preconized in Papal Consistory, and render to it an account of their stewardship, in the same way as the bishops of Italy, France, Austria, Spain or other parts of the world where the bulk of the pop- ulation is Catholic.
This historic measure is based on the recognition of the progress of the Church in the countries mentioned. It is reckoned that there are now some 12,000,000 of Catholics in the British Empire. There are 17,000,000 in the United States and 5,000,000 in the Philippines, making 22,000,000 under the Stars and Stripes and, in round num- bers, about 34,000,000 of the English-speaking world. This total forms more than a ninth part of the whole Catholic Church.
Restoration of the Rota. Another important feature of the same constitution completed by the brief has been the restora- tion of the well-known Court of the Rota. All who have engaged in the study of mediaeval history are familiar with this famous tribunal which was for centuries the supreme court of eccle- siastical appeal for the universal Church. It was this court that in final instance adjudged those cases of appeal to Rome which are found in such numbers in the records of every Catholic country, especially during the Middle and later Middle Ages. Such cases cast a vivid light on the state and working of the mediaeval Church, and students of Church history of the school of Maitland, Othenthal or Dr. Sagmuller have found how neces- sary for a true understanding of them is the knowledge of the methods and procedure of the Rota and the Chancery.
The Rota consisted of a dean and 12 judges, or auditors (usually chosen from the various nationalities), with a large attendant body of advocates and notaries. Each case was heard by a panel or " turn " of three judges. If a litigant was dissatisfied with the decision he could have the case tried anew, or even a third time by a fresh " turn " of three other judges, one of whom could be chosen by himself, and the other two by the judge thus selected. When two or three of the judgments thus given were concordant, the case was definitely settled. (Hence the clause: " After a third definitive sentence," so often found in the records of appeals in the pre- Reformation centuries.) In the later Middle Ages the volume of judicial business in the Rota was very considerable, but in later times it was notably reduced, as the Holy See had extended and encouraged the system of having cases tried "extra-judicially " by judges delegate, acting by papal authority, but chosen by the litigants themselves, and adjudicating in their own country, as may be seen in numberless entries in the volumes of the Calendar of Papal Letters relating to Great Britain.
Pius X. restored the Rota to its ancient preeminence as the chief court of the Catholic Church. It has now a dean, and 10 instead of 12 judges, but its procedure by " turns " or successive sentences on appeal remains substantially unaltered. It is in this tribunal that appeals on matrimonial cases are heard from all parts of the Catholic world, and amongst them such causes celebres as that of Parkhurst and Reid, and Miss Anna Gould and the Marquis Bpni de Castel- lane, who, after strenuous efforts, have failed to obtain a verdict of nullity upon their marriages. A further appeal from the Rota now lies to the commission of judges in the Apostolica Segnatura, inso- much as the latter acts as a court of cassation, and takes cognizance of defects of procedure.
As the Catholic Church condemns the doctrine of divorce, in the sense that any marriage between Christians that has been validly contracted and consummated can be dissolved by anything but the death of one of the parties, the matrimonial cases justiciable in the Rota or the Segnatura are only those in which a plea is brought against validity of the marriage, and is put forward to prove that, for reasons good in Divine or Church law, the bond of matrimony never existed. A modern feature of the restored Rota is that con- densed reports of the leading trials are published in the official Ada Apostolicae Sedis, with a summary of the facts (Compendium Facti) and of the juridical principles involved (Compendium Juris).
Reconstruction in England and Wales. The same policy of reconstruction was applied to the Catholic Church in England. At the restoration of the hierarchy in 1850 the whole of England was included in a single province, having its archiepiscopal see at Westminster. On Oct. 28 1911 Pius X., after consultation with the English bishops, issued a constitution (Si qua est), in which, after reciting the distribution of sees made by his predecessors Gregory I. and Pius IX., he divided the Catholic Church in England and Wales into three provinces, with archiepiscopal sees at Westminster, Birmingham and Liverpool. Westminster retained as suffragan sees the dioceses of North- ampton, Nottingham, Portsmouth and Southwark. To Bir- mingham were assigned Clifton, Plymouth and Shrewsbury and the two dioceses of Menevia and Newport which included Wales. To Liverpool were given the sees of Hexham, Leeds,
Middlesborough and Salford. The Archbishop of Westminster and his successors were declared to be perpetual presidents of the episcopate, with the right to wear their pallium, and to be preceded by their cross in any part of England and Wales, to preside at all meetings of the bishops, and to represent them in any dealings with the civil Government of the country, having first consulted their suffragans and accepted the decision of the majority. A further development of this plan was effect- ed five years later, when Benedict XV., by a Bull of Feb. 7 1916 (Cambria), erected Wales into a new and separate province, transferred the see of Newport to Cardiff, and raised it to an archbishopric, with Menevia as its suffragan.
The motive underlying this change is best expressed in the open- ing clause of the Bull: " Wales, by the Celtic origin of its people, its language, customs and traditions, is so different from the rest of England that it needs, even in its ecclesiastical order, to be taken apart from the other dioceses and to be given its own hierarchy." It has been pointed out that these words are the recognition and ful- filment of a claim which was made by the canons of St. David's in the year 1145, when they petitioned Pope Eugenius III. to make Wales a distinct ecclesiastical province and to grant the pallium to its archbishop.
The Church and Doctrine. The action of the Church in matters of doctrine included chiefly the continuance of her conflict with " modernism," which had been condemned by Pius X. in his Encyclical (Pascendi) of Sept. 7 1907. This was followed up and reinforced by a Motu Proprio, addressed to the whole Church (Sacrorum Antistitum) on Sept. i 1910.
The Encyclical contained an elaborate exposition of the views put forward by the chief modernist writers, who for several years previously had carried on an active propaganda, mainly amongst the priests and seminarists in France and Italy and, to a smaller extent, in England and America. The ostensible object of the move- ment was to win recognition for a restatement of religion and the Catholic faith in such a form that it might be made acceptable to men holding the most advanced opinions outside the Catholic Church. The attention of the Pope was drawn to their utterances by several councils of bishops, and, after a full examination of their literature, the Holy See arrived at the conclusion that, in pursuing their end, they had essentially altered the meaning of the Catholic doctrines which they professed to explain. Such concepts as " re- ligion," "faith," "revelation," "dogma," "sacraments," "author- ity," "the Person of Christ," were set forth in a sense alien and contrary to that which is taught by the Catholic Church. Pius X. vigorously condemned the whole system as "a summary of all the heresies" and ordered rigorous measures to be taken to secure its elimination from the fold.
The Motu Proprio of 1910 emphasized the decision of the Encyc- lical, and prescribed further steps for the exclusion of all modernist doctrines, requiring that holders of ecclesiastical offices or dignities should take an oath and make a specific profession of faith for this purpose.
In the course of the years that followed, the "modernist" movement, in view of this condemnation, practically ceased to trouble the peace of the Church. Of its three chief leaders, Father Tyrrell in England, the Abbe Loisy in France, and the Abbate Murri, who was the exponent of its political and social activities in Italy, the first died in 1909, and was buried out- side the Church; the second, who had already abandoned his belief in the Godhead of Christ, was excommunicated; the third laid aside his priesthood and shared the same fate. Some friends of the movement had entertained the hope that, on the death of Pius X. and the accession of a new pope, the reprobation of their views might in some degree be modified and " the storm pass over," but one of the first acts of Benedict XV., in his Encyclical ad Beatissimi, addressed to the episcopate of the whole Catholic world, was to renew the condemnation of "modernism," denouncing its "monstrous errors" as a "col- lection of all the heresies," describing the movement in the words of Job (xxxi. 12) as "a fire that devoureth even to de- struction and rooteth up all things that spring," and warning the faithful not only against its teaching but against its spirit. The effect has been to indicate that if modernism has a future it must be one that will be outside the Catholic Church.
The Church and the Social Question. In relation to socialism and the economic questions which arise out of the contending claims of capital and labour, the main lines of direction to Catholic thought and action had been laid down in the Encyc-
