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

8Napoleon III. and the Papacy.
consciousness that she was not under arbitrary rule, but had
a constitutional government, while her constitution was never
written, but only grew, as a power, in the hearts of rulers and
people. Thus old things pass away, in the most ordinary
course of Providence and grace; not by a stream of formal
repeals and abolitions, but by a constant shedding of the
obsolete, and the silent descent of outgrown usages into desuetude.
As for the Papacy, it is outliving its time. Its spirit and
power are gone. What is it? We speak not of the Catholic
church as a whole, but of the Papacy, with its appendages, as
an office of that church. What moral or religious influence
has it with the people, for instance, of this country? What
questions of any real moment, in doctrine or practice, has its
infallibility to decide? Suppose the Catholic churches of the
United States were severed from Rome, as the American Episcopal church is separated from its mother-church of England,
having all merely legal matters adjusted to its separate state,
and what would it lose? Of what moral or religious benefit
would the Catholic Christians of this country be bereft?
With the fall of the temporal power of the Pope, will cease
also, in a great measure, the acknowledgment of his spiritual
influence. The early and continual endeavours of the Papacy
after temporal powers, betrayed the conviction that, without
the dignity of secular dominion, the universal headship of the
church could be little more than a vain show. How much
more must that conviction reveal itself in these times, when
the people have become more enlightened, and capable of asking and weighing the reasons of things? And now that the
secular dominion is coming to naught, it becomes more than a
mere query for the curious, what the spiritual powers of the
Papacy will hereafter in practice amount to. The revolting
states of the church, as they pass under a government tinctured with Protestant liberty, will have more spiritual sympathy with progressive christendom than with Rome; and if
Rome herself should join the progress, she would soon dissolve
in the elements of freedom, like the morning mist in the light
of advancing day. While the people are forsaking the Pope,
and adopting another government of their own preference, they
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