AN ADDRESS BY THE POPE.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume II, Issue 85, 12 December 1874, Page 14

AN ADDRESS BY THE POPE.

THE OBSERVANCE OF SUNDAY. On Tuesday, August 13, the Holy Father granted an audience to the whole of the members composing that branch of the Society ' for Catholic Interests -which occupies itself with the sanctification of Sundays and holidays, and which tries to prevent labor and traffic on those days. The President of this branch of the society, Count Adolfo Planciani — brother of the late revolutionary syndic of Borne — presented an address to the Holy Father, and an album containing the names of 35,000 Catholics of Borne, who protest against the scandal of labor on Sunday permitted by the Government and the municipality. The persons who signed the address are, for the most part, those who are most outraged by such acts, being workmen and tradesmen. To the address read to him the Holy Father replied : — " To the Pharasaical hypocrisy which ascribed the pressing of a few heads of wheat to draw from them a little sustenance, which the Apostles did, to a want of the festival observance, to this hypocrisy of exaggerated observance has succeeded contempt for the law of the sanctification of Christian festivals. " I believe that this proceeds from two motives. Many labor, and cause others to labor, little thinking of the prohibition of the law. Many others have work done to bring the law into scorn. As to the first, it may be said that there is greed of gain ; as to the second, it is a spirit of diabolical unbelief. The former are under the shadow of avarice ; the latter under the pressure of impiety. " The greed of gain demonstates contempt for the law of the Decalogue, and to the development which the Church gives to this law. The other demonstrates the desire of burning incense before the altar of impiety ; and in our days it seems that all that is wanted to rule commandingly is to show oneself an unbeliever and a despiser of the law of God. " But ye, ye who rule, lend an ear : praebete aures gui continetis multitudines et placetis vobis in turbis nationum. 15. now you delight in the profanation of festivals, in the the spoliation of churches, in the dispersion of the ministers of the Sanctuary, and in so many other anti-Christian works, ye must likewise present yourselves before the Divine tribunal, to be judged with a most hard judgment, just because you now role and command : judicium durrissimum Us, gui praesumt jiet. And if the clergy in some parts are relaxed in discipline, and in some parts deviate from right, the failings and faults of this small portion of the ministers of the Sanctuary fall back upon ye who have opened the cloisters, or favored the apostates ; and ye knew not how imitate so many, who in past ages were protectors and not persecutors of the Church. " And apropos of this I am glad to make known, to you how in the past days a photograph was offered to me of a picture found in the Botundo, in which was depicted the image of an Emperor, who offers the Pantheon or Temple of Agrippa to a Pope. The Emperor, Phocas, then, is seen offering to Boniface TV. the said., majesticj estic edifice ; and the Pope receives the gift with signs of complacency. The fact refers to an epoch at least twelve centuries distant from us. The Holy Pontiff disposed that the temple should be consecrated to Christian worship ; but since the Bomans felt a repugnance to adore the true God in a place where the false divinities of blind paganism were seen honored, he, the Pontiff, filled the church on every side with the bones of the martyrs, and he wished it dedicated to the queen of martyrs herself, so that to-day it is called the basilica of St. Mary and the martyrs; and thus the Christians, under the protection of the queen of martyrs and the martyrs, enter trustfully into the temple transformed from the lying adoration of idols to the holy invocation of the martyrs and to their Queen. "As then, so in other later ages, very many churches were seen being founded and enriched by the work of the great ones of the earth. Now in most places thoughts and deeds are changed. There are spoliations and oppressions ; the destruction of all that belongs to the Church, and the Church itself, if that were possible, is sought. The scourge grasped by the hand of God, which will afterwards be thrown on the fire, was taken ab Aquilone. Hence it in* sintiates itself and penetrates into a hundred different places, and finds everywhere elements which .operate, think, and .speak in the same mode. "In the midst of the fury of such a tempest, let us cry to the Lord that he may increase our f aith,-and that he may increase in us to attain and follow out our salvation ; and bo certain that ho will reply : Nolite tirnere ; ecce ego vobiscum sum. " You meanwhile prosecute the Christian undertaking to which you have dedicated yourselves. Strive to counsel and induce not only to abstinence from servile work, but likewise to the sanctifica* tion of the feast by assisting at the Divine Sacrifice, by raising the heart to God, reading some instruction, "by hearing the word of God, and by some work of charity ; without this preventing the taking of honest rest. "Go on courageously in the Christian work ; nor heed certain barkings by which it is sought to prevent goodi and sometimes to repel it by sarcasms and foolish remarks. Meanwhile may God console you with his benediction which descends copiously upon you j upon your families and upon your substance ; and I pray that God j may conduct you, by the hand, as it were, on the journey of eternity. " Benedictio, Dei etc."