Democratic Sentinel, Volume 13, Number 51, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 January 1890 — COMPLAINT OF THE POPE. [ARTICLE]

COMPLAINT OF THE POPE.

Hit Temporal Power Encroached Upon by King Humbert’s Government. A Rome cable says: At a consistory the other day the Pope said that the Italian adversaries of the church persistently continued their war against it, as was me.de evident by the recent utterances of persons in public positions acquainted with the intention regarding the church of the rulers of Italy. Among other recent insults to the church was the demonstration in honor of Giordano Bruno. The Italian government, seeking to detach the people troin the church, opposed the action of the Pope in every way. His holiness referred to the temporal power as necessary to tbe independence and liberty of the Pope in the exercise of his mission, and declared that he did not claim tbe restoration of the temporal power from human motives. It was his right, and he was required to preserve it intact and transmit it to bis successor as one of the unalienable treasures of the Christian faith. The new Italian penal code just coming into operation also attacked the just liberty of the clergy and hindered their work with new obstacles. An additional wound was about to be Inflicted upon the church by the law regarding charitable trusts, which had recently been enacted with unseemly baste. This was a fresh step in the endeavor to efface every vestige of religion from civil institutions. By this law all pious establishments were to be suppressed or transferred, especially those for the dowering of girls entering convents, and thdse by which it was provided that masses should, be said of the souls of the dead. This law violated the wishes of the founders of all those charities. Priests were excluded from the benefits of charitable institutions and women were admitted to such benefits. It was argued that charity should be secular in order that it might be more acceptable. But, indeed, the unfortunate are too proud sometimes to accept Christian charity, and outside the church there is no true charity. Other blows also have been leveled at the church by the invasions of the civil power forcing itself into sacred things. For a time all these things might embarrass the church, but they can never definitely change its course. Tbe Riforma says the violence of the language used in the Pope’s allocution will not prevent Italy from being governed in harmony with tbe necessities of progress and tbe aspirations of her people.