Napoleon III and the Papacy [pp. 686-702]

9Napoleon III. and the Papacy.
of the present condition of the Papacy, and of the value of the
office in determining the religious future of the world.
We incline to anticipate successive modifications of the
Catholic system, by the continued and accelerated progress of
change which has been inaugurated in the United States.
The silent but growing disuse of dogmas and of practices
which have become distasteful and unprofitable to the altered
mental conditions has already gone much farther among the
Catholics of the United States, and even among those of
foreign birth, than is generally known. Some twenty years
ago, we heard, in the leading Catholic congregation of one
of our largest Atlantic cities, a discourse from a priest
which took us quite by surprise. It was an exhortation concerning the duty of confession, and complained of great
and growing neglect of this ordinance of the church, and
remonstrated-" Why should the church have to mourn that
one of her most binding ordinances should be so generally
neglected by her members who are engaged in the business of
the world, or have risen to the higher ranks of intelligence and
culture?" And from statements as to the number of members
in the charge, and the number who attended the confessional,
it appeared that scarcely one in a hundred pretended to comply
with the requisition of the church, by the habitual abuse of the
confessional; that those who did confess, were mostly of the
lowest class, or in extremity. This is the inevitable course of
usages which do not agree with the advancing ideas of propriety, and which cannot adapt themselves to some rational
sentiment of utility, even while fulfilling an acknowledged
scriptural requirement. So it has already been with the
Catholic church in this, country, and so it will continue to be.
The changes will naturally be the more rapid within the church
as the usages become the more conformed to the religious
sentiment prevailing in the age, and as the antagonism between
Catholic and Protestant becomes less bitter and violent, while
the transition of individuals and of communities from Romanism, will also be more free and frequent. Circumstances will
also hasten the work. While the spirit of the two great divisions of christendom towards each other is conformed more and
more to the gospel, the greater religious susceptibility of
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