The Temporal Sovereignty of the Pope

New Zealand Tablet, 4 May 1911, Page 803

The Temporal Sovereignty of the Pope

In a letter signed by Archbishop Bourne, of Westminster, on his own behalf, and that of all the English Bishops, appears the following timely protest: ,' 'Whereas in other ; years pilgrims would have been flocking to pay in person their homage to the Holy Father, this year the Apostolic See is constrained to view with mourning the commemoration of an event the memory of which must bring pain and sadness to every Catholic heart. Sad in retrospect, that event is made the sadder in its commemoration, because no pains have been wanting to give to both the event and the commemoration a significance hostile and insulting to the Apostolic See. It is necessary that Catholics should never forget that the temporal sovereignty, providentially bestowed upon the Holy See in order to ensure the civil independence which is essential to the exercise of the spiritual mission entrusted by God to the Papacy, was destroyed by a policy of long-continued aggression, violence, and deceit. And to this day no other means has been discovered or suggested for the safeguarding and protection of that civil independence. Even were the conditions in which the government of the Universal Church is now carried on satisfactory in themselves— who will venture to say that thev are? —yet they would be absolutely inadequate for the simple reason . that they, rest • on nothing more solid than the guarantee of the uncertain will of the Parliament of one single nation. On this account Catholics will never cease to protest that such civil independence and freedom of spiritual government as the Holy Father now possesses are so precarious and insufficient that they can never satisfy the legitimate claims of his spiritual subjects, to whatever nation they may belong. ' We desire, therefore, in loving sympathy with the chief pastor of the flock, that on Sunday, March 19, the feast of St. Joseph, special prayers be offered tip in all the churches of the province for the Supreme Pontiff that God may be with him in all his anxieties and trials, and may hasten the day of the restoration to the Holy See of the complete civil independence which the experience of past ages, no less than the actual teaching of the Church, has shown to be necessary for the due accomplishment of her divine mission.'