The New York herald. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1840-1920, 1870-11-05
Ths New Life and Future si tho Roman
Catholic Church.

tory-the gaze Of civilized mankind is fixed Of
Rome with peculiar interest. The call for al
Ecumenical Council Of the Church repute,
J Apostolic and universal was, Of ITSELF grea
awakening TO the world. To the faithful an,
earnest adherents Of Catholici!y 1t was sum
mons that seemed inspired in the midst o
accommodating disorders; the breaking dowl
Of all restraints; the abrogation OF old tenets
the setting up Of self and the higher law, 81
called, in the place of the one Supreme Father
whose preeepts had become the basis and thu
rallying point Of order in barbaric times and
the buwark against destructive license and
vice In the days of a corrupt and unbelievina
civilization. To the opponents OF Romanism,
per Sc, on the other hand, this call was
deemed fragrant challenge thrown down TO
ssthe spirit of our time" and defiance OF the
: work achieved by religious and political pro-
gross. These two opinions divided Christen-
dom while the Council was sitting, and they
divide it STILL But in the meanwhile, through
all the jorriug and cayilling Of authorities, the
Church itself is evidently undergoing won
derful and salutary Transformation, or, rather,
is sloughing off the excrescences which the
ambition Of prelates and princes and the
exigencies Of peculiar times and regions had
| fastened on it. This process is grand to con-
template in the light Of history so pic
turesque and 30 majestic as that Of the Roman
| Church.
| In order to appreciate the change let us
cast our thought backward for an instant to
the period when Christianity began to take
shape and emerge from the allurng but de-
ceptivc mirage of Pagan mythology and the i'm
posing but unsatisfactory rites of ancient Juda-
ism. ''yoice Of the East, voice of the West,
voice of the four winds, woe to the Temple
woe to Jerusalem" was the terrible warning
| cry OF him who was known as "Jesus, son of
| Ananius," who, as Josophus tells us, suddenly
| uplifted his voice amid the city in the hour of
profoundest peace, and ceased not by night or
by day until the whole Jewish people had
heard Of his coming and his prophecy But
as Jesus, the Christian Messiah, had been re-
jected, so was this Jesus, the prophet of ruin,
despised by headstrcng people. Yet the
sack Of the ancient city by the Roman Titus
came and the ideas Of the Christian faith
caught up amid the fire and the carnage of
the Jewish capital chung to the skirts Of the
conquerors and were transferred with them to
Rome. But in the meanwhile, as we learn
from sacred tradition, st. Thomas bore the
Gospel Of Jesus to the farthest Ind st. John
ST. Andrew made it revelation of higher
life to the rude Scythian hordes; st. Philip
spread it abroad over the Asatic Continent;
ST. Bartholomew established it in Armenia
st. Matthew disclosed it to benighted Persia;
st. Simon made it the new and saving light
of Mesopotsnia. and St. Luke with it re-
futed the legends and the imaginative
| heogony Of Arabia Thus was q grand,
glorious message made known by inspired
and devoted men to suffering world.
The heart of humanity leaped up to hail a
dawn so benignant, and in spite of all trials
aud prosecutions, the faith fourished and grew
ON all Sides The terrible prosecutions which,
beginning with Nero at Rome, were continued
under Domitian aud his ferocious successors,
but seemed to give strength, vitality and fixed
stability to nascent belief so full of native
strength, as the storm wind but imparts vigor
to the oak whose roots are deep in the soil,
even while it sweeps away the feebler children
OF the forest and scatters them dying in It's
path. And why was this? Because, to con-
tinue our smile, the roots Of the Christian
creed descended deeply into the hearts of men.
The simple virtues Of its early followers, the
purity and lofty life Of it's apostles and its adj
vocates; their divine eloquence; their inspired
erudition; their indefatigable toll; their fear
lessness in the presence of chains and death,
and the sublime promises they uttered from
the gibbet and the stake to the humblest and
the weakest who believed, were power which
| overawed the purple tyrants of the world and
announced Christ and Him crucified as indeed
the Every present help" and Saviour Of
| the stricken people. Vivifed by the
warmth of zeal that had been kindled
by the lamps Of the sepulchre, and viyifed by
the blood shed in SO many massacres, at last,
| in A. ID. 363, the new Church, go sorely beset
by Julian the Apostate, found a Roman
emperor to thoroughly protect it. Jovian,
who had braved the wrath OF Julian, heard
his own troops exclaim, "Fear not, Emperor !;
you command Christian army. The most
aged among us were instructed by the great
Constantine aud the rest by his SON." The
cross which had appeared but as 9 vision Of
victorious omen in the sky became fixed
emblem in the most powerful and civilized OF
cities, and hurried on from conquest to con-
quest until il rose resplendent upon church
spires in half the world. AT last the Ecume-
nical Council, held at Constantinople A. D.
38l, in the reign Of Theodosue, and accepted
by the West, proclaimed and fixed the main
dogmas of the Church, AMI it became posi-
tive mower on earth But even with this