The Intermountain Catholic. (Salt Lake City [Utah] ;) 1899-1920, 1905-07-29
LIE POPE AND KING
CCatholic citizen. Milwaukee,


catholic Citizen, Milwaukee.)
If the intermittently talked-of recon
Citation between Italy and the holy
see should some day. come about
would it be matter over which we,
who write from the Catholic stand
point. should rejoice?
Probably not. The independence of
the holy see-which is the chief concern
lis fairly maintained under existing
conditions. There is non-intercourse
between the pope and his neighbor, the
usurping king. Neither seeks to inf1u-
ence the other The vatican assumes
'an attitude of protest. 1t is the injured
party The Italian government takes
care mot to aggraVate the injury. 1t
makes a pretense, at least, of respect
ing its promises contained in the So
called laws of guarantee"
If the pope and the king become rec
onciled. an interchange of courtesies
may be followed by an interchange of
obligations. independence, without
friendship, is better for the pope than
friendship with political and court
pressure.
Recent talk of reconciliation between
the pope and the king may have rela
ton to the falling off of papal revenues.
And the projected peace may be pro-
NOTED largely by the interests of these
numerous and useless persons who still
hang about the papal court as stipen-
diaries, and who see the end of their
graft in the declining revenues of the
vatican. A way is TO be paved for the
pope to draw the half million odd dol
lars that the Italian government enact
ed QS7O) should be paid him annually
in compensation for the loss of the
temporal power-which donation"
"
clined to take. This accumulated treas
ure, if accepted by the pope, would en-
able him TO keep up all the panoply of
a court and continue the ornamental
services of multitudinous consumers of
macaroni and spaghetti. whose connec-
ton with the welfare of religion is APP
parent to nobody but themselves and
their nephews.
Let it be clearly understood that we
are now discussing an aspect strictly
on the human side of the church. A
System" may develop on the admins
trative side of religion that needs re-
forming from time to time. Plus Y is
a religious pope. and one of his early
acts was TO reduce the expenses of the
vatican. He discontinued sundry offices
which belonged properly to the role of
the pope as temporal sovereign. There
is no court in Europe that is not hedged
with SlnecureS, parasitic officials and
smug-faced pensioners. The vatican
was not an exception in the days an
terror to 1870. And the barnacles stuck
to the bark of Peter. even after it was
high and dry of the political sea. An
Italian can be lazy more gracefully than
any other Caucasian; and the vatican
was also a palace of art in its exhibit
of artistic Incidence. The Catholic
world, however, was sufficiently CRATE
full i'll sustaining this mock and tinsel
show for a generation. A time came
when retrenchment was necessary. And
there can be a further retrenchment
before the real work of religion will
suffer 1t will be time to put up contri-
button boxes for Peters pence in our
parish schools when very many of those
who now domicile in the vatican are off
on missions among the neglected Ital-
ians.