THE PRESENT J'OSITIOX OF CATHOLICS IX FRANCE. 



191 



intellect iial and moral atrophy if ultramontaiiism pre\'ail. The 

 papacy will inevitably be transformed if modernism prevail ; 

 and notliing short of a catastrophe to civilisation can check it. 



In Italy, modernism is more widely spread among the clergy 

 than in France. It is buth more practical and more intense ; 

 as it is allied closely with a great deal of socialistic and 

 reyolutionary enthusiasm. The policy of the reigning Pope has 

 led to more anti-clericalism than Italy has experienced since 

 Arnold of Brescia. The growth of the relig'ious orders, since 

 1870, has been steady, and in Eome itself lias become very 

 serious. The goyerning classes minimise the friction ; but the 

 feeling of the urban populations is strong. There might 

 conceivably be a working alliance between modernists and 

 socialists which would possibly overthrow the Curia, and 

 perliaps even eUminate the monarchy. At any rate, there is a 

 significant counter-alliance at present between the Italian 

 ministry and the supporters of the Vatican. 



In Germany, the modernist movement has only been kept 

 under with ditiiculty, through the sympathetic understanding 

 between the papacy and the Prussian bureaucracy. The centre 

 party has no longer the full contidence of the catholic 

 populations. There was much discontent in Germany about 

 the manner in which modernism was condemned by Pius X. 

 The matter of his Encyclicals filled intelligent Germans with 

 contempt or despair ; and the methods advocated by him for 

 dealing with the modernists revolted Germanic notions of 

 justice and fair play. Several German professors have been 

 threatened by the Vatican, and if they had been French they 

 would certainly have been condemned ; but the papacy hesitated 

 to offend the government, and the government feared to 

 irritate popular feeling by sacrificing German professors to the 

 rancour of Italian ecclesiastics. Between German science and 

 ecclesiastical obscurantism there can be no permanent alliance ; 

 and the existing calm in Germany is probably the calm which 

 precedes a storm. It will be for the good of the world if that 

 storm ends the alliance between the Vatican and Berlin, and 

 helps to overthrow the autocracy of both. 



The example of France will not be lost, we may be sure, on 

 the other Latin countries, steeped as their clergitis are in 

 corruption and stagnation. 



In Australia and in tiie United States, modern ideals and 

 British institutions have been gradually transforming Catholi- 

 cism, even among the Irish settlers. In Canada, these influences 

 have made the catholics very different from their reactionary 



