THE

PROVIDENTIAL MISSION

OP

LEO XIII.

A LECTURE BY

JOHN J. KEANE,
Bishop of Richmond .

BALTIMORE:

JOHN MURPHY & CO.

1888.





THE

PROVIDENTIAL MISSION

LEO XIII.

A LECTURE BY

JOHN J. KEANE,
Bishop of Richmond.

BALTIMORE:

JOHN MURPHY & CO.

1888.



THIS LECTURE,

DELIVERED IN BALTIMORE, WASHINGTON,

RICHMOND AND WHEELING,
/

AND PUBLISHED AT THE REQUEST OF MANY FRIENDS,

IS LAID AS A TRIBUTE OF REVERENCE AND AFFECTION

AT THE FEET OF

LEO XIII.

*

lifted



THE PROVIDENTIAL MISSION
OF

LEO XIII.

T
HE subject on which I am to address you

this evening is suggested by the event

which the whole world is now celebrating,

the Glolden Jubilee of our Holy Father, Leo XIII.

And you will surely agree with me that no

theme could be more worthy of our study than

the character and career of that great and good

Pontiff, who, holding the highest office that man

can hold on earth, adorns it with qualities to

which the entire world, without distinction of

nation or class or creed, unites in paying the

tribute of admiration and reverence, and who,

being vested with his sublime responsibility in

one of the most critical periods of the world’s

history, when every step is fraught with conse-

quences of mighty moment, has discharged his

great trust with a disinterestedness, a devotedness,

3



4

a lofty wisdom, and a practical prudence, that may

well he considered more than human. It is in

his relation to our epoch, with which the Provi-

dence of God has so inseparably associated him,

that the character and work of Leo XIII. can

best be understood. He will be forever one of

the great landmarks of the nineteenth century,

and it is in its light that we will now view him.

We are living in a great transition period of

humanity. Everywhere around us the hand of

God is working momentous changes and develop-

ments, which are to characterize a new era in

the history of mankind. The convulsive throes

of the birth of that new future began a hundred

years ago, and their quivering is still felt through-

out the human race. For fifty years and more

men held their breath, not knowing what those

agonies portended; they feared that anarchy was

going to seize on Christendom and plunge it into

chaos. But, to eyes that love the light, this

latter half of our century is bright with the rain-

bow of hope, and the parting clouds show the

God of Xations, the God of wisdom and of order,

still sitting on His throne and guiding the march

of time. ’Tis as with the face of nature around

us. The beauty of her hills and dales is the

work of heaving earthquakes and rushing tor-

rents. At first, they seemed to promise only

ruin and horror
;
but time rolled on, and nature



5

passed her soft strong hand gently hut mightily

over their awful work, and turned it into a new

mirroring forth of the grandeur and the beauty

of Grod. And so, over the rude wild work of

human wills the loving almighty hand of Grod is

passed, and grateful generations thank Him for

the new beauties and the new blessings which

spring up under His touch.

That we may understand the part which Leo

XIII. was to take in the moulding of our era,

we must glance back a moment to the epoch of

his illustrious predecessor. When Pius IX. was

called by Providence to the Chair of Peter, he

heard the voice of his Divine Master breathing

over the storm and the chaos the first sweet

whisper of “ Peace, be still ! ” With the faith of

Peter, he was willing and eager to leap into the

seething waves, to meet his loved Master and to

stand with Him on the billows
;
and Europe and

America rang with acclamations, as they saw the

brave young Pope commit himself to the popular

forces which were surging up tumultuously from

the awakening energies of the yet untutored

millions. But the billows were not ready for

his heroic trust
;

only the Divine feet could as

yet press them in safety. It was in Peter’s

bark, within the Church herself, that the provi-

dential work of Pius IX. was to be done, and

the record of his wonderful pontificate shows

how nobly he accomplished it.



6

The future was to bring with it two great dan-

gers, and it was his work to raise up ramparts

against them. These dangers were to spring from

the very exuberance of the forces which the

Providence of Grod was rousing and moving in

human society, from the extremes to which even

good and lawful tendencies are prone to go.

In the first place, our age was to be charac-

terized by an astonishing development of human

energy, by wonderful results of human activity

and skill. Man was to almost annihilate the

obstacles of time and space, to yoke to the

chariot of his progress nearly every power of

nature, to be, as he had never been before,

monarch of the material universe. No wonder

then that he should be tempted to take pride in

his abilities, and to think human nature all-suf-

ficient for human needs. No wonder that he

should be tempted to ignore or to reject the

salutary but humbling truths taught by Divine

Revelation, the truths of man’s fall, of nature’s

weakened powers, of humanity’s need of a Re-

deemer. No wonder that he should be tempted

to think the whole sphere of supernatural religion

a dream, or should wish to drag it down to the

level of mere nature. Against this evident dan-

ger Pius IX. was to provide a safeguard of

Divine truth
;
and that safeguard, strange as it

might at first sight seem to the world’s proud



7

common sense, was the definition of the Im-

maculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

For the declaration of Mary’s privileged exemp-

tion from original sin, was equivalently the de-

claration of the fallen condition of the human

race, and of our need of Redemption
;
while the

assertion of the privilege thus granted to her as

the Mother of our Redeemer, is virtually the

proclamation of His Divinity and of the super-

natural Religion by Him established. The un-

thinking and the prejudiced cried out “ super-

stition! Mariolatry!” But, to honest and reflective

minds, the spotless hand of that Immaculate

Mother, thus lifted up in the sight of all the

world, holds aloft a beacon-light to warn and

guide our age away from the shoals and rocks of

naturalism, to keep it true to the great mysteries

of the Incarnation and the Redemption, which are

the very foundations of the Christian Religion.

The second great danger was to spring from

that general assertion of popular and individual

rights, which was to be a still more striking

characteristic of our era. The close of the last

century beheld myriads so intoxicated with the

“ rights of man ” as to be oblivious of the rights

of Grod. Our own century has seen in all nations

large numbers so infatuated by that magic word

liberty that they denounce all authority as tyr-

anny and all law as oppression. And multi-



8

tudes of minds, although incapable of excesses so

monstrous as these, are in danger of so exagger-

ating the principles of democracy as to acknowledge

no authority, whether in civil or in religious matters,

that does not emanate from the people and find its

sanction in the people. Nay, some seem to admit no

standard of law save the collective force of human

votes, and no standard of truth save the col-

lective force of human opinions. In a word, the

democratic idea which the Providence of God

has awaked in the mind of the world, runs risk

of turning against God Himself by being pushed

to the extremes of socialism, anarchism, and mere

humanism in both Church and State, and of

leaving mankind, as the Apostle expresses it,

“without God in the world.” The barrier which

Divine Providence, through Pius IX., raised

against that danger, was the definition of Papal

Infallibility. This solemn promulgation to our

age of a truth as old as Christianity, reminds the

world that mankind is not left to the mercy of

fluctuating human opinions, but is ever guided,

% although through a human agency, by Christ the

Light of the World and by the spirit of truth;

that, amid the thousand changing forms which

human authority may assume, the organization

and authority of the Kingdom of Christ on earth

must remain till the end of time as firm and

unchanging as Himself Who established it and



9

%

as the Rock of Peter on which He laid its founda-

tions
;

that there is an authority, a power on

earth, which man is incapable of either giving

or modifying, and whose existence reminds the

peoples of the world that, no matter how they

may control the reins of civil power, no matter

how they may entrust them to the hands of their

chosen public servants, still the fountain of

authority is not in man but in God, and that

the measure and sanction of just laws is not in

human wills or votes, not in police or armies,

but in the truth and the justice of the Supreme

Law-Giver and Judge.

To teach the world these two great lessons, to

impress them indelibly on the mind of our age

by the most solemn of all authoritative pro-

nouncements, and to give mankind, in his own

beautiful life, an exemplification of all he taught,

—

this was the work of Pius IX.
;

and, having

accomplished it, he passed from this scene of

storm and struggle to the ranks of his sainted

predecessors in the realms of endless peace.

Before he died, the Church and the Papacy

had begun to experience their share in the great

transition which our era was to accomplish
;

for

the Church too was to have her part in its

changes and modifications. “ But,” it will be

objected, “can the Church change? Is not the

Church ever the same?” The Church is indeed

2



10

*

ever the same, and yet she is ever changing too.

Let a simple comparison explain this apparent

paradox. A man’s soul is always the same
;
from

babyhood to manhood and on till death, it is

ever the same identical spirit, with the same

identical being and faculties
;
and yet it is equally

true that, from babyhood till death, a man’s soul

is perpetually changing, adapting itself to the

ceaseless modifications of the body in which it

lives and of the environment by which it is sur-

rounded. Aow the Church is the spiritual element

in human society, and may well be called the

soul of mankind. She will remain till the end

of time the same spirit that the Son of God has

made her, identical in mind and will, in her

inner life and in the purpose of all her exterior

action. But the body which God has put her

in to animate and guide, the great world-wide

human body of which she is the spiritual prin-

ciple, is undergoing and shall continue to undergo

constant vicissitudes
;
and the Church has to feel

them all, to be, in a certain sense, modified by

them all. The Church is the same in the noon-

day of the nineteenth century that she was when

hidden in the catacombs in the second and third

;

she is identically the same amid the surround-

ings of European civilization that she is in the

Indian missions of Paraguay or Alaska
;
and yet

how different her life, her relationships, her



11

manner of action, under these different circum-

stances. The nations, and perhaps the whole

human race, advance from childhood to manhood

and to old age, just as individuals do. In the

time of their growth, they pass through the writh-

ings and tearings of many a growing pain
;

in

the age of their manhood, they undergo many a

vicissitude of fortune and of condition
;

in the

period of their decline, they suffer many an ache

and pang in stiffening limbs
;

and all these

changes the spirit has to feel, and to make allow-

ance for, and to adapt herself to, for she must

make herself “ all things to all men, in order to

win all to Christ.”

Now the nineteenth century is working momen-

tous, and, for all we can see, permanent changes

in the organization of human society, in the

methods of human governments, in the relation-

ships of human life. These changes may be

summed up in one word : it is the era of demo-

cracy
;

it is the era of the power of the people,

of the predominance of “ the fourth estate ” in

the body politic, as it used to be called. It is

not for us at present to examine the political

philosophy of this development. It suffices us to

state and to accept the unquestionable fact, and

to express our firm conviction that it is not the

work of chance, nor of the devil, but of the over-

ruling Providence of God. Whoever opens his



12

eyes, and is willing to see what is, must recog-

nize that the day of absolute rule and of so-

called paternal 'governments is over
;

that if, in

some parts of the civilized world, they still hold

a struggling existence, their duration must be

stormy and short
;
that the laws of the nations

can never again be made by one man or by a

few men, unless as the delegated and responsible

agents of the people, for whose welfare alone laws

ought to be made.

The consequence in regard to the relation of

the Church with the world is obvious. As Car-

dinal Manning has recently so well expressed it

:

“ Hitherto, the Church has had to deal with

dynasties
;

henceforth, she has to deal with the

people.” “But,” it may again be objected, “why

need the Church have any dealings either with

the power of dynasties or with the power of the

people? ” Simply because, in the nature of things,

there must be harmonious relations between the

body and the soul of humanity. As the Church

has neither the right nor the wish to hinder or

hamper the State in the State’s rightful domain,

so the State has no right, and ought to have no

wish, to hinder or hamper the Church in her

rightful province. But, unfortunately, the good

will of governments is prone to fickleness, and

cannot always be taken for granted or depended

on. Hence it was found necessary to secure



13

religious freedom by contracts entered into with

the governments. In former times, the stability

of the government or dynasty was supposed to

be a natural guarantee for the stability of the

contract and of the religious freedom secured by

it. But now, governments or administrations

change with the changes of popular majorities.

We may like this state of things, or we may

dislike it
;
but we have to accept the fact and to

recognize that, with some possible modifications,

it bids fair to be the fundamental fact of all

governments for the future. Hence the Church

has to secure the rights and the freedom of reli-

gion, not by treating with changing administra-

tions or governments, but by her hold on the

convictions and affections of the people. It is so

in our country, and it is fast becoming so in

countries where Csesarism has thus far maintained

some hold. And I am frank to confess that,

when I look back at history and see how Caesar

has almost habitually treated religion and the

Church in the past, I heartily welcome the future,

in which she shall no more have to deal with

him, but with the people, who, in the main, and

always when in their senses, know that she is

their best friend and that her interests are

their own.

It is easy for us Americans to feel this way

;

but it must, naturally speaking, have been hard



14

for Leo XIII. to enter into such new views.

The notions of the old school are very much to

the contrary of all this, and have usually a very

tenacious hold on the minds and feelings of

Europeans
;

and it was in that old school that

he was nurtured and trained. But no school

could hold or trammel a man like him. His

great mind and his noble heart soar above all

prejudices' and attachments and habits of thought,

to see facts as they come from the hand of Grod,

and to accept their meaning and their moral.

To Leo XIII. Grod has assigned the task of at

least inaugurating this adjustment of the Church

to the new circumstances of the world, and Provi-

dence had admirably fitted him for so delicate

and so important a mission. Xaturally endowed

with all the qualities of mind and heart which

make up the great and good man, his life-experi-

ence had been such as to make him intimately

acquainted with every detail of both Church and

State, and with all the interlacings of their com-

plex life. His ties of blood and his career as

priest, as prelate, as papal nuncio, as cardinal,

had brought him into familiar contact with the

nobility, with the people, with the clergy and

the hierarchy, with the diplomacy of courts and

governments, with the supreme administration of

the Church. With the clear and practised eye

of a philosopher, a theologian, and a statesman,



15

lie had scanned the life of the world, had noted

the throbbings of its pulse, had watched the ways

of Providence, and he knew that those ways,

though often obscure to us, are always right.

He saw changes going on, and changes ahead;

but he knew he could look on them without fear.

Temporary difficulties were indeed inevitable, for

all great adjustments are difficult
;
but the wisdom

and the benefit of the final results he was sure of

beforehand.

Again, in order to fit him to be a safe guide

into the future, Providence had firmly moulded

and rooted him in all that was wise and good

in the past. For progress is not a leap in a

vacuum
;

it is an advance on a solid road. The

growth of the future, if it is to stand firm, must

be well rooted in the past. He who plans what is

to be, without taking careful account of what has

been and what is, is building houses on the sand

or castles in the air, but not a lasting structure

on solid foundations. Leo XIII. came to his

work enriched with all the spiritual wisdom be-

queathed by Pius IX., armed with every con-

viction and every principle whose assertion had

immortalized the name of that glorious Pontiff.

His whole life breathes forth the spirit of the

two great definitions of faith, which are the chief

glory of his sainted predecessor, and in formu-

lating which he had himself had so important a



16

part. We know too with what marvellous assi-
duity he attends to every detail of the Church’s

inner life, to whatever becomes the holiness and

beauty of the Bride of Christ. And because thus

solicitous for the Church’s inner life and spiritual

beauty, he was all the better fitted to provide

for her external action and her worldly relation-

ships
;
because so fully possessed of all that had

preceded him, he was the more competent to be

a wise guide in the new ways on which the world

and the Church were entering.

The difficulties of those new ways, the wrench

and pain of the new adjustments, have been ex-

rienced to a special degree in France and Spain

;

and here, accordingly, the Holy Father’s wisdom

has had to be specially exercised. Very many

of the good and honest people of those countries

accept willingly the democratic future, and, while

lamenting the errors and the violence which are

apt to accompany great changes, yet fully trust

that the final issue will be for the general good.

Very many others, on the contrary, firmly wedded

to old ideas, see nothing but unmixed evil in the

new developments, and believe that the only hope

of the future, and especially the only guarantee of

the Church’s welfare, is in the restoration of fallen

dynasties. Such a conflict of views, urged on

each side with all the earnestness of passionate

conviction, made the situation of the Holy Father



17

a most difficult one. The vehemence and the

importance of the controversy demanded that he

should speak out
;
and yet what could he say

without grievously wounding the most sensitive

feelings on the one side or on the other? He

spoke out, however, bravely and clearly
;

and

his declaration was that the Church and her

interests are not wedded to any dynasty or to

any particular species of social organization, that

she does not consider any form of government

as necessarily hostile or injurious to her, that

she has no fear of any result which the Provi-

dence of God and the due development of nations

may bring forth. Out it rang, clear and loud

amid the storm, and many a heart stood still in

amazement at the sound. The irreconcilables of

the old school wailed aloud at seeing their idols

thus cast down, and cried that the sacred tra-

ditions of the past were being swept away.

Caesar too gnashed his teeth
;
for he was used to

consider the Church as his dependant, and her

interests as inseparably bound up with his own,

and he winced under this proclamation of the

Church’s emancipation from his vassalage. But,

all the same, the word rang out from the lips

of Leo XIII., and it will stand forever as the

Church’s Declaration of Independence.

In Germany, Caesar still holds sway. He is no

longer, indeed, the absolute potentate of former

3



18

times
;
he knows well the power that resides in

the masses whom he rules. Yet he plays the

dictator occasionally
;

and it was as such that

Leo XIII., when called to the Papal throne,

found him confronting the Church. Caesar de-

manded the Church’s vassalage, and unsheathed

the sword of persecution. But the demand and

the threat were no new things to the Church of

all the ages, and she knew how to meet them.

Leo put his trust in the power of truth
;

he

looked to God, and to the faithful millions of

German Catholics, who understood the power

which the advance of democracy had put in their

hands and were determined to use it sturdily.

We know how the despot did his worst, and

how he failed, and how at last he had the good

sense to surrender to the German Centre and to

the millions whom they so worthily represented.

And then the magnanimity of Leo XIII. mani-

fested itself in another form. The victorious

phalanx seemed to he pressing the vanquished

Crnsar too sorely, demanding further concessions,

which were indeed simple justice to the Church,

hut the immediate enforcement of which seemed

more than the galled and beaten tyrant could

endure. Then it was the voice of Leo XIII. that

called halt to his eager columns and granted

truce to his adversary. Many of his old soldiers

growled and thought him in error
;
and it was



19

no small pain to the Holy Father to grieve his

faithful veterans by restraining them. But his

superior wisdom knows how to be patient and

prudent in victory as well as unflinching in the

hour of combat
;

and he is well assured that

the full justice which he now restrains the Catho-

lics of Germany from taking by storm they are

certain to win by the steady advance of popular

rights.

While the Holy Father was thus busy foiling

the fierce assault of mail-clad Germany, he had

to withstand another attack of Csesarism from

another quarter. This time, however, it came in

a very different guise. It was not Caesar trying

to coerce the Church or to crush her
;

it was

Caesar cunningly seeking to cajole the Church

and to use ^er as a cat’s-paw for his own selfish

ends. This tells plainly enough whence the

attempt emanated. With stealthy overtures of

friendliness on the one hand, and insinuated

threats of hostility upon the other, England

sought to win the Pope to the unworthy task

of restraining poor Ireland’s aspirations after

just government and rightful freedom, of hold-

ing her submissive in the chains of centuries,

from which the spirit of our era is deliver-

ing her. But here too Leo XIII. was found

impregnable. Calmly but firmly, heeding neither

promises nor threats, he threw his sympathy and



20

his influence on the side of justice and humanity.

Poor, down-trodden, long-suffering Ireland felt

that she had indeed in him a Father and a

friend, when, in spite of the bitterest opposition

and the most wily influences, he appointed to the

See of Dublin the patriot priest who was the

choice of the Irish hierarchy and the darling of

the Irish people. Few men have a more diffi-

cult position than that held by Archbishop Walsh.

Compelled by his providential situation to be not

only the spiritual guide but also the temporal

adviser of a down-trodden, generous-hearted, and

impulsive people, who, asking only the barest

justice, are exasperated by taunts and goaded by

coercion
;

forced, on the one hand, to assert his

people’s rights, and, on the other, to restrain

their honest indignation and hold them in the

wise and safe paths of peace; constantly maligned

by his country’s enemies, and often misunder-

stood and misrepresented by those who ought to

be her friends
;
he must indeed have many a sad

and weary hour. But his chief comfort, next to

his trust in the Grod of truth and justice, is the

loving sympathy of Leo XIII.

Still another solicitude has all along weighed

heavily on the heart of the great Pontiff, owing

to a danger which lies at the very foundations

of human society. He knows well, from his care-

ful observation of European events in the present



21

century, that the greatest danger attending the

development of democratic institutions, has sprung

from the discontent of the laboring and poorer

classes. These ought to be the bone and sinew

of a nation
;
but if their affections are alienated

from their country by real or supposed injustice,

they easily become its peril and its bane. Dema-

gogues are always ready to exaggerate their

wrongs, to preach to them the gospel of hate,

and to hurl them against all authority, both

civil and religious. The comfort and content of

the lower classes is the surest guarantee of the

peace and prosperity of nations. Hence, as the

best friend of human society, as the enlightened

advocate of European civilization, as the devoted

Shepherd entrusted with the care of all the sheep

and all the lambs of the fold of Christ, Leo

XIII. has always manifested the most paternal

solicitude for the welfare of the laboring classes.

His voice has constantly been heard in gentle

pleadings and loving warnings against the influ-

ence of those hot-headed or unprincipled agi-

tators, ,who, under the guise of friendship, strive

to mislead them into the ruinous abysses of social-

ism, anarchism, and violence. But it has also

been heard with equal clearness pleading the poor

man’s cause and asking respect for the poor

man’s rights.

Quite recently, when welcoming with special



22

affection the great pilgrimages which represented

the thousands of the workingmen of France, he

poured forth the convictions of his heart in lan-

guage that shows equally the Father and the

statesman, and which ought to be well pondered

not only by the toiling millions of the world,

but also by their employers and their rulers.

He laid down the broad and all-important prin-

ciple that the workingman has a strict right to

such a return for due and honest labor as will

supply the ordinary human needs of himself and

his dependent family
;
that it is not mere bene-

volence or charity which must impel the em-

ployer to give this much, but strict justice which

commands him to do so. He recognized that the

working classes might very properly take all lawful

means for securing their just rights, but impressed

upon them the obligation of keeping their efforts

within the limits of public peace and of respect

for the rights of others
;
and he asserted that it

was the duty of governments, when necessary, to

protect the working people with the strong arm

of the law against injustice and oppression. These

again were, to very many ears, strange and start-

ling sentiments—to those who have been used to
regard the workingman as an object of charity

rather than of strict justice, and who have been

accustomed to consider wages as depending for

their amount on the good-will of the employer,



23

or on the bargain he can make with labor,

rather than on the inalienable human rights of

the employed. But Leo XIII. spoke it out,

calmly, gently, fearlessly, and his principles may

well be considered the standard of all wise and

just action in the great labor questions which

are now agitating the world.

In the light of these principles, it is easy to

comprehend the position of the Holy See in the

recent controversy concerning the Knights of

Labor. Rome drew a clear distinction between

the principles involved in that question, and the

particular methods or form of organization by

which it was sought to enforce them. Upon the

principles avowed, the Holy See could but look

with sympathy and kindness
;

for they asserted

unquestionable rights, and appealed only to legi-

timate means for their vindication. But to the

organization in all its practical details the Holy

See could not commit itself, and never gave any

approval
;

for the fact could not be ignored that

when large masses of men are seeking to vindi-

cate their rights against real or supposed wrongs,

they are in imminent danger of falling into

errors and of being led perhaps into violence and

injustice. But Rome could not, on that account,

be induced to put the organization under the

ban of ecclesiastical censure. The Church wisely

preferred to leave it to experience to eliminate



24

the elements that might he mistaken or dan-

gerous, feeling sure that practical good sense and

justice would prevail at last, and trusting confi-

dently that the conservative wisdom of our coun-

try’s institutions, and the strong right arm of

her legal authority, were fully competent to keep

the action of this and all similar organizations

within the limits of law and order.

And this brings us to the Holy Father’s feel-

ings towards our own beloved America. But

here it would be hard to tell the bare truth

without seeming to be over-boastful, so very re-

markable are the esteem and affection which

Leo XIII. manifests for America and Americans.

He recognizes in our country the furthest ad-

vance yet attained by the true spirit of our era;

the most symmetrical and orderly development

of democracy which the world has yet beheld
;
a

republic which is a rebuke and a lesson equally

to the absolutism of the past, and to the red-

revolutionism which misrepresents democracy and

imperils its future in Europe. Here he sees

Church and State moving on side by side peace-

fully, not indeed as closely and harmoniously re-

lated in their action as the body and the soul of

human society ought, in the nature of things, to

be
;
but yet in mutual respect and forbearance, in

the best manner which, considering the existing

state of things, could reasonably be expected. He



4

25

appreciates the contrast here presented to the con-

dition of insult and violence which the Church has

to endure from Csesarism or from red-revolution-

ism elsewhere, and he loves .and honors our country

and her straightforward, broad-hearted people. In

acts which speak louder than words, he has shown

that he has no fear of such democracy and such

freedom as ours, and that he would rejoice to see it

giving the tone to the future of the world.

Now from all this some may be tempted to con-

clude that Leo XIII. accepts and endorses that

“ spirit of the age” which Pius IX. so emphatically

condemned. But this would be a great mistake.

Pius IX. condemned that self-styled, self-consti-

tuted, false “ spirit of the age,” which asserts man’s

self-sufficiency, rejects Divine Revelation, scoffs at

the supernatural order, glories in materialism, and

denounces religion and the Church as the enemies

of human nature and human freedom. And to

such a “spirit of the age” Leo XIII. is as firmly

opposed as Pius IX. ever was. But he knows full

well that this is not the real spirit of the age, but

its perversion and its caricature. Our age is the

the age of freedom, the age of the assertion of

man’s inalienable rights, of rights which are in-

alienable because they have not been conferred by

man and therefore cannot be taken away by man,

but have been, as our Declaration of Independence

proclaims, bestowed on man by his Creator, rights

4



26

therefore which have their basis in man’s relation-

ship with God. But now these infidels come and

cast doubt on the existence of God, or deny it out-

right. Then, they conclude, rights are not God-

given but man-given
;
they are given by the laws,

by human society, by the State. And thus is laid

the foundation of a stateolatry
,

which makes of the

State a Moloch before whom individual rights and

individual freedom must fall prostrate, and in

whose name, even under the pretence of liberty,

can be perpetrated such horrors of tyranny as the

world still shudders at in the French Revolution.

The agnosticism, the atheism, the materialism of

our day, would logically lead back to the absolu-

tism which prevailed everywhere under heathen-

ism and which Christianity dethroned. And the

Vicar of Christ, by protesting so vehemently

against those errors, and by asserting so strenu-

ously the great truths of reason and revelation

which are the real and the only basis of human

dignity and human rights, is laying the only foun-

dation on which our era can stand securely, the

only logical foundation for an epoch of popular

rights and true freedom. Outside of that, there

remain but the two extremes of grinding absolu-

tism or of desperate anarchism, under neither of

which can human society live. Reflective minds

everywhere are beginning to appreciate this, are

looking to religion for the security of society in the



27

future, are coming to understand the important

relationship which exists between human welfare

and the office of the Chief Pastor of the Universal

Church. This explains the wonderful spectacle

which we now behold,—the heads of so many of
the nations imitating the example of Germany’

s

Iron Chancellor and reaching out for the hand of

Leo XIII., or chafing uneasily in the consciousness

that, whether they like it or not, they must come

to that, as the best security of peace and order.

From all this we easily understand why Leo

XIII. has so assiduously inculcated in his famous

Encyclical Letters that the only guarantee for the

prosperity of commonwealths is their being organ-

ized on a Christian basis. This too is why he con-

stantly insists that the masses of the people, since

they are to be the great reservoir of power, should

be imbued from their earliest years with true ideas,

with moral and religious principles, in good Chris-

tian schools. This is why, above all, he so ear-

nestly desires that they who are to be, by their

talents and position, the leaders of the people and

the moulders of public thought, should be prepared

to exercise on their generation a salutary and not a

destructive influence, by being solidly grounded in

sound philosophy, and fully and nobly developed

by a thoroughly Christian higher education.

Here is the secret of the very remarkable inter-

est which Leo XIII. has shown in the Catholic



28

University of America, which the hierarchy of the

United States are now establishing in the Capital

City of our country. He sees in it a realization

of his desire that the highest and truest education

should everywhere be the safeguard of the purest

and noblest civilization. He sees in it a fountain

of sound philosophy opened up to the people of

America, another link to bind our country in faith-

ful allegiance to Christ the Prince of Peace, the

Author of all true social welfare and national

greatness, as well as of individual virtue and sal-

vation. He considers it morally certain that men

educated in such an institution as we propose to

establish, must go forth prepared to be a blessing

to their country and to help her to be a blessing to

mankind. The University is to commence, indeed,

with the Faculty of Divinity, because the Religion

of Christ our Lord must be the animating spirit,

the enlightening central sun, the great moving

principle of the whole organization, just as Christ

Himself is the Light of the World. Still it is the

wish of the Holy Father, as well as our own, that

Faculties for the highest education of the laity

should be added on as rapidly as means can be

procured, in order that not only the Church but

the State also may enjoy the blessings which the

University is meant, under Providence, to impart,

and that all parents who appreciate the inestimable

advantages of the purest and safest and highest



29

and most useful intellectual culture, may have the

facility offered them of bestowing so priceless a

boon upon their sons. Therefore it is that he

appeals to both clergy and laity to push on the

work, and to let no difficulty discourage or deter

them, till this noble undertaking be realized and

its blessings be shared in by all.

A Father whose family is the whole world, and

such a world as we know it to be, must always

have a heart full of solicitude, and his life must be

marked with many an hour of sadness. But I

think one runs no risk of mistake in affirming that

the greatest sadness in the heart of Leo XIII. is

the alienation existing between him and his own

loved Italy. The world is now ringing with the

acclamations of his Golden Jubilee
;
but amid all

its rejoicings he must feel as our Divine Lord did

when, in the midst of His triumph, He looked

down upon Jerusalem and wept over it. He knows

indeed full well that there too the Providence of

God is sure to work out a solution of the problem

which will be for the greater good both of Italy

and of the Church. But meanwhile, all the diffi-

culties of the complication weigh on him, and cir-

cumstances seem to conspire to render the situation

painful beyond endurance. On the one hand, the

government of Italy is at present dominated by a

faction of infidels, who certainly do not represent

the Italian people, any more than the faction of



30

infidels who do the loudest talking and the most

aggressive working in French politics represent

the French people, which they assuredly do not.

And these degenerate sons of the noblest races of

the past fully verify the old Latin saying “ corruptio

ojptimi jpessima—the very best, when corrupted, be-
comes the very worst.” For truly one would sup-

pose from their dealings with religion and with the

Vicar of Christ, that they were lineal descendants

of the ruffian Roman soldiers who smote our Divine

Lord with their fists and spat in His sacred face.

At Christmas time of 1886 I heard him pour out

his heart on this subject in an eloquent allocution

whose burning sentences stirred all Europe. He

showed how the party now misgoverning Italy

took every opportunity to outrage religion and to

insult the Head of the Church
;
how they syste-

matically banished Christianity and Gfod from edu-

cation and insisted on training up a generation of

scoffing unbelievers
;
how with heartless tyranny

they trampled on the most sacred rights of re-

ligious men and women, refused to let them

serve Hod according to their conscientious con-

victions, and expelled them from the sanctuaries

in which they had consecrated their lives to their

Creator and to the good of their needy fellow-

creatures. “And,” he concluded, “as long as

they persist in this policy of irreligion and in-

justice, what can I do but maintain my attitude



31

of protest?” Assuredly, with such a policy, and

with the ideas and the spirit which prompt it,

neither Leo XIII. nor any other Vicar of Christ

can ever he reconciled.

On the other hand, the question of the Tem-

poral Power presents a puzzle of the acutest

difficulty. For more than a thousand years, the

Temporal Power of the Popes had stood, the

most venerable institution of modern times, pre-

served by a manifest Providence for the purpose

of securing the independence of the Pope’s sub-

lime spiritual office and the freedom of his world-

wide jurisdiction. In a day, the mailed hand of

violence seizes it, wipes out its sacred and his-

toric character, incorporates it with the dominions

of the spoiler, turns the Capital of Christendom

into the capital of one of the last and least of

the European Powers, and turns the Central See

of the Christian Religion into the receptacle and

hot-bed of the worst blasphemers against Chris-

tianity. They expect the Pope to say amen to

all this
;
and they do really seem to have made

it impossible that such a city and such a country

could ever again be governed by the Successor

of St. Peter. But how can he say amen to such

astounding spoliation, to such a wiping out of

the tradition of all the ages of Christian history,

to such a profanation of the treasures of Chris-

tian antiquity, to such a degradation of the Capi-



32

tal of the Christian world ? And even if he

were inclined to submit to all this, on the plea

of accepting the inevitable, how can he enter into

such a bargain with a government which, accord-

ing to the signs of the times, may any day be

overthrown by the volcanic red-revolutionism

which honey-combs the whole country, or be

swallowed up in the tremendous European out-

burst which the world is momentarily expecting?

Such is the painful embarrassment in the mind

of Leo XIII., who hears all around him the cry

for conciliation
,
who longs for it himself more

than any one else possibly can, but who says,

“ How can I accept conciliation on such terms?”

But of this we may rest assured, that as, in

his recent negotiations with Germany, he has

shown the Church’s readiness to accept modifica-

tions in external circumstances, when such accept-

ance is demanded by the interests of religion and

involves no sacrifice of principle or of spiritual

duty, so will he be found ready to solve the

problem of the Temporal Power by the same

lofty principles, and to treat with Italy and Rome

on the same noble terms, if he ever conscien-

tiously sees that the circumstances of the times

make it possible and advisable. Meanwhile, we

leave the issue with him and with Providence,

earnestly praying that the final solution may

redound to the dignity of the Ploly See, to the



33

advantage of religion, and to the welfare of Italy

and of Christendom.

We have been studying Leo XIII. in his

public and official capacity
;
and surely it is no

exaggeration to say that, in the grandeur of his

character as well as in the sublimity of his office,

he stands to-day without a rival in all this wide

world. But if now we could pass through the

majestic portals of that grand outer life of his,

into the sanctuary of his inner character and life,

how charming an object of contemplation, how

admirable a theme for study, would we there

discover! Few great men can stand the test of

that inner scrutiny. Many a life has electrified

the world by its outer show, which was inwardly

contemptible. Xot such the life of Leo XIII.

After the somewhat exceptional opportunities that

I have had to gaze into the inner sanctuary of

his heart and soul, I do not hesitate to affirm

that it is the sweetest and loveliest that I have

ever seen or that I ever expect to see here

below. Probe his heart to the bottom, and you

will not find in it one mean or selfish fibre.

Search his character through and through, and

you will not discover there one trait of insin-

cerity or guile, one inclination that is not in

accord with purity and truth and justice and

honor.

We all recognize in him the strength that is able
5



34

to contend with every power of evil in the world

;

but with it there is united the gentleness and ten-

derness of a father’s, yea of a mother’s heart. We
see in him the majesty before which the greatest

ones of earth may well bow in reverence
;
but with

it is blended a winning sweetness, such as must

have drawn the little children to love Our Lord

and cling to Him. You look upon his face in its

repose, and you feel that you are gazing into a

mind whose realms of thought reach to the ends of

the earth and to the heights of heaven
;

you speak

to him, and at once the smiling attention, the eager

interest, the sympathetic response, put you quite at

your ease, and would make you suppose that he

has only your business to concern him. You see

that life crowded with cares, assuredly the busiest

life on earth
;
but behind it there is always the

recollection in Grod, the spirit of prayer, which

makes the saint. Occasionally a corner of the

curtain will be drawn, and one can peep into that

inmost holy of holies of his soul. Such a peep I

had for the first time on the Monday of last Holy

Week, and I shall thank Glod for it as long as I

live. He had sent for me to assist him at the altar

that morning, and never shall I forget that celebra-

tion of the Holy Sacrifice. Long he was wrapt in

silent prayer before he ascended the altar. Then,

clad in the sacred vestments, and reading the

words of prayer and of prophecy which, in the



35

Ordinary of the Mass of that day, usher us into the

sorrowful week of Our Saviour’s Passion, he was

no longer himself, he was as if transformed into

Him whose Vicar he is on earth, and whose words

of plaintive pleading with his obdurate people and

with the sinful world he was reading there at the

altar. I felt awe-struck and touched to the heart

as I gazed on that transfigured personality and

assisted him all through the sublime mystery of

Calvary. And when his identification with our

suffering Lord was perfected by the Holy Com-

munion, and when, after the Sacrifice, he spent a

whole half-hour on his aged knees, plunged and

absorbed in communing with his God, then I un-

derstood whence came his wondrous wisdom and

fortitude, and why it was that, all day long, his

life was so much more than human.

Well may the world be glad that, for fifty years,

such a priest has been daily offering up the Sacri-

fice of the Immaculate Lamb, invoking benedic-

tions on the living and the dead. Well may the

universal Church thank the Divine Good Shepherd

that such a Supreme Pastor holds the place of

Peter, caring for the sheep and the lambs of the

whole flock. Well may our age rejoice that, amid

its perils and its difficulties and its mighty issues,

so wise and so holy a pilot is at the helm. For

many a day may God yet spare him to us, to be an

honor to humanity, a glory to the Church, and a

blessing to the world.