THE PAPACY AND FOREIGN RELATIONS.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 67, 9 September 1911, Page 2 (Supplement)

THE PAPACY AND FOREIGN RELATIONS.

Tito Time Spirit boars heavily upon tlifi Papacy nnd on its conduct of its affairs in the lands whom Roman Catholics divel). "There have been disagreements," says Current Literature, "between Cardinal Merry del Val and his predecessor in the secretaryship of state at the Vatican. Cardinal Rampolla. Since bis failure to attain the papal tiara at the last conclave, Cardinal RampoHa has held a dignified but somewhat oltseure a .rolldoaconate. Occasionally ho is consulted by his Holiness in matters of umisual delicacy connected with the policy of the Church in France. TWO CARDINALS TN CONFLICT. "On the last of these occasions Cardinal Tvampolla, if one may accept the current gossip, characterised a contemplated papal document as most inopportune, Cardinal Merry del Val took issue with -the ecclesiastic who wielded such power under Leo XTIT and lias become a cipher under Pius X. Cardinal TtampoJln. we read, 'relieved bis overburdened heart in such a, manner as to bring on a sharp verbal and personal dispute,' Expressions like 'ruin of the Church' nnd 'pseudo-diplomatist' wore applied to Merry del Val. to the amazenri'iif of the Pope, to whom the matter was 'most mystifying.' THE POPE AS DIPLOMAT. "His Holiness seems to have learned for the lirst, time last month that Cardinal Merry del Val is held responsible bv tlie whole world for the ecclesiastical diplomacy of the present pontificate. ,; l'ius X. resolved instantly, wo read in the Independence Beige, a well-in-formed hut anti-clerical daily in Urnssols, to correct a misapprehension, 'so unjust to bis secretary of state and so false to history.' For the past three weeks, therefore, the clerical organs of Europe, especially the. Difosa (Venice), and the flermania (Berlin), have been affirming that Pius X. is practically his own foreign minister. Cardinal Merry del Val m but an instrument, obeying, 'as his duty is,' the instructions coming to him from the head of the Church,

"The anti-clerical world delights in spri ad!ng niisinfonpal ion m, i!i, cil'.v, thai the Vatican diplomacy is guided liv Cardinal Mcitv del Val, observes the German daily. The idea is absurd. Even so anti-clerical a paper as the Independence l.clge inclines to the view thai Cardinal .Merry del Yal ha- Ik en misiinderslnod by I,in: world, lie has been all along, it, now conjccl ures. a mere subordinate or clerk in the Vatican chancellery, doing just. a> he was (old and nothing more.

"So very egregious is the lei-eoncep-lioii regarding the influence of Cardinal .Merry del Val at, the Vatican, according to the licnl informed European dailies, t hal he has been held responsible tor acl.s which he actually opposed, Tim.-, I.lu- present tense situation with <,Vrmany, growing out of a recent encyclical, was brought about by phrases which I'ius _\. insisted upon using against the sullieieut ly respectful remonstrance of (lie papal secretary of stale. The only intimates of the sovereign pontill' are understood to be the secretaries he brought with him from Venice. These priests share, his repasts anil form, we are asked by the Independence l'elge to believe, a sort, of kitchen cabinet Yet it is the Pope himself who comes to all the great decisions. It was Pins X. himself who broug'bt, on the conllict with France, who strained relations with Spain, whose (Millpaign in Germany has precipitated the wildest uproar in the universities and seinimirie.s, whose decree on marriages is setting Ireland by the ears, whose refusal to make terms with the Portuguese led to the triumph of antieJericalism there, whose denunciations of modernism are the sensations of the age.' Cardinal Merry del Val suggested none of these things.

POPE AXI) GERMAN PROTESTANTS. "If the relations between the Vatican and the German Empire are harmonious the credit belongs entirely to the Emperor, according to a version of the words of the Prussian envoy at the papal court which appears in the Berlin ia-geblatt. The action of the Vatican is causing extreme exasperation to German Protestants, added this candid friend, lie was referring to the modernist controversy and to the tactics of the Vatican in conducting this campaign against this series of heresies. That campaign baa brought all relations between the \ atican ajid' Berlin to the forefront of political discussion not only in Germany but in Western Europe. *' "The burning issue is presented by the anti-modernist oath exacted by the Pope from all teachers and preachers of the Roman Catholic faith. Prussia required the exemption of the professors of Roman Catholic theology at Prussian universities, who are Prussian officials, on the ground that the oath deprived them of their independence as teachers. Tho Vatican was supposed to have conceded the point. It transpired later that the Pope's whole attitude on the subject had been misunderstood. He went so far as to say in a letter to the Cardinal Archbishop of Cologne that only cowards would not take this oath."