The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1867-10-21
GaribaIdI-Pope Plus.

Until the present exciting aspect changes,
and still more during the new emergencies
likely to arise, the contest in Italy will occupy
the attention and absorb the interest of
Christendom. The decision of Napoleon ele-
Yates it from local insurrection to the rank
and dignity Of European question, possibly
of the first magnitude.
As the germ of the oak is to be found in the
bursting acorn, its life being the identical life
of the developed tree, so the spirit of Carl
baldi on the one side, and that of Pope Plus
* ON the other, contain the seminal princi-
pies of the rising contest, however colossal
may be its consequences. Garibaldi repre-
sents what is most aggressive in innovating
modern tendencies; the Pope what is most
ancient in existing civilization. The Papacy
is the oldest and most time-honored of all ex-
tant institutions. As a spiritual power it is
very far from being effete; indeed there are
symptoms that it is extending its hold upon
the conscience and religious sympathies of the
world. Professionalism has made no relative
gains since the era of the Reformation.
Every country of the Old World which re-
manned Catholic after the great struggle in
the sixteenth century is Catholic still, while
in the New World every country south of our
own acknowledges spiritual allegiance to the
Holy See. In our own country, originally
settled by Puritans and Episcopalians, the
growing sects while in Canada, besides the
adherence of the old French inhabitants to the
Catholic faith that Church has considerable
strength among those who speak the English
tongue. Moreover, there is in England and
the United States perceptible Romanizing
tendency in the bosom of Professionalism. 1t is
exhibited in the activity and influence of what
is called high-churchism, and latterly in the
outbreak of ritualsm AS compared with
Professionalism, Catholicity is not on the de-
cline, and has not been for two centuries.
There is indeed general decay of faith by
which all forms of Christianity suffer, but the
Catholic the least of any.
In this country, where we have opportuni-
ties of observation, there is, out of the Episco-
pal Church and its Romanizing tendencies, a
growing spiritual torpor and constant ebb of
religious interest The majority of our Pro-
testant clergy retain their hold on the public
mind by their activity in various humanita-
rian, reformatory, and political schemes, and
by trying to outbid each other in matters
which interest the public more deeply than re-
ligion. The Catholic clergy, on the other
hand, here, and we suppose the world over,
devote themselves to the spiritual wants of
their hocls. In our larger towns they keep
open almost the only places where the poorer
classes may worship without feeling them
selves overborne by the spirit of caste or ex-
cluded by expense We conclude, therefore,
suffers no decay, except from the slepticsm
and secular preoccupatiOn which are under
mining all religion, and that it loses less
from these causes than the rival iOrms of
Christianity.
In speaking of the decadence and crumbling
influence of the Papacy we refer only to its
temporal authority, which is in the last stages
OF decline and perhaps on the point of disso-
luton. No enlightened historian, no philo-
sophie reasOner worthy of the name, whether
Protestant or Catholic disputes the benefcent
influences of the Papacy during the Middle
Ages. 1t was the only barrier against the
supremacy of brute force, the only oonserver
of learning the only bond of communion and
intercourse among the nations of Chrstendom.
Commerce and civilization, constant inter
change Of intelligence and the new agencies
for the promotion and diffusion of public
opinion, have gradually superseded this
necessity for the kind of influence once ex-
cited by the Papacy, The new social forces
have taken that part of its work, and by doing
it better have rendered obsolete a-venerable
institution without whose fostering aid these
new forces would have been stihed in their
birth. The temporal authority of the Pope
has long ceased to be selfsubsstent. There
has not been a day since the return of Plus
TX to Rome in lS49 when his power would not
have toppled, if unsupported by secular
mOnarchs.
If the Pope, as a temporal sovereign, repre-
sents the most ancient venerable, and longest
lived of all existing institutions, Garibaldi ON
the other side, is the embodiment of whatever
is most headlong and aggressive in the modern
spirit. 1t is his impraotcable and opinonated
zeal which has precipitated the present crisis,
and the vigorous and admiring sympathy he
exoites is what renders it formidable. 1t seems
to ms quite beside the mark to dilate on Carl
baldi's narowness, his impolitic zealotry, his