The New Zealand Tablet THURSDAY, OCTOBER 26, 1922. THE POWER OF THE POPES BENEFICIAL TO EUROPE

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XLIX, Issue 42, 26 October 1922, Page 29

The New Zealand Tablet THURSDAY, OCTOBER 26, 1922. THE POWER OF THE POPES BENEFICIAL TO EUROPE

HE itinerant ranter, whose mark is ignorW M ance of history and disregard for truth, ill® j often goes back to the Middle Ages, about ILf which [neither he nor the weak-minded id people who chuck three-penny bits into his hat know anything, for material for attacks P&y on dear old Rome. As in England, from . the time of the Reformation until quite recently, the writing of history seemed to be undertaken only by people who were either honest and ignorant or else, like Fronde, fairly educated and extremely prone to telling lies, it is easy to find in Protestant English versions of history matter of the kind that. is dear to the average ranting parson. Nowadays, the study of history has made wonderful progress in England— is to sav that in England Protestants are beginning to find out things which the scholars of Europe knew a hundred years ago —and among students the lies that passed current half a century ago everywhere and are still repeated in tin-tabernacles in the Colonies are now regarded as the outward and visible signs of benightedness. Thus a Dickie may still blaze as the bright particular star of a little town more than ten thousand miles away . from civilised Europe, but a man who dared display such boorishness as he and his peers are known to have displayed one Twelfth of July in Knox Church would, in England, be more qualified for breaking stones than for teaching theology. Ignorance of the sort that such people culti- . vate is kin to madness, and the very mention of Rome has the same effect on them as a full moon has on an average Orange Lodge. Hence, pity for them is perhaps the most charitable sentiment. _ , ■ * w. In spite of Protestant history, the power of the Popes in the Middle Ages was most beneficial to Europe. They kept princes up to their duty and they restrained .subjects when other means failed. They formed a court of appeal to which princes and people could have -recourse without fear that secret diplomacy would inter.fere with justice. They were a bulwark against tyranny and, what makes them objectionable to Protestantism which, means Capitalism, they protected the poor and the toilers against the rich. We know how .- the great Hildebrand brought' the tyrant, Henry of Germany, to his knees at Canossa and smashed hisj

arrogance and pride for ever!: In our time congresses - of so-called statesmen have tried to. make peace between warring countries' and we have only to think of-Ver-sailles to remember how they failed, because they set selfishness and greed and revenge before charity and justice and truth. In the Middle Ages the Popes did what the Lloyd Georges and the Clemeneeaus and the Wilsons fail to do, because the Popes made. the law of God and the law of Nature the bases of their decisions. One does not hear the ranters quoting the body of Protestant historians (not English of course) who, because they studied history instead of repeating like parrots old-wives' tales, were proud to bear witness to the salutary results of Papal power exercised on behalf of humanity during the Middle Ages: Thus, Voight, in his history of Gregory VII, and Hurter, in his history of Innocent 111, prove that these Popes saved civilisation by their energetic resistance to the corruption of the age and the despotism of rulers like Henry IV and 'Frederick 11. _ Seeing how well they deserved of Europe by the exercise of that power which ranters in New Zealand say was abused, "Urquhart, a distinguished Protestant writer, quoted in O'Reilly's Life of Leo XIII, urged that the present foolish and fruitless system of trying to settle international questions by, congresses should be abandoned and recourse had once more to the arbitration of the Pope. Leibnitz wrote, at the end of the seventeenth century: "In my opinion Europe and the civilised world ought to institute at Rome a tribunal of arbitration presided over by the Pope, which should take cognisance of the differences between Christian princes. - This tribunal established over princes to direct. and judge them would bring us back to the golden age," Pitt wrote in 1794: "We must find a new bond to unite us all. The Pope alone can form this bond. Only Rome can make her impartial and unprejudiced voice heard; for no one doubts for an instant the integrity of her judgment:" (Pitt did not conceive how ignorant New Zealand parsons were going to be!) Guizot wrote in 1861: "All things considered, the Papacy, and only the Papacy could be the powerful mediator by defending, in the name of religion, the natural rights of man against States, princes, and various nations themselves. . It was the Papacy which reconciled the weak with the strong by always inculcating in all things justice, peace, and respect for duties and engagements; in this way it laid the founda-tion-stone of international right by rising against the claims of passion and brute force."

We have the authority of Mr. Hughes of Australia for saying that the recent terrible war was a war for economic domination/ ’ another way of saying that it was a sordid trade war.” One thing is certain: while millions of workers died, and lost all they had in life, while hundreds and thousands of others came home to begun the streets of London and Sydney, the engineers of “Dope” swindles and similar schemes made vast sums of money out of the blood of the workers. During the war, while a hired press was shrieking about patriotism, profiteers were, adding millions to millions, and the secret diplomatists were forming a solemn compact not to allow the Pope to make peace even if he could gain the ear of the people who most wanted peace. They made that scandalous compact; they solemnly set their names to itthose English and French and Italian schemers who would- have human blood run in rivers rather than allow the ope to stop the useless slaughter. When the Pope issued to the world a peace-proposal, based on justice and- charity, the British hireling press denounced it as pro-German, and when, a short time later, Wilson issued his proposal, based on the Pope’s, the same hired press hailed it as the wisdom of a superman. And, in time, the ’ political schemers scrapped the Wilson proposals as soon as they had served to delude the Germans into laying down - their arms on the strength of a scrap of paper. Then, instead of trying to reconstruct Europe on such a -basis of truth- and charity and justice as. the Pope proposed and Wilson copied these secret > diplomatists played ' their game of [(grab around The table at Versailles 'to such effect that

they left Europe ten' times worse than it was before the war for ''economic' domination" ever began. Is it any wonder that people whose .guiding principle is selfishness and greed do not want the Pope's intervention? Is it any wonder that we find the policemen of a Capitalist government in New protecting ranters who make a living by trying to stir up hatred of the Pope and of the one religion in the world whiph has at heart the interests of the poor? Is it any wonder that Ministers who are' puppets in the hands of rich men will prosecute a Bishop for saying what he never said while they send out police to enable Protestant ■parsons to say.' things that have caused serious riots throughout the Dominion? When is public opinion going to compel the Government' to.prove that it has some respect for justice and that there is shadow of justification for its motto of "a square deal" ?