Chapter VII: Work of the Propaganda

At the very first meeting of the Cardinals, held by order of Gregory XV., to settle upon the means of forming the Sacred Congregation of the Propaganda, it was resolved that the heads of all the religious orders should be written to for statistics relative to the state of the missions confided to their subjects in every part of the world. It was further resolved that the papers of the Provisional Congregation called together by Gregory XIII. should be obtained from the Bishop-Secretary. These two acts established the identity of the Sacred Congregation with the vast work carried on by the Roman Pontiffs for the spread of the Faith in preceding ages, and especially with the work of those Cardinals called in to assist Gregory XIII. The new Congregation set instantly to work at the immense amount of labour placed upon its members. Its responsibility was very great. It had to look to the East and to the West. The Church in the lands once Catholic, now committed to its keeping, was everywhere in ruins. Four-fifths of the population of the earth wandered still “in darkness and in the shadow of death” outside the narrow boundaries of Christendom. The interior of Africa remained a closed book to the European, and within it millions groaned in slavery under rulers who deemed it a sacred duty to offer human victims in thousands annually to idols. Budha and Vishnu held half the human race captive. Savage hordes wandered over the steppes of Asia, through the forests of America, and peopled the innumerable islands of the Pacific with races almost as destitute of the knowledge “of a God in this world” as the lower animals upon which they subsisted. Where a semi-civilization created caste-prejudice, as in India, or refined materialism, as in China, mankind in its masses descended into depths of degradation still lower and more worthy of commiseration than the wild tribes in savage life. There was no mercy. The weak “went to the wall.” Little children were slaughtered without pity, the poor were regarded as the accursed of God, and the helpless were trampled upon without hesitation or remorse. Islam had extended its ravages over the fair Christian States which once extended from the Pillars of Hercules to the Red Sea, and from thence through Syria to the waters of the Bosphorus. It was supreme in Persia, and spread its Crescent over all the lands from the crests of the ranges of Thibet to the Chersonesus. It had fixed its seat in the city of Constantine, and its sway was undisputed throughout the Balkan Peninsula, and in the Isles of Greece and of the Levant.

One of the first duties of the new Sacred Congregation was to look after those Christian peoples who yet retained any vestige of Christianity in the nations subjected by Islam. They had become timid and abject slaves under the persecuting lash of their masters. It was difficult for missionaries to reach them at all, and then there was another difficulty to be met with before Catholic missionaries could minister to them.

The Orientals were generally schismatics of various rites and nations, imbued with a fanatical hatred for the Church from which their fathers had seceded. Great zeal was therefore needed amongst these sects. The Missionaries of the Propaganda had to make their converts either from Islam, which punished what it called apostasy, with terrible severity, or from Christians made vile by ignorance and slavery in the lands of their ruthless conquerors. Yet the grace of God prevailed to a wonderful extent, and innumerable souls were reconciled and became Catholic.

The Armenians, the Maronites, the Melchites, the Copts, the Nestorians themselves, sometimes abandoned in a body, their errors and schisms, or individually passed over to communion with the Holy See. In consequence, to-day, we have a Roman Catholic Archbishop in Athens, another at Naxos; and Catholic Bishops, Priests and flocks at Skio, Pinos, Andros, Santoria and Lyra, and other places in schismatical modern Greece. In the Turkish Empire in Europe and Asia, there are no less than sixty-six dioceses of various grades at present, not including those in formation, which amount to thirteen, under Vicars or Prefects Apostolic. The great Christian Community of the Armenians have also, by the constant care of the Propaganda, been kept in large measure from schism, and in the graces which spring from union with the Church. Incredible pains have been taken for the spread of the Faith in Egypt, Nubia, and the old Christian State of Abyssinia. Apostolic prefectures have been established in the remotest regions of Africa; and the spread of French and other European influences in Algeria and Tunis promises to renew the Faith of the great St. Augustine in the once fertile Christian Provinces which he enlightened by word and pen when he ruled the famous See of Hippo. A special congregation of Cardinals under the Cardinal Prefect devote themselves to the numerous, difficult, and important questions which arise from this department of the work of the Propaganda. Under it are also two flourishing Colleges—one for the Greeks, and the other for the Armenians—which latter was founded by Leo XIII. under the able and zealous presidency of the late Cardinal Hassan.

Further to the East, the Sacred Congregation directed during the period which has passed from the opening efforts of St. Francis Xavier in India and Japan, to our own days, the missionary enterprise of the Church. Under its care, Jesuits, Dominicans, and Franciscans penetrated to China, and worked the wonders we read of during the long reign of Kang-he, and later on of Keen-lung. Innumerable and bloody were the persecutions its Missionaries had to suffer there, as well as in Corea, Thibet, Cochin-China, and other nations bordering upon the Celestial Empire. The Propaganda, besides, looked with ceaseless solicitude upon the changing fortunes of the missions in India, and nourished them amidst the wars and diplomatic arrangements which transferred power from Portugal and France to Great Britain, or to her East India Company of traders. In America it never ceased to follow the tracks of the red man in his forests, and those of the poor negro in his slavery. The history of Indian tribes from Canada to Patagonia, is the history of its Missionaries, of their labours, travels, and martyrdom. It sent with equal zeal its Apostolic men to the islands of the Southern Seas, as these became known by the exertions of successive explorers. And in those vast regions, where barbarous or uncivilized man yet walks in the darkness of paganism and idolatory, it never ceased its exertions until now its bishops may be numbered by the hundred, its priests by the thousand, and its converts by millions. In all, it spread the knowledge of Christ; and orphanages, hospitals, schools, and other pious institutions, conducted by Catholic brotherhoods and sisterhoods of various forms, now give to the pagan a knowledge of the earnest zeal and devotion of genuine Christianity.

But interesting, as this account is, of its labours—how easy and pleasing it would be to prolong the record if time permitted!—it is not more interesting than that of the work done by the Sacred Congregation for the salvation of the nations which lapsed into heresy at the period of the Reformation, and for the Faith in this country, and in every land that speaks our language.

If the Faith has again penetrated into Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Iceland, and those Northern regions whence it was long banished by a vigilant and persecuting heresy, it is owing entirely to the zeal of the Propaganda; and we have only to recall the history of the Church in England, Ireland, and Scotland, to know how sleepless was its care of our fathers exposed to such long-continued persecution in the three kingdoms. Up to 1700, the law of the land prohibited a Catholic priest to put his foot into Scotland. Yet the few Scotch Catholic clans of the Highlands and the still more scattered Catholic families of the Lowlands, were never wholly without the ministrations of religion or the means of a Christian education. We have only to look at the annals of these dreary but sadly interesting times, to know that it was the care and the funds of the Sacred Congregation that kept both priest and schoolmaster in this country and so kept the Faith alive and in progress, until at length it needed a Superior over the missions, and at last, a Bishop, to take charge of the gradually increasing flock. The increase consequent upon the influx of Irish immigrants who swelled the Church to the proportions of greatness, continued to occupy the zealous attention of the Propaganda, until at length the moment came when our present Holy Father was enabled to restore to the land evangelized by Columba and Aidan, its ancient Hierarchy.

Ireland occupied so distinct a portion of the care of Propaganda, that I have been frequently led to think the Sacred Congregation was chiefly, if not entirely, occupied with her concerns. And Ireland indeed deserved it all, for she has proved to be amongst all nations, far the most faithful daughter of the Holy See. Since the days of the terrible peace which followed the long struggle of Hugh O’Neill and O’Donnell for her freedom, and her ancient Faith, the Propaganda applied its whole energies to cure the woes of the Catholics of the country, to minister to them and preserve their Faith. Not only during the brief interval of national triumph secured by the Confederation of Kilkenny, when enormous assistance was given to Ireland through the Legate, Cardinal Rinuccini, but before and after that transient gleam of sunshine on the Church in Ireland, the assistance given to the country by the Propaganda was ceaseless. It took care that in Rome and out of Rome, in many Colleges and Convents, her Clergy should be educated gratuitously. It gave large and well sustained grants for education, the nature of which has been shown by my own Archbishop, who was himself at one time Professor of Hebrew at the Urban College, and had access to authentic documents proving that point, which, as an Irishman, so much interested him.[25]

His uncle, Cardinal Cullen, who besides being for many years Rector of the Irish College in Rome, was also for a period Rector of the Urban College of the Propaganda, has more than once evidenced the same. The Propaganda, besides, found funds for the support as well as for the education of the Clergy. And Ireland, I believe, is the only country which, having Colleges of her own, both in Rome and in other countries, obtained a right to a certain number of students in the Urban College. Of this number, at various seasons, were many of the most distinguished ecclesiastics of the Irish Church. Cardinal Cullen was a Propagandist, and so was the late Delegate Apostolic to Canada, of whom the Irish Church and Rome herself had such high hopes, Monsignor George Conroy, Bishop of Ardagh and Clonmacnois.

In England, the history of its Church since the death of Elizabeth, is inseparably bound up with the Propaganda. The unwearied care which it bestowed upon that Church rendered so desolate by the action of the rulers—not, we must always remember, of the people—surrounding Elizabeth and James, is worthy of all attention. It never ceased that care from the appointment of the first single Bishop till it saw the ordinary Hierarchy of the country restored to something like its pristine glory. I need not say, that with the same care it followed the children of Ireland, who went forth to found the Churches of the United States, of British Canada, of Australia, and the other dependencies of Great Britain. Even at the present moment the Church in those regions, is not only equal to what she had been in the foremost Catholic States of Europe, but the wonderful zeal, energy, and generosity of her children, compensate for what Catholicity loses in older States, through the action of the Infidel Revolution.

But besides the continued works of zeal which the Propaganda has never ceased to foster since its foundation, there is another work which it carries on just as ceaselessly. The Church needs not only to be founded, but when founded in any locality or nation, it has to be administered and cared for. This forms no small portion of the labour of the Propaganda. The zeal of its missionaries in many lands, the providential increase of the faithful in others, the self-arising return in response to the invitation and grace of God, in the cases of individuals everywhere within the borders of its jurisdiction, has rendered its work in our own days far beyond what it was at the commencement, or for many years afterwards. If we only consider the one duty of selecting the Bishops for the various dioceses in these Islands, in Canada, the United States, and Australia, we may form some idea of this work. We know how frequently priests and people are much exercised with ourselves regarding these appointments. Conflicting interests get at work. Public and private affairs are effected. Interminable correspondence arises, for grave issues are at stake. All this work must be settled by the Propaganda before it is presented for final solution to the Vicar of Christ, with whom of course rests the ultimate responsibility. Now, peoples of whose affairs we know absolutely nothing, have interests as dear to them, to be solved in the same way by the Propaganda. The Sees which concern them spread from the rising to the setting of the Sun. Then come questions affecting religious orders, in general and in detail. Everywhere there are important interests to be settled or conciliated; for it is wonderful how pious people can see the glory of God and the good of souls in directions so very opposite one to the other; and the more sincere and holy the parties on either side are, the more sure are they to be obstinate, for reasons of the most conscientious kind. If the Propaganda was not there with the patience and experience it possesses, and with the power of the Supreme Pontiff at its back, there would be no settlement for such disputes as sometimes arise between the most sincere, devoted, and best intentioned people in the world. For what else but an authority that cannot be disputed could settle issues between people obstinate for conscience sake, and only too happy to endure martyrdom for conviction. Such people in our midst, who are not Catholics, break up the little section of Protestantism to which they belong into still smaller fragments, whenever they happen to be much exercised by opposite religious views; and hence we see over one church door the “Free Kirk,” and over another “Kirk of Scotland.” Indeed a certain good soul who became very solicitous for my own salvation invited me in a passenger car to join the Church of Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, established in a suburb of London, in the year of Grace 1884. “Annual subscription £1, to be paid quarterly in advance.” As I already belonged to a Church of that title established in an upper room in Jerusalem in the year of Grace 33, I declined the invitation. It was, I suppose, a miniature “Free Kirk” which differed and broke off from some other, there being no one to settle the difference. But all differences in the Catholic Church are settled by an authority from which there is no appeal, and that authority is exercised for four-fifths of this world, materially speaking, by the Sacred Congregation of the Propaganda, with a patience, skill, and knowledge which no words of mine could adequately express.

And here you will permit me to quote what I wrote on this subject upon another occasion on the Propaganda:—

Over the minutest as well as the gravest concerns of the
immense expanse of its jurisdiction, the Propaganda has
always watched with a sleepless vigilance. Sustaining, with
an instinct and a power that must be surely largely infused
by the Holy Ghost, the divine principle of authority, it has
never been blind to the slightest manifestation of its abuse.
The humblest missionary, the humblest child wronged any where
in the vast extent of its care, is certain to receive from
its officials a just and a paternal hearing, and, if wronged,
is certain of redress. There is not, and there never was on
this earth, a tribunal more just, more patient, more kind to
all committed to its keeping. Then, too, it watches over the
interest of souls with constant assiduity. The most difficult
questions are daily submitted to its judgment, and find
invariably a solution which cannot be given except where the
Vicar of Christ reigns and rules.