The revolutionary movement in Italy headed by Victor Emanuel has, step by step, trampled under foot every principle of religion, morality, and justice that stood between it and its goal. No pretext of the welfare of a people, even when based on truth, can ever make perfidy and treachery lawful, or furnish a covering of texture thick enough to hide from intelligent and upright minds so long and black a list of misdeeds as the Piedmontese subjugation of Southern Italy contains. “All iniquity of nations is execrable.” What is more, the catalogue of the crimes of this revolution is by no means filled, and, what is worse, the future forebodes others which, in their enormity, will cast those of its beginning into the shade. That the natural desire for unity among the Italian people might have been realized by proper and just means, had the religious, intelligent, and 2influential classes exerted themselves as they were in duty bound to do, there is little room for reasonable doubt. For it would be an unpleasant thing to admit that civilized society, after the action of nineteen centuries of Christianity, could find no way to satisfy a legitimate aspiration, except by a process involving the violation and subversion of those principles of justice, right, and religion for the maintenance and security of which human society is organized and established. It is indeed strange to see the Latin races, which accepted so thoroughly and for so long a period the true Christian faith, now everywhere subject to violent and revolutionary changes in their political condition. How is this to be reconciled with the fact that Christianity, in response to the primitive instincts of human nature, and in consonance with the laws which govern the whole universe, aims at, and actually brings about when followed, the greatest happiness of man upon earth while 3securing his perfect bliss hereafter? For so runs the promise of the divine Founder of Christianity: “A hundred-fold more in this life, and in the world to come life everlasting.”
What has beguiled so large a number of the people of Italy, once so profoundly Catholic, that now they should take up the false principles of revolution, should accept a pseudo-science, and unite with secret atheistical societies? How has it come to pass that a people who poured out their blood as freely as water in testimony and defence of the Catholic religion, whose history has given innumerable examples of the highest form of Christian heroism in ages past, now follows willingly, or at least submits tamely, to the dictation of leaders who are animated with hatred to the Catholic Church, and are bent on the extermination of the Christian faith, and with it of all religion?
Only those who can read in the seeds of time can tell whether such signs as these are to be interpreted as signifying the beginning of the apostasy of the Latin races from Christianity and the disintegration and ruin of Latin nations, or whether these events are to be looked upon as evidence of a latent capacity and a youthful but ill-regulated strength pointing out a transition to a new and better order of things in the future.
Judging from the antecedents of the men placed in political power by recent elections in Italy, and their destructive course of legislation, the former supposition, confining our thoughts to the immediate present, appears to be the more likely. It is not, therefore, a matter of surprise that Catholics of an active faith and a deep sense of 4personal responsibility feel uneasy at seeing things go from bad to worse in nations which they have been accustomed to look upon as pre-eminently Catholic. Nor is it in human nature for men of energetic wills and sincere feelings of patriotism to content themselves when they see the demagogues of liberty and the conspirators of atheistical secret societies coming to the front and aiming at the destruction of all that makes a country dear to honest men. Nowhere does the Catholic Church teach that the love of one’s country is antagonistic to the love of God; nor does the light of her faith allure to an ignoble repose, or her spirit render her members slaves or cowards.
Serious-minded men, before going into action, are wont to examine anew their first principles, in order to find out whether these be well grounded, clearly defined, and firm, and also whether there may not be some flaw in the deductions which they have been accustomed to draw from them. An examination of this kind is a healthy and invigorating exercise, and not to be feared when one has in his favor truth and honesty.
Copyright: Rev. I. T. Hecker. 1877.
II.—THE UNITY OF ITALY.
The idea of unity responds to one of the noblest aspirations of the soul, and wherever it exists free from all compulsion it gives birth to just hopes of true greatness. Would that the cry for unity were heard from the hearts of the inhabitants of the whole earth, and that the inward struggle which reigns in men’s bos
What has beguiled so large a number of the people of Italy, once so profoundly Catholic, that now they should take up the false principles of revolution, should accept a pseudo-science, and unite with secret atheistical societies? How has it come to pass that a people who poured out their blood as freely as water in testimony and defence of the Catholic religion, whose history has given innumerable examples of the highest form of Christian heroism in ages past, now follows willingly, or at least submits tamely, to the dictation of leaders who are animated with hatred to the Catholic Church, and are bent on the extermination of the Christian faith, and with it of all religion?
Only those who can read in the seeds of time can tell whether such signs as these are to be interpreted as signifying the beginning of the apostasy of the Latin races from Christianity and the disintegration and ruin of Latin nations, or whether these events are to be looked upon as evidence of a latent capacity and a youthful but ill-regulated strength pointing out a transition to a new and better order of things in the future.
Judging from the antecedents of the men placed in political power by recent elections in Italy, and their destructive course of legislation, the former supposition, confining our thoughts to the immediate present, appears to be the more likely. It is not, therefore, a matter of surprise that Catholics of an active faith and a deep sense of 4personal responsibility feel uneasy at seeing things go from bad to worse in nations which they have been accustomed to look upon as pre-eminently Catholic. Nor is it in human nature for men of energetic wills and sincere feelings of patriotism to content themselves when they see the demagogues of liberty and the conspirators of atheistical secret societies coming to the front and aiming at the destruction of all that makes a country dear to honest men. Nowhere does the Catholic Church teach that the love of one’s country is antagonistic to the love of God; nor does the light of her faith allure to an ignoble repose, or her spirit render her members slaves or cowards.
Serious-minded men, before going into action, are wont to examine anew their first principles, in order to find out whether these be well grounded, clearly defined, and firm, and also whether there may not be some flaw in the deductions which they have been accustomed to draw from them. An examination of this kind is a healthy and invigorating exercise, and not to be feared when one has in his favor truth and honesty.
Copyright: Rev. I. T. Hecker. 1877.
II.—THE UNITY OF ITALY.
The idea of unity responds to one of the noblest aspirations of the soul, and wherever it exists free from all compulsion it gives birth to just hopes of true greatness. Would that the cry for unity were heard from the hearts of the inhabitants of the whole earth, and that the inward struggle which reigns in men’s bos
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