Pepin, Charlemagne, the Countess Matilda; on popular suffrage or request of the people; on the necessity of protecting and providing for the people abandoned and left without a civil ruler by the Iconoclastic emperors of Constantinople; but we have never heard it pretended that he holds it by virtue of his commission as Vicar of Jesus Christ, or by the title by which he holds his Apostolic authority in the Church. His right is an acquired right, valid, inviolable, but still acquired and outside of his right as Sovereign Pontiff. No doubt the spiritual government of the Church is more or less mixed up with the Pope's temporal government, and many of the existing arrangeinents for the administration of ecclesiastical affairs are more or less modified to meet, or are based upon the fact that the Pope is a temporal sovereign, and has a temporal principality. The supreme administration of the state and the supreme administration of the Church are, for the most part, in the same hands. Much in the mode of transacting ecclesiastical affairs may require to be changed if the separation of Church and State be carried out, but still the papal state, as any other, lies in the temporal order.

Assuming this, the whole question we have been discussing lies in the order where compromises are allowable and even necessary. No temporal right, whether held by a secular or a spiritual person or corporation, is absolute, and to be maintained at all hazards. It is held in subordination to religion and society, and when in the changes that take place it becomes incompatible with the good of either, it may be surrendered or redeemed, though not taken away by violence, when not forfeited by abuse, which in the present case is not to be pretended. We assert the principle. It is not for us to apply it. All we wish to establish here is, that though mixed up with the practical administration of ecclesiastical affairs, the Pope's temporal government, in its origin and character, is neither a spiritual nor a quasispiritual government, and therefore with the consent of the may be suppressed. As supreme judge of religious

Pope

interests, the Pope is free to act in the case as he judges proper, but how far the feeling among Catholics, that it is in some way intimately connected with the Papacy, and essential to it, a feeling that has to be taken into the account, may embarrass his freedom, we are unable to say. All we say is, that we hold him free to consent to a total severing

of all political bonds between Church and State, and we see

no other way, with the tendencies of the modern world such as they evidently are, of arriving at a passable solution of the terrible problems pressing every day more and more for solution.

This solution involves in a certain sense the triumph of the Politiques, as they were called in the time of Henry IV., or what we have strenuously opposed under the name of Political Atheism, over public right, or system of international law and vested rights introduced by the Sovereign Pontiffs into Christendom, and consecrated by Christian diplomacy. We confess it; but all history proves that a victory against the Church is a defeat. Our Lord won his kingdom in being crucified by wicked hands; the early Christians conquered the world in being slain, not by slaying. When the Jews shut their ears to the word of God, the Apostles turned to the Gentiles; and we must turn from kings and kaisers who have betrayed their God, betrayed the Church, betrayed society, and betrayed themselves, to the people. THE CHURCH AND THE PEOPLE STILL LIVE. Here is our hope for the future, and here our readers may see why we so strenuously defend the popular cause, so strenuously advocate for all Christendom free forms of government, forms which secure to the people a constitutional and effective voice in public affairs; why we so earnestly insist on the education of the people, on a high and thorough education, as far as practicable, of the whole community; why we defend the political separation of Church and State, and wage unrelenting war against the oscurantisti, or defenders of the old order of things now out of date. Right or wrong, our policy is clear and well-defined, and holds together in all its parts. Through the people we believe the Church can revindicate her system of public right and international law, and recover, though under another form, more than she has lost through the perfidy of the sovereigns and the intrigues and complications of politicians. The majority of the American people are un-Catholic, if not anti-Catholic, and yet no people as a state has more scrupulously observed the great principles of natural justice and public right insisted on by the Church; and there is no country on earth where the Church is as free and independent and her relations are on so satisfactory a footing as in these United States. To those who doubt, we point triumphantly to this grand fact in proof of the justness of our views. Through the people invested with political power, free and intelligent, without forming

with them any political bonds, the Church may gain a victory, which will more than compensate her for what she has lost by the politicians and sovereigns.

And this brings us back, as a fitting close, to the eloquent and profound Conférences of Father Felix, which contain the very lessons, bating a few passages which smack of Cæsarism and hero-worship, needed by a republican people, or a state of society in which the people through their representatives possess the supreme power, and the danger is not on the side of authority, but on the side of liberty. They set forth in the clearest and most attractive style the great, invariable, and universal principles of Christianity, and show their bearing on individual, social, and domestic life. Nothing can be better adapted to protect us against our chronic danger, that of pushing liberty to license, making the people God, and regarding worldly success as the test of merit. They rebuke our demagogie and our political atheism, by showing the folly and absurdity of both. Let them be translated, and with the addition of a few notes, circulated through the length and breadth of the land. They who read them, will find themselves wiser and

better.

ART. IV.-SEMINARIES AND SEMINARIANS.

Ir is commonly given as an answer at Rome to many persons who go thither to indulge in complaints and lamentations, "We have no time here to listen to fault-finding with the past; tell us what there is that can be done for the

future."

This wise reflection indicates the spirit which should guide him who may feel it his duty to write on the delicate subject of measures, the adoption of which is calculated, as he believes, to advance the interests of religion in this country. We do not hesitate to add, that earnestness and zeal for the truth furnish no good excuse for undue severity of expression.

such

justify a want of charity and kindly feeling, unless, indeed, want should exist more in appearance than in reality. It is not our purpose to find fault with our brethren, the clergy of the American church, or to recommend any rule VOL. II.-No. I.

7

of sacerdotal life. We make no suggestions, we offer no views touching their affairs for them to approve or disapprove. We are truly and sincerely persuaded that it is not our place to address the venerable priesthood of the Church on the duties of their holy office, and we do not see that the discussion of our subject requires us to do so. But we surely violate no propriety by inquiring into the qualifications of young laymen who may be candidates for the ministry, and in stating frankly what we may think renders them fit or unfit for admission into an Ecclesiastical Seminary. If we offered nothing but our own views and opinions on this important subject, we should be entitled to no more consideration than what is due to the arguments we might bring forward in support of our assertions. But the question we are ventilating has been subjected to earnest and careful examination by the Church, and after long and mature deliberation her decision has been made known. It is not left to the option of each diocese to keep up the body of its clergy, or to add to their numbers in any way, or from any source it may choose, but stringent rules have been made that must be obeyed, unless where circumstances render obedience impossible. Does the reader inquire where we find such a rule, and what may be its purport? We shall give him the rule in a few plain words; it is as follows:

"If children are not trained to the ecclesiastical state from their tender years, they will not be fit for it unless by an extraordinary favor of Providence. It is therefore decreed, that every diocese shall choose out, and support, and educate a certain number of boys from their twelfth year, or thereabouts, to be Priests. These boys shall be taken from the city or diocese, or at least from the province in which they are one day to be Priests."

This rule was drawn up by the General Council of Trent. We have quoted its exact words, leaving out only such circumstances as are not just now necessary to the understanding of our subject. The reader will find the original words of the Decree in the Review for last October, p. 507.

But perhaps the reader may here remark, that the Holy Council, no doubt, leaves the arrangement of all such matters as this to the Bishop of the diocese. It is for him to Bay whether he will have a Diocesan Seminary or not, and whether or not he will fill the ranks of the priesthood from the younger members of his flock, or from some other

source. A very slight examination of the words of the Council will show that the Fathers did not intend to leave. this matter to the discretion of each Bishop, that they foresaw this objection, and framed the law so as to forestall it, and reply to it with unmistakable clearness.

They say, in substance, that in this matter of educating boys for the sanctuary, the Bishops are not free, that is, they are bound in conscience to attend to it, as the Council prescribes. If a Bishop neglects to discharge his duty in this respect, the Council goes on to say that the Archbishop must "sharply reprimand" him for his neglect, and "compel him" to get together and educate the young seminarians above described. And if the Archbishop should neglect, on his part, to do his duty, the Provincial Council is authorized and obliged to "sharply reprimand" the Archbishop for his neglect, and "compel him" to get together the boys as above described, and provide a seminary for their educa(See Review, 1860, pp. 508, 9.)

tion.

"But all this," the reader may exclaim, " amounts to a rule for the Bishops of countries in which the Canon Law obtains in full force. Such is not the case in the United States, for here the Council of Trent has never been promulgated, and is not, therefore, the ecclesiastical law of the country." We reply, that whether the Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent have been promulgated or not, the observance of this particular statute regarding the erection of Diocesan Preparatory Seminaries has been emphatically urged upon the Bishops of this country by the Pope and the American Councils. The Fathers of the second Council of Baltimore, held in 1833, recommended all Bishops to use every endeavor for the erection and maintenance of Diocesan Seminaries, and to do all things in the form prescribed by the Fathers of Trent, in so far as local circumstances would allow. They are to exhort the people frequently to contribute generously to a work which the Council declares to be one of dioceses of the country have all, or nearly all, accepted in necessity to the Church. (Ibid., p. 511.) The different their Synods the Decrees of Baltimore for their own special guidance, and by such acceptance have declared that they consider the ecclesiastical education of boys belonging to the diocese, in the manner prescribed by the famous decree of Trent, to be a work of necessity to the Church.

took into consideration this same question, whether the Benedict XIV., a great Pope and a great theologian,