The Catholic World, Vol. 11, April, 1870 to September, 1870Various
Religion
The Catholic World, Vol. 11, April, 1870 to September, 1870
Various
Catholic Church -- Periodicals
There is evidently, then, little reliance to be placed on the
governments; for they are liable, any day, to be changed or
overthrown. The strongest of them hope to sustain themselves and
keep the revolution in check only by concessions, as we see in the
extension of suffrage in England, and the adoption of parliamentary
government, under a constitutional monarch, in Austria, France, North
Germany, and elsewhere. But as yet the concessions of the governments
have nowhere strengthened them or weakened the revolution. One
concession becomes the precedent for another, and one demand
satisfied only leads to another and a greater demand, while it
diminishes the power of the government to resist. What is more, the
closer the union of the church with the government the more helpless
it becomes, and the greater the hostility it incurs. The _primum
mobile_ of the movement party, as we now find it, is not the love of
honest liberty, or a liberty compatible with stable government, or
the establishment of a democratic or republican constitution; and it
is not hostile to the church only because she exerts her power to
sustain the governments it would reform or revolutionize, but rather,
because it regards them as upholding the church, which they detest
and would annihilate. The _primum mobile_ is hatred of the church.
This is the reason why, even when the governments are well disposed,
as sometimes they are, the people will not suffer them to observe
faithfully their engagements to the church.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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