THE POPES

New Zealand Tablet, 10 March 1910, Page 371

THE POPES

v WHAT THEY HAVE DONE FOR THE WORLD The Very Rev. Dean Kavanagh, of the Church of Our Lady of Victories, Market Harborough, England, in a lecture to the members of the Market Harborough Working Men’s Club, said it was an historical fact that no nation had ever been converted from paganism to Christianity except by missionaries sent expressly by the Popes, Peter's successors,' or by missionaries in open communion with the See of Peter. - For a thousand years England, like the other nations, knew but one religion. Her Archbishops of Canterbury swore obedience to Peter’s voice, , and even Henry VIII. himself styled Rome ‘ the mother and mistress of all

Churches. i The early British Church also derived its faith from the Eternal City, as Gildas, the British hist?ln ’ . testlfied: ‘ Tke British held St. Peter to be the first ot the Apostles and key-bearer, through whom other Bishops received their power.’ . ■ 1 . Great was the devotion of the Anglo-Saxon kings to Pome and many the pilgrimages they made to the tomb of St. Peter Coedwalla, Ina, Ethelburga, Conrad, Off a, Canute, and Ethelwulf; Coedwalla went to be baptised there. c+ a 4°, unded la . Ro me a hospice for Anglo-Saxon pilgrims, k a Edward, King of England, built Westminster Abbey, a ? . dedicated it to St. Peter in exchange for his vow to visit his shrine. Alfred the Great of England was anointed and crowned there, like many another monarch, Charlemagne, Lothaire, Louis of France, Otho of Germany, etc. Kef erring to the Popes and their deeds, Dean Kavanagh said that to speak of Rome and leave out the Popes was to play ‘Hamlet ’ with the part of Hamlet left out. It ivas the 1 opes, he said, ‘who destroyed the colossal monster of Greek and Roman paganism, with all its abor minations. they changed the whole face of Europe, rescunfg+S degraded slave from bondage, protecting the rights ptaf+f™ °+p r and the defenceless, putting down infanticide, ™ ng , th ? Position of woman, teaching the nations to be pure and chaste, shedding everywhere the blessing of holy charity and peace. 3 p ~ ‘They founded Christian Rome and made it the centre of light and education to the rest of the world; they rescued Italy over and over again in successive ages from Goths Vandals, Saracens etc. Even the infidel Gibbon says: Were it not for the Popes, the name of Rome might have +he\slrl Se i d f i° m - the eai i -’ They converted and civilised the wild barbarian hordes that rushed in from the North on the decaying Roman Empire; they covered Europe with +®’ cathedrals, colleges, universities, and beneficent ' institutmns fr every case of misery; they saved Europe Horn the lurks, organising the crusades and planning the bS°TTpf-,r 0f Lepanto, Vienna, etc.; they humbled tyrants ike Hemy IV. and the three Fredericks of Germany; they preserved the ancient monuments of Rome—but for them the Coliseum, Pantheon, Hadrian’s Mausoleum, etc., might have long since disappeared; they fostered the arts of In Rnmp +| ltmg -’ f™ lpture > .architecture, etc., and attracted to Rome the mightiest geniuses in these arts, the world has ever seen Above all, they upheld the light of faith with undimmed splendor in every age.’ After describing the Vatican Library, the finest in the •world, with its 25,000 manuscripts of priceless value, its , Codex Vatica-nus, the earliest known Greek version of the’ New Testament, etc., Dean Kavanagh said the greatest universities owed their origin to the Catholic Church. Cathohc kings and priests founded Oxford and Cambridge, Eton and Winchester The Universities of Paris, Aberdeen S- penagGn ’ Heidelberg Prague, Vienna, Bologna, Naples’ Pisa, Turni, Rome, Salamanca, Seville, Valladolid, Coimma, Louvain, etc., were universities founded by Catholic kings and princes, and often under immediate Papal inspiration The most magnificent cathedrals of the world were built by the genius of the Catholic religion—Westminster Lincoln, Ely, York, Durham, Salisbury, St. Peter’s, J°, ne U C R 0g i ne, i Milan, etc. Artists of world-wide fame such as Raphael Michael Angelo, Corregio, Canova, etc., owed much of their success to the support of the Popes! it was the cloister which produced some of the finest- artists and their works. It was to priests and monks that they °fn +i° n i® ! he greatest discoveries. It was the glory o. Catholicity to have given to the world many of its gieatest and most important scientific truths pendulum, laws of motion both in solids and fluids, the barometer, the manner s compass, the telescope and microscope, spectacles, lenses, the thermometer, the perfect catalogue of the stars, the discovery of continuous current of electric energy (the foundation of telegraphy and telephones), the printing +1 press, • wireless telegraphy, gunpowder, photography, the magic lantern, the music gamut scale, the first electro motor, the hydraulic press, clocks, the method of teaching deaf mutes, the way of teaching the blind to read, ~ The first museum was that of the Vatican in Rome, the first botanical garden Pisa, the first newspaper pubhshed in Venice, the first scientific society Naples, the first bank founded in Venice, not forgetting the X-rays, that brilliant discovery so useful in surgery, and the theme of universal praise. The Catholic Church, moreover, w r as the first to establish free schools for the poor—episcopal, parochial, and grammar schools. In the teeth of such evidence what remarkable stupidity for any man to call the Catholic Church the enemy of the intellectual life and or progress. In conclusion, on this point Dean Kavanagh quoted the great statesman and profound scholar, W. E. Gladstone. ‘ Gladstone,’ he said, ‘expresses in one sentence all that might be said on the subj’ect when he declares that “since the first three hundred years of persecution the Roman Catholic Church has marched for 1500 years at the head of human civilisation, and has driven, harnessed to its chariot as the horses of a triumphal car’ the chief intellectual and material forces of the world: its art, the art of the world; its genius, the genius of the world; its greatness, glory, grandeur,’ and maj’esty have been almost, though not absolutely, all that in these respects the world has had to boast of.” ’