is, therefore, to enlighten them as well as ourselves; to inform, in fact, our fellow-citizens of every denomination, of the great international wrong done to us, and thereby awaken true sympathy and co-operation, that I have undertaken the task of entering, this evening, as fully as the time at my disposal will permit, into the whole question of the spoliation of the Propaganda—into the nature and history of that noble institution doomed to perish by local greed, it is true, but still more by the anti-Christian hate and policy of those ruthless sectaries whose one aim is to destroy—root and branch—everything not only that advances, but that even fosters Christianity in the slightest degree. Their hate is not less for Protestantism than for Catholicity. Their aim is to eradicate the very Christian idea from the minds and the hearts of mankind. Now all this we shall proceed to see by a consideration, first, of the history and nature of the sacred Institution, and, secondly, by a review of the means taken to destroy it. From both, to-night, I am sure, all here, will come to the conclusion that it is a clear duty of our own Government to take some action for the preservation of the rights of British Catholics, and that in any case it is a sacred obligation on the part of Catholics in every land, but especially in countries benefited by its ministrations, not to let the great work of the Propaganda perish.