ROME AND THE POPE'S ENCYCLICAL.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XIX, Issue 44, 7 August 1891, Page 23

ROME AND THE POPE'S ENCYCLICAL.

(Special Correspondence of ths Pilot. )

Borne, Ma; 23. Thb great event of the week in Borne is the publication of the Pipe's Encyclical on the Social Question, which occupied, on three successive evenings, a total of eighteen columns in the OttcrvaUre Romano. Tnia version was in the original Latin. Translations in Italian and French are about to be issued, and the English translation, revised by Cardinal If arming and the Archbishop of Dublin, will appear in a few days. This will naturally supersede any attempt at translation on tbe part of individuals, and will furnish an accurate and genuine conveyance of the Pope's thoughts from Latin into excellent English. There has, perhaps, been no production of the Pontiff in our dava looked forward to with snob intense interest and expectation as the Encyclical dated May 15, 1891, beginning with the words "Rerun novarum." Presented to the world in the midst of the religious fea9t of Pentecost says a Catholic journal in Borne, may the act of Leo XIII. be understood in all languages, as the inspired discourses of the Apostles, and may it regenerate the worn-out and unbalanced world that is suffering from a crisis and the pains of a new birth. It ii remarked that a century ago, in 1791, the French Revolution, by a definite decree, abolished the corporations which formed the base of the ancient social order. In 1891 Leo XIII. promulgates a new economical charter at the moment when industrial society, founded by the Manchesttr doctrines, tends towards ruin. Leo XIII. has chosen this fateful hour to teach the world's contending forces the social gospel. The Papacy remains alone, in the midit of men, the great international power constituted of sufficient strength, sufficiently sura of itself and rich in light and energy to attempt tbe supreme task. As Leo XIII in the politico-religious order, by his Encyclical 11 Immortals Dei" preached the code of reconciliation, so, in the econom'c order, he now promulgates the character of social harmony. The Aftniteur de Rome, describing tbe Encyclical, says : " The personal character of tbe Encyclical reaidea not ia lueae d jctrinea of justice and of charity, but in the adaptation of the divina deposit to our present conditions, in this serene and fruitful harmony of historic fac's with eternal principles. Bt. Jerome and Bossuet have perhaps consecrated tbe richest magnificence of hum*n language to tbe glorification of the disinherited and of the poor of Christ ; but L>o XIII is tbe first doctor wbo has put this evangelical perfume, this divine eisence, in the vase of economic science. Thornton compares society to a pyramid, the bate of which is formed by the labouring classes. " Is it to be wondered at that Leo XIII. asks from tbe State its best care for those whom it justly call* the proletaries ? Besides, no word of hate or contempt falls from his lips. All Christian tradition is embodied in this teaching. In reading the Encyclical, the miud salutes, in passing, the transforming action of the Church in the world. It salutes the majestic domes of these celebrated monasteries where the religious bacania sboemakers.fullers, carpenters, labourers, mingling manual labour with maiita ion and the chanting of Psalms. It admires the luminous apology of labour by those Roman ladies who passed, under inspiration from on high, from the very palace of tbe emperors, into the catacombs, where they dr*9sed the wounds of obscure martyrs, and into convents, where they laboured with their bands in plaiting baskets and weaving mats and sewing coarse clothing ; it goes back to the Apostles, wbo demand each day's breai from the labour of their hands ; thought, burdened with admiration and gratitude, rises through the uninterrupted chain of tbe monastic orders, from the monks wao still till the land to-day in tbe austere lilence of tbe Trappist'a life, even to the Carpenter of Nazareth, whose example bu merited for the workingnun the letters of Chris* ian nobility which constitute his greatness before man and God r This effort to bring into harmony tbe eternal teachings of the Gospel with the actual necessities of the world to-day ia what bestows on this Encyclical the character of an arbitration and makes it a species of " truce of God." And all this is accomplished with a perfect knowledge of the whole question, filled though it is with intrinsic and technical difficulties, with complexity of subject and constantly changing conditions. Tbe composition of the Encyclical presupposes an acquaintance with the whole range of tha vast literature of the subject of which it treats. Leo XIII. has brought all this into a clear and accurate series of important statements. He is here, > as the Moniteur describes him, " illuminator and conciliator ; here supported by the Gospel and St. Thomas, there upon tbe immense modern laboratory where men and hypotheses meet. It is only a great Pope who could bear this Atlas-burden and make this synthesis. But Leo XIII. preserves in the midst ot this universe all his serenity, his luminous simplicity, his clearness— that ' varnish of the great masters ' — that lapidary preciseness which trembles for what one says

and for what one does not say ; this facility which leaves the operations of rigorous analysis in the workshop, and which brings before men only the pith of things, as the bee of the fields.

" Snch are the characteristics which strike one at first glance : the opportuneness, Gospel spirit, peace making harmony, sovereign facility, with scientific preciiion,fand that simplicity of incomparable art, where supreme elegance and the most ample science, far from excluding one another, are united In sweet harmony." Bach are the notes and the characters of what the Archbishop of Dublin lately described as " the most important document of tbe Pontificate of Leo XIII."

The Italian and French translations of this great message of healing to the world, if the world will bat listen to it, hare jort been made public in Borne in the columns of the Catholic journals. The Voce delta Verita and the Ostervatore Romano publish the Italian Tersion ; the Moniteur de Rome the French translation. Clearness of expression and thought, elegance, and at the same tim« scientific propriety of language, distinguished'these translations, as well as the original Latin version. They also are the work of Leo XIII., and this authorshipjaccounts for their excellence. To-d*y all Borne is reading the words of the Pope, and the Italian Government itself may learn from the imprisoned Pontiff the mode of saving its people.