The Wanganui Chronicle WEDNESDAY, JUNE 27, 1928. FASCISM AND THE VATICAN

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 20183, 27 June 1928, Page 6

The Wanganui Chronicle WEDNESDAY, JUNE 27, 1928. FASCISM AND THE VATICAN

has been heard of late regarding conditions in Italy.

Particulars of the new Fascist Parliamentary and electoral system, designed to make the Italian Chamber a mere mob of Fascist nominees and to destroy practically the last vestige of the Italian CoaaUtution, came to hand recently, but there have been other movements also of equal moment about which the cablegrams have been practically silent. Overseas exchanges show that the latent conflict between the Vatican and Fascism has become more acute. After having suppressed the non-Catholie Boy Scout organisations in favour of the Fascist organisations of youths—called “Balilla” -—Mussolini has now issued a decree prohibiting, “according to the integral and inflexible Fascist style and method, any formation or organisation, albeit temporary, whieh proposes to promote the instruction or training for any profession or trade, or to further in any way whatever, the physical, inoral or spiritual education of youth.”

This means that the Catholic Boy Scouts, which had been tolerated in eities with more than 20,000 of a population, are also to be suppressed, and that the whole youth of Italy is to be trained according to principles whieh the Pope has repeatedly denounced as incompatible with the teaching of the Roman Catholic Church. As a further subtle move against the Vatican, a Royal Decree has been published to regulate the order of precedence at Court and other public ceremonies. Its object is to give special rank to the dignitaries of the Fascist regime. Hitherto, under a decree issued n 1866, the Knights of the Annunziata (who rank by courtesy as cousins of the King) have taken precedence before all other dignitaries of the State but after Ihe Cardinals of the Roman Catholic Church who ranked as Princes of the Blood. Henceforth, Mussolini comes first before the Knights of the Annunziata and the Presidents of the Chamber and the Senate. The Cardinals are ranked below him, and Archbishops and Bishops who used to have precedence over the Grand Officers of State are placed in fifth and seventh categories respectively. That is to say the Archbishops follow the Governor of the Bank of Italy, the Vice-Secretary of the Fascist Party and the heads of the large municipalities, while the Bishops rank below the Vice-Presidents of the Fascist Tribunals and the provincial secretaries of the party.

This affront has caused indignation at the Vatican and among the Roman Catholic ecclesiastical hierarchy in Italy and abroad. The Pope may for the moment be powerless to prevent it, but he has a long arm and Mussolini may yet feel its reach. In considering the realtionships of the Vatican and and Fascism, the Pope’s recent lament of his powerlessness to help the Tyrolese whom Mussolini is harrying cannot be forgotten. And, rising to questions of principle, there is the Pope’s formal declaration that the claims of the Fascist State are incompatible with those of the Roman Catholic Church, and his denunciation of the doctrine that the authority of the Fascist State is as divinely ordained as the authority of the Vicar of Christ. A recent visitor to Italy has expressed his admiration for the “five years of solid and steady achievement” of Fascism. Yet, if those who take this view accept the standard of durability, what have they to say of the well-nigh eleven years of solid and steady achievement of the Bolshevists, whose technique Mussolini has copied in almost every particular? Of the two systems Bolshevism may even be the more efficient, for it has more murder and depredations to its credit than Fascism, it has lasted longer, and it rules with equal pitilessness over a far larger number of human beings.