THE ELECTION OF A. POPE.

Timaru Herald, Volume XXVII, Issue 1899, 30 November 1877, Page 3

THE ELECTION OF A. POPE.

(Mail, Sept. 20.) Next to the framing of definitions to be invested with a divine authority, the greatest labor of the Roman Church is the selection of their inspired interpreter. The former of these acts constitutes an epoch, the latter is a continuous process. The moment the Catholic world is congratulated on the possession of a Pope begins the question who is to be his successor, and what influences or machinations are to control the choice. The question, hardly less important, always interposes itself, who is to govern the Church m the interregnum, and see that the conditions of a valid election are duly observed. This is a matter to be decided at once, for though Phi 3 IX. has outlived many Popes and more than one Camerlengo, there must always be a functionary ready to apriug into active being when the Church has lost for the moment its Head, and to preserve the golden thread of the Papal succession, Republics and Monarohiea, whether despotic or limited, have their rules and methods. Home also has hers. But no other constitution or organisation betrays so much suspicion, so much distrust of Providence, or so low an estimate' of those irho, upon its own supposition, are the best of men. That the Church should entertain this suspicion of temporal Princes and their agents is but natural ; i but the immediate objects of her dire distrust are the Cardinals she has created, and whom she has invested with the function of creating the Viceroy of Heaven. These men are presumed to be capable of any conceivable violence or fraud that cupidity or weakness may suggest. They may terrify, circumvent, or cajole one another j falling other means, they may

poison one another by either the potent drug that removes at once out of the way, or the safer agent that stupefies the sense and enfeebles the vitality. Upon the theory that guides Rome through the ino3t critical of its acts, every Cardinal is a pretender, an usurper, an intriguer, a traitor, and a conspirator, not against any earthly Court, which might be pordonable ; but against the viceregency and dignity of Heaven. What the wicked world m its most envious moods and by its harshest exponents might whisper of Cardinals, Rome herself proclaims of them now. " Trust no man," least of all a member of the Sacred College," she says, when the question is of a Conclave. But how are the custodians to be guarded and the overseers overseen ? What avails suspicion itself when all are suspected ? Here is the very difficulty. The problem is akin to that of perpetual motion, and not less difficult. A clean thing is to be got out of the unclean, a pure election out of impure electors, and a perfect result out of a mass of imperfection. The Sacred College will ferment as it may, but its spirit is to ri3e pure and good. For this mystic purpose there is to be provided a power within a power, and the mind of the Pontiff is to survive m the form of a functionary who shall manage the election so as to stop all irregular practices and anticipate all foreign or merely personal influences. He is even to be armed against the uncertainty of events. Unless a thousand rumors successively rising during the Pope's many illnesses, and certainly justified by Roman precedent, are gnotl for nothing, the pilot who has to guide the ship of the Church through these, dangerous straits has a budget of measures adapted for various occasions. He may produce the plenary instrument which will overrule all the rules he is created to enforce ; he may do m one act all the violences he has: to secure against, and proceed, according to circumstances, to an immediate election with such Cardinals as he may find about him. He fights with a weapon that all other weapons have no chance with. In a moment he can paralyse all opposition by showing himself duly qualified to elect with or without the forms which earthly jealousy and conflicting mundane interests iiavo forced on Rome. If the Camerlengo has only moderate abilities, he is greater than Pope, for he can make the Pope. But although he is a wheel within a wheel, yet there are wheels within him. It is said to be almost invariable that ho is never elected himself. The tradition is doubtless derived from days when the Pope's nephew, scarcely a man to be elected Pope, was commonly created Camerlengo by his uncle. Those days are gone by ; but it still remains perfectly natural that one m a position of. such vast power should be himself the first object of suspicion against whom all are on their guard. He is watched, known, and anticipated. This helps to govern the choice of the man to fill the post. The ambitious man will not readily accept what m the case of the holder is a self-denying ordinance. But if this disability of the Cauieiiengo does (indeed forbid him to act for himself, and m the vulgar direction of a personal ambition, it does not prevent him from taking sides m the larger sphere of opinion. Cardinal De Angelis, who held the office, was a man after the Pope's own mind, and no doubt was entertained that, as far as age permitted — and age appears to be very little impediment m the Papacy and its affairs—he would do just as Pius IX. would have wished him. The question of his successor is stated by our correspondent at Rome to have lain between Cardinals Pecci and Panebianco ; and it is a remarkable illustration of the jealousy which is ever defeating itself, that the former seems to have been accepted for the office of Camerlongo becauso the other, not being m any respect his equal, has an eye to the Papacy, and has persistently declined the office which is usually supposed to disable for it. Pecci is said to have been too learned, too good, and too zealous m the See of Perugia not to have been regarded with jealousy by those about Pius IX. Antonelli did not want the presence of a man whosa abilities, not to speak of his virtues, rendered him a possible rival. It is often said that Antonelli had become indispensable to the Pope, but it now appears that this indispensablenesa consisted partly m the fact that the Secretary took continual care that his Master should have no choice m the most important matters. He was Secretary and factotum because there was no other competent person at hand, one competent man being already sent out of the way. While Pius IX. was amusing himself and the world with visions of Infallibility he was enduring at his very doors the perpetual scandal of a life whose very secular standard of morality must have been politically as well as religiously injudicious. The great Bishop of the Church, so it is stated, declared that Pecci was too good a Bishop to be at Rome, and that he was more *uitably placed m his distant See. But m reality so thought Antonelli for him, and the Pope seems to have acquiesced m his judgment. Yet aged as the Pope is, and infallible a3 he may be, he appears to have received a curtain degree of illumination, at least, fi3 a, nun of the world, since Antonelli's d.;ath, and the man Pius had hitherto discarded from his own Court has been selected as a fit man to preside over the 01 -jetton of his successor. Here, however, ojmes the Nemesis of a policy which first willingly neglects, then unwillingly disables all m the way of its own conveni-; ence and comfort. Cardinal Panebianco is left unembarrassed to follow the career he is said to have proposed for himself, and he is described as the man of all others likely to wish to be Pope. Till Pius IX. solved the riddle of his character and threw off the disguise of his earlier years, the Popes had been a long period men of the class known m this country as the quiet dignitary, content to be loved and reverenced, disclaiming higher worship, and administering the authority which they find committed to them. Both the character and the misfortunes of the present Pope have . carried us back to the Middle Age 3, and there is no pretension made by Hildebrand, or any of his followers, which he ha 3 not revived, and as far as possible exaggerated. Panebianoo, who is now named for the Papacy, is stated to be another Pius, without the personal virtue and graces which have made the world tolerate, to the verge of admiration, the disastrous anachronism of the present Pope's official career. We need not believe all that is re-, ported of his character, for the very eve of a vacancy is not the time to expect fair dealing from rivals. Still, popular opinion is seldom wholly wrong, and a good man, it is evident, is now supposed, rightly or wrongly, to have been disqualified m favor of one not so good, but who refused to be disqualified. Practically, it can make but little difference. It is only a question of time. The next Pope, whoever he may be, will have to come to an understanding with the Italian Government, representing m this matter the secular power, or seek some

region where his pretensions will be at once unresisted and ineffectual.