ensure the moral independence of the papacy; and he believed that the new Italian kingdom was a mushroom growth, that might fall in pieces at any moment. Hence he followed in the steps of Pius IX. and refused to recognize the existence of the de facto government in any way whatsoever; he would not accept the subsidies it offered him, or allow Catholics to take any part in political life. During the earlier years of his reign he undoubtedly had hopes of recovering his lost dominions with the help of Germany, and Bismarck was not the man to discourage such expectations. They were suddenly blasted when Germany, Italy and Austria entered into a Triple Alliance at the end of 1887. Thereafter Leo turned to France. Already in 1884 he had warned the French clergy against meddling in royalist intrigues; in 1892 he issued a much more stringent exhortation to French Catholics to rally to the Republic. An idea got abroad that he was looking to the time when the old dream of Lamennais and Gioberti might become a reality, and Italy would split up into a number of republics, amongst which the temporal power of the pope might find a place.
Certainly his public pronouncements took on an increasingly democratic tone. From the first he had shown great interest Christian Socialism. in social questions; and his encyclicals deal much less with theology than with citizenship, socialism, labour, the marriage-laws. Under his influence a Christian Socialist movement sprang up in France and Belgium, and soon spread to Italy, Germany and Austria. It had undoubtedly done much to awaken interest in social problems, and to call forth philanthropic zeal; but the movement soon travelled far beyond the limits that Leo would have set to it. In Germany, in particular, it has grown into a political party connected with the Social Democrats; nor have the democratic socialists been slow to exploit their Christian allies for their own ends. And in other countries the attempt to bring religion into politics has sometimes had the effect of lowering religion, rather than ennobling politics. In an age of universal suffrage public men cannot afford to appeal to pure reason, or even to pure sentiment. Christian socialism becomes a real force when it translates itself into anti-Semitism; and anti-Semitism is at its strongest when it is pursuing one particular Jewish captain in the French artillery. Much on the same lines stands the Italian Catholic attempt to show that the Freemasons are the real founders of Italian independence, and to take the field against them with the help of Léon Taxil and “Diana Vaughan.” And, quite apart from their political colouring, such attempts to meet the devotional tastes of the masses as the miracles of Lourdes, or the modern French religious press, lie well within the range of criticism. Nor have they even had the dubious merit of success. Dying in 1903, Leo XIII. was spared from seeing the failure of his policy of reconciliation with the French Republic; for the “denunciation of the concordat” (December 1905) and consequent Pius X. separation of Church and State took place under his successor, Pius X. What results this measure may have on France it must be left to the future to decide. Nor is it yet possible to forecast the result of the only other sensational event that the reign of Pius X. has yet produced—his condemnation in 1907 of the complex movement known as Modernism. Modernism. This began as an attempt to break loose from the neo-Scholasticism so ardently patronized both by Pius IX. and Leo XIII., and to supplant the critical methods of the medieval doctors by those of modern scholarship; and its leaders have won special distinction in the fields of Biblical criticism and ecclesiastical history. But Modernism soon broadened into a thoroughgoing revolt against the modes of thought and methods characteristic of the latter day Vatican; its motto is that Catholicism is the strength of popery, but popery the weakness of Catholicism. By “popery” must here be understood the belief that spiritual doctrines always lend themselves to a precise embodiment in black and white, and can thereafter be dealt with like so many clauses of an act of parliament. Modernists deny that the spirit of religion can be thus imprisoned in an unchangeable formula; they hold that it is always growing, and therefore in continual need of readjustment and restatement. On the other hand, they maintain that the present always has its roots in the past, and therefore they are opposed to any violent change; they consider, for instance, that northern Europe would have done better to listen to Erasmus than to Luther. But progress can leave little room to individual initiative, if it must always be orderly and systematic; and the Modernists accordingly show little sympathy with Protestantism. The core of their creed is a fervid belief in the infallibility of Catholic instinct, if only Catholic theology can be induced to leave it to develop in peace. Hitherto the theologians have shown small disposition to hold their hand; and several of the leading Modernists have been excommunicated (see especially the article Loisy, A. F.), while the whole movement was condemned in bitter and scathing language by Pius X.'s encyclical (Pascendi gregis) against the Modernists. But ideas are difficult to kill, and it is possible that the Modernist movement may yet prove to be the opening chapter of a mighty revolution within the Church of Rome.[1]
Bibliography.—The literature on the Roman Catholic Church is, of course, vast. Many works will be found in the lists of authorities appended to the articles to which cross-reference is made above, notably Papacy. Here it is only possible to give a few outstanding books of reference. The most compendious of all works of reference on the subject, though partly antiquated, is the Encyclopédie théologique of the Abbé Migne (1844-66), Ser. I. 50 vols., Ser. II. 52 vols., Ser. III. 66 vols. . This is a series of dictionaries, and contains Fr. Périnnés's Dictionnaire de bibliographie catholique, 5 vols. (Paris, 1858-60). A useful systematized bibliography is also given in the Subject Index of the London Library (1909), pp. 945-51. Other encyclopaedias are Watzer and Welter's Kirchenlexikon, 13 B. (2nd ed., Hergenröther, &c., 1882-1903), Roman Catholic (there is a French translation of the 1st edition, ed. T. Goschler, 1870); Herzog-Hauck, Realencyklopädie für Protestantische Theologie und Kirche (3rd ed., Leipzig, 1896-1909), Protestant, but containing articles of universally recognized scientific authority on many aspects of the Roman Catholic Church; the Catholic Encyclopaedia (London and New York, 1907 ff.), invaluable as an authoritative account of Roman Catholicism in all its phases, by eminent Catholics of all nations. All these encyclopedias are also bibliographies.
- (St C.)
The Church in England.
The origin of the English Roman Catholics as a community separated from the National Church is generally held to date from the accession of Queen Elizabeth in 1558. In the following year was passed an Act of Supremacy, whereby all public officials, clerical and lay, were required to acknowledge the supremacy of the queen “as well in spiritual things or causes as temporal.” This declaration all the existing bishops, with two exceptions, refused to make; some fled the country, some were imprisoned, others simply deprived and placed under surveillance.[2] To the parish clergy the declaration was not systematically tendered; of those deprived of their livings a large number were allowed to remain on as chaplains in private families. From laymen, unless they happened to hold some public office, no declaration was expected; and during the earlier years of Elizabeth's reign most of them continued to attend at their parish church. The line of division became much more acute when Pius V. deposed Elizabeth from her throne (1570); thenceforward her government looked on every Catholic as a potential rebel. Already it had passed a severe act against the Catholics in 1562; this was followed by other measures in 1571, 1580, 1584, 1585, 1593. During the forty-five years of Elizabeth's reign, however, only about 180 persons suffered death[3]—less than half the number of those whom the Catholic zeal
- ↑ For a criticism of the modern tendencies of the Roman Catholic Church from an outside point of view see Ultramontanism.
- ↑ From the Roman Catholic point of view the ancient English hierarchy came to an end with the death of Thomas Goldwell, some time bishop of St Asaph, at Rome on the 3rd of April 1585. Some six months previously Thomas Watson, formerly bishop of Lincoln, had died in prison in England.
- ↑ Not as heretics, by burning, but as traitors, by hanging, drawing and quartering. But, since to say or hear mass was constructive treason, the distinction was, in many cases, without a difference.
