Vladimir Moss – Orthodox Christianity Author

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THE RISORGIMENTO AND THE FALL OF THE PAPACY

Written by Vladimir Moss

THE RISORGIMENTO AND THE FALL OF THE PAPACY

 

     The country closest to revolution in the middle of the nineteenth century was Italy. This fact was due, at any rate partially, to the presence in Italy of the Papacy - in Italians’ eyes, the most intransigeant of despotisms. For, as Baigent and Leigh write: “Writing in the 1850s, an historian and Catholic apologist described the Papal States of the immediate post-Napoleonic period as ‘a benevolent autocracy’. Between 1823 and 1846, some 200,000 people in this ‘benevolent autocracy’ were consigned to the galleys, banished into exile, sentenced to life imprisonment or to death. Torture by the Inquisitors of the Holy Office was routinely practised. Every community, whether small rural village or major city, maintained a permanent gallows in its central square. Repression was rampant and surveillance constant, with Papal spies lurking everywhere. Meetings of more than three people were officially banned. Railways were banned because Pope Gregory XVI believed they might ‘work harm to religion’. Newspapers were also banned. According to a decree of Pope Pius VIII, anyone possessing a book written by a heretic was to be considered a heretic himself. Anyone overhearing criticism of the Holy Office and not reporting it to the authorities was deemed as guilty as the critic. For reading a book on the Index, or for eating meat on Friday, one could be imprisoned.”[1]

 

     However, with the arrival of a still more absolutist Pope, Pius IX, in 1846, the forces of nationalism and revolution were to prove more than a match for him…

 

     “Strangely enough, given his subsequent career, Pius IX began his reign with the reputation of a reformer. He was sympathetic to at least some form of Italian unification and nationalism. He envisioned himself, in his capacity of pontiff, serving as a divinely ordained conduit and instrument for Italy’s rebirth. He dreamed of presiding over a confederation of Italian states. He even elicited hopeful appeals for support from Mazzini and Garibaldi, who in their naivety fancied they might find a new ally in the Church.

 

     “Whatever illusions Pius may initially have fostered, they quickly evaporated, along with his popularity. It soon became apparent that the Italy the Pope had in mind bore little relation to any constitutional state. In 1848, he doggedly refused to lend his support to a rebellious military campaign against Austrian domination of the north. His studied neutrality was perceived as a craven betrayal, and the resulting violent backlash obliged him to flee Rome in ignominious disguise, as a priest in the carriage of the Bavarian ambassador. In 1850, Papal rule was restored by the arrival of French troops [sent by Louis Napoleon, the future emperor] and Pius returned to his throne. His political position, however, now made no concessions of any kind to liberalism or reform; and the regime he established in his own domains was to become increasingly hated.”[2]

 

     In December, 1851 Louis Napoleon staged a coup d’état in Paris, and, somewhat surprisingly, the leadership of the Grand Orient (in spite of resistance by some radical Freemasons, such as Ledru-Rollin) decided to support him in the plebiscite that elected him President of the Republic. Napoleon was now indebted to the Masons, and therefore, bowing to their pressure, began to turn against the Pope.[3] In particular, he began to support King Victor Emmanuel of Sardinia-Piedmont, a Freemason, in his struggle to expel the Austrians from Italy and unify the peninsula – a movement that eventually led to the stripping of the Papacy of all its secular dominions with the exception of the Vatican City itself.

 

     The Franco-Sardinian alliance was successful: after the victories of Magenta and Solferino in 1859-60, the Austrians retained only Venetia (the Italians acquired that in 1866). Meanwhile, Garibaldi’s red-shirts had conquered Sicily and Naples. Only the Papal States in the centre of Italy withstood the Masonic-led onslaught. They, paradoxically, were protected by a French garrison – Napoleon was not yet ready to throw the Papacy to the nationalist wolves. But for how long?…

 

     As his political power crumbled during the course of the revolution, Pius  IX sought to compensate for it by asserting his spiritual power in a shriller and more maniacal manner than ever, by increased repression within his kingdom, and by inventing new dogmas that the Catholics were now compelled to believe.

 

     The process had begun in 1854, when, with the support of five hundred Italian, Spanish and Portuguese bishops, many of whom he had appointed to newly created dioceses, he proclaimed the doctrine of the immaculate conception of the Virgin – that is, her freedom from original sin - while in exile in Gaeta. His personal secretary, Monsignor Talbot, said at that time: “You see, the most important thing is not the new dogma but the way it is proclaimed.” In other words, the important thing was not whether the dogma was true or not, but the fact that the Pope was asserting his power.

 

     In 1864 Pius issued Quanta Cura, which condemned a whole “Syllabus” of Errors, including modern heresies such as liberalism and socialism[4], and reasserted the papacy’s supremacy over all secular powers. Then, in December, 1869 he convened the First Vatican Council. Two and a half months into the Council, the question of papal infallibility was raised.

 

     In his constitution Pastor Aeternus, the Pope declared his own infallibility on matters of faith and morals when speaking ex cathedra thus:-

 

“1. If anyone will say that the blessed Apostle Peter was not placed by Christ the Lord as prince of all the apostles and the visible head of the whole of the Church militant, or that he did not receive, directly and without mediation, from our same Lord Jesus Christ only the pre-eminence of honour, and not the true and genuine pre-eminence of power, let him be anathema.”

”2. If anyone will say… that the blessed Peter in his pre-eminence over the whole Church does not have an unbroken line of successors, or that the Roman high priest is not the successor of the blessed Peter in this pre-eminence, let him be ΰnathema.

”3. If anyone will say that the Roman high priest has only the privilege of supervising or directing, and not complete or supreme jurisdiction in the Universal Church not only in matters that relate to faith and morals, but even also in those which relate to discipline and the administration of the Church, which is spread throughout the world; or that he has only the most important parts, but not the whole fullness of this supreme power; or that this power is not ordinary and immediate, both over each and every church, and over each and every pastor and member of the faithful, let him be anathema.

”4. Faithfully following the tradition received from the beginning of the Christian faith, we teach and define that the following dogma belongs to the truths of Divine revelation. The Pope of Rome, when he speaks from his see (ex cathedra), that is when,  while fulfilling his duties as teacher and pastor of all Christians, who defines, by dint of his supreme apostolic power, that a certain teaching on questions of the faith and morals must be accepted by the Church, he enjoys the Divine help promised to him in the person of St. Peter, that infallibility which the Divine Redeemer deigned to bestow on His Church, when it defines teaching on questions of faith and morality. Consequently, these definitions of the Pope of Rome are indisputable in and of themselves, and not because of the agreement of the Church. If anyone were to have the self-opinion, which is not pleasing to God, to condemn this, he must be consigned to anathema.”

 

     It is interesting to note that in this last sentence the Pope admits the possibility that in his definitions of the faith he might be right and the Church wrong. In other words, he denied St. Paul’s words that it is precisely the Church, and not any individual man, that is “the pillar and foundation of the truth” (I Timothy 3.15).

 

     This was a complete surprise and shock to all the assembled bishops except those belonging to the Inquisition; and at first only a small minority – 50 out of 1,084 bishops eligible to attend and vote - was in favour of it. However, Pius now proceeded to apply threats and intimidation. And so “by the time it came to a vote, the Papacy’s strong-arm tactics had tipped the balance decisively. In the first vote, on 13 July 1870, 451 declared themselves in favour and eighty-four opposed. Four days later, on 17 July, fifty-five bishops officially stated their opposition but declared that, out of reverence for the Pope, they would abstain from the vote scheduled for the following day. All of them then left Rome, as a good many others had already done. The second and final vote occurred on 18 July. The number of those supporting the Papacy’s position increased to 535. Only two voted against, one of them Bishop Edward Fitzgerald of Little Rock, Arkansas. Of the 1,084 bishops eligible to vote on the issue of Papal infallibility, a total of 535 had finally endorsed it – a ‘majority’ of just over 49 per cent. By virtue of this ‘majority’, the Pope, on 18 July 1870, was formally declared infallible in his own right and ‘not as a result of the consent of the Church’. As one commentator has observed, ‘this removed all conciliarist interpretations of the role of the Papacy’.”[5]

 

     And so the Council finally consented to the false dogma, declaring: "The Pope is a divine man and a human god... The Pope is the light of faith and reflection of truth."

 

     And yet, if the Pope was infallible, what was the point of the Council? For, as Fr. Sergius Bulgakov wrote, “how could a Council be expected to pass the resolution if it has no power to decided anything on which the Pope alone has the right of final judgement? How could the Council have consented even to debate such an absurdity? It can, of course, be argued that the Vatican Council had to carry out the Pope’s behest from obedience, regardless of content. But even as infallible, the Pope cannot do meaningless and self-contradictory things, such as submitting to a Council’s decision a motion when the power to decide belongs not to it, but to him.”[6]

 

     Bishop Joseph Georg Strossmayer of Diakovar, in Croatia, was one of the few bishops who opposed the dogma of infallibility. “In 1871,” writes Fr. Alexey Young, “he wrote to a friend that he would rather die than accept this false teaching, adding: ‘Better to be exposed to every humiliation than to bend my knee to Baal, to arrogance incarnate.’ But apparently the humiliations and threats imposed on him by Rome proved, after ten long years, too much to oppose. He finally submitted to the new teaching in 1881…”[7]

 

     For a time Pastor Aeternus looked destined to create a schism as devastating as that of the Protestants. As Peter de Rosa writes: “Absolute power had fashioned an absolute ‘truth’; and other Christians found one more sky-high barrier between themselves and the Roman church.”[8] “Prejudice against the Church seemed to have acquired a new justification; and anti-Catholic sentiment erupted across the whole of Europe and North America.[9] In Holland, there was virtual schism. In the Habsburg imperium of Austria-Hungary, a concordat previously concluded [in 1855] with the Papacy was abrogated by the government. The Papal Nuncio in Vienna reported to the Vatican’s Secretary of State that ‘almost all the bishops of Austria-Hungary now returned from Rome are furious over the definition of infallibility’; and two of them publicly demanded that a debate be opened to reverse the decision of the Council. For more than a year, the bishops of Hungary refused to accept the Council’s ruling.

 

     “The Bishop of Rottenburg openly branded the Pope the ‘disturber of the Church’. In Braunsberg, a distinguished professor published a manifesto castigating the pontiff as ‘heretic and devastator of the Church’; and the local cardinal and the local bishop both tacitly concurred in this condemnation. In Prussia, Bismarck introduced laws that radically altered the Church’s status and relationship with the state. Jesuits were effectively banned from the kingdom. Legal proceedings were instituted for the appointment of clergy. Civil marriage ceremonies were made obligatory. All schools were place under state supervision.

 

     “In the face of such reactions, the Papacy simply became more aggressive. All bishops were ordered to submit in writing to the new dogma; and those who refused were penalised or removed from their posts. So, too, were rebellious teachers and professors of theology. Papal nuncios were instructed to denounce defiant ecclesiastics and scholars as heretics. All books and articles challenging, or even questioning, the dogma of Papal infallibility were automatically placed on the Index. On at least one occasion, attempts were made to suppress a hostile book through bribery. Many records of the Council itself were confiscated, sequestered, censored or destroyed. One opponent of the new dogma, for example, Archbishop Vicenzo Tizzani, Professor of Church History at the Papal University of Rome, wrote a detailed account of the proceedings. Immediately after his death, his manuscript was purchased by the Vatican and has been kept locked away ever since…”[10]

 

     As Archimandrite Justin (Popovich) writes: “Through the dogma of infallibility the pope usurped for himself, that is for man, the entire jurisdiction and all the prerogatives which belong only to the Lord God-man. He effectively proclaimed himself as the Church, the papal church, and he has become in her the be-all and end-all, the self-proclaimed ruler of everything. In this way the dogma of the infallibility of the pope has been elevated to the central dogma (vsedogmat) of the papacy. And the pope cannot deny this in any way as long as he remains pope of a humanistic papacy. In the history of the human race there have been three principal falls: that of Adam, that of Judas, and that of the pope.”[11]

 

     Again, Archimandrite Charalampos Vasilopoulos writes, “Papism substituted the God-man Christ with the man Pope! And whereas Christ was incarnate, the Pope deincarnated him and expelled Him to heaven. He turned the Church into a worldly kingdom. He made it like an earthly state… He turned the Kingdom of God into the kingdom of this world.”[12] Indeed, although the Pope calls himself “the vicar of Christ”, we should rather say, writes Nikolaos Vasileiades, “that the Pope is Christ’s representative on earth and Christ… the Pope’s representative in heaven”.[13]

 

     European individualism since Gregory VII has been of three distinct types: papist individualism which decrees the maximum rights – and knowledge – for one person, the Pope; liberal individualism, which decrees the maximum rights for every person; nationalist individualism, which decrees the maximum rights for one nation. Papist individualism had tended to recede into the background as first liberal individualism, and then nationalist individualism caught the imagination of the European and American continents. But now, having already anathematised the main propositions of liberalism in his Syllabus of Errors of 1864, and having stubbornly resisted the triumph of nationalism in his native Italy[14], the Papacy reiterated with extra force and fanaticism its own variant of the fundamental European heresy – the original variant, and the maddest of them all. For is it not madness to regard oneself, a mortal and sinner and as in need of redemption as any other man, as the sole depository and arbiter of absolute truth?!

 

     However, Divine retribution was swift for this act of pagan man-worship in the midst of Europe’s ancient religious and political capital. On the very next day after the decree on Papal infallibility, July 19, Emperor Napoleon III, declared war on Prussia and withdrew his troops from Rome. In September he was defeated at Sedan and forced to abdicate, in spite of the fact that he had won a resounding victory in a plebiscite only four months before. [15]

 

     Napoleon’s sudden fall from grace was caused by a sudden withdrawal of support by the Freemasons. Thus Archpriest Lev Lebedev writes: “H.K. Gris, who was at that time Russian consul in Berne (Switzerland), and later minister of foreign affairs (chancellor) of Alexander III, in accordance with the duties of his office observed and carefully studied the activity of the Masonic centre in Berne. To it came encoded despatches from French Masons with exact date about the movements, deployment and military plans of the French armies. These were immediately transferred through Masonic channels to the Prussian command. The information came from Masonic officers of the French army… And so France was doomed! No strategy and tactics, not military heroism could save her. It turned out that international Masonry had ‘sentenced’ France to defeat beforehand, and that the French ‘brother-stone-masons’ had obediently carried out the sentence on their own country (fatherland!). Here is a vivid example of Masonic cooperation with the defeat of their own government with the aim of overthrowing it and establishing an authority pleasing to the Masons. But when this republican parliamentary power was established, it was forced to take account of the national feeling of the French people, deeply wounded by the defeat and the seizing by Germany of Alsace and Lorraine…”[16]

 

     Sedan was an historic milestone in more ways than one. Not only did it reverse the decision and the result of the French victory over the Prussians at Valmy in 1792, when the Masons had supported the French against the Prussians. The protector-client relationship between France and the Roman papacy, which had begun when Pope Stephen had crossed the Alps to seek to anoint the Frankish King Pippin in the eighth century, was also now about to end. For, with the French no longer able to support the Papacy, as Christopher Duggan writes, “there was little to stop the Italian government seizing the historic capital. On 20 September, less than three weeks after the Battle of Sedan, Italian troops blew a hole in the Leonine walls at Porta Pia and marched into the city. Pius IX was left with the small enclave of the Vatican. A law was passed in May 1871 that guaranteed the safety of the pope, provided him with an annual grant, and gave him the full dignities and privileges of a sovereign; but Pius IX rejected it out of hand. The rift between the liberal state and the Church was now broader and deeper than ever.”[17]

 

     The new constitution was, like Louis Philippe’s of 1830 and Napoleon III’s of 1862[18], a strange mixture of old and new, Christian and antichristian. W.M. Spellmann writes: “Under the terms of the first constitution (one actually issued in 1848 by Victor Emmanuel’s father Charles Albert to his subjects in Piedmont-Sardinia) the monarch ruled ‘by the grace of God’ as well as ‘by the will of the people’. A bicameral assembly was established with members of the upper house chosen by the king and the lower house elected on the basis of a very restricted franchise…”[19]

 

     Some bewailed the fact that the national consciousness of Italians lagged behind the State of the new united Italy. Thus Massimo d’Azeglio remarked in the opening session of the new parliament in 1861: “Now that we have created Italy, we must start creating Italians.”[20]

 

     The nationalists were disgusted, writes Adam Zamoyski, that “the process… hailed as the Risorgimento, the national resurgence,… was nothing of the sort: a handful of patriots had been manipulated by a jackal monarchy and its pragmatic ministers. And the last act of 1870 had been the most opportunistic of all.”[21] Thus “it was a different Italy that I had dreamed of all my life,” said Garibaldi a couple of years before his death. “I had hoped to evoke the soul of Italy,” wrote Mazzini from exile, “and instead find merely her inanimate corpse.”[22]

 

     And yet they had gained not only the unification of Italy but also the humiliation of the Papacy, of which Machiavelli had said: “The nearer people are to the Church of Rome, which is the head of our religion, the less religious are they… Her ruin and chastisement is near at hand… We Italians owe to the Church of Rome and to her priests our having become irreligious and bad; but we owe her a still greater debt, and one that will be the cause of our ruin, namely that the Church has kept and still keeps our country divided.”[23]

 

     To others, however, and not only Papists, the “ruin and chastisement” of the Church of Rome was no cause of rejoicing. Thus the Russian diplomat, Constantine Nikolaevich Leontiev, lamented: The Pope a prisoner! The first man of France [President Carnot] not baptised!”[24] The reason for his alarm was not far to find: for all its vices, and its newest heresies, the papacy was still one of the main forces in the West restraining the liberal-socialist revolution as it descended ever more rapidly down the slippery slope towards atheism.

 

     For if one religious despot had been removed[25], there were plenty of anti-religious despots waiting in the wings. Thus Zamoyski writes of a decorative poster produced by the garibaldini in 1864 headed “The Doctrine of Giuseppe Garibaldi”: “This opens with the words: ‘In the name of the Father of the Nation’, shamelessly substituting Garibaldi for God, and the service of Italy for Catholic practice. The catechetical question of how many Garibaldis there are elicits the answer that there is only one Garibaldi, but that there are three distinct persons in him: ‘The Father of the Nation, the Son of the People, and the Spirit of Liberty’. Garibaldi was, of course, made man in order to save Italy, and to remind her sons of the ten commandments, which are:

 

     “1. I am Giuseppe Garibaldi, your General.

     “2. Thou shalt not be a soldier of the General’s in vain.

     “3. Thou shalt remember to keep the National Feast-days.

     “4. Thou shalt honour thy Motherland.

     “5. Thou shalt not kill, except those who bear arms against Italy.

     “6. Thou shalt not fornicate, unless it be to harm the enemies of Italy.

     “7. Thou shalt not steal, other than St. Peter’s pence in order to use it for the redemption of Rome and Venice.

     “8. Thou shalt not bear false witness like the priests do in order to sustain their temporal power.

     “9. Thou shalt not wish to invade the motherland of others.

     “10. Thou shalt not dishonour thy Motherland.

 

     “The poster contains an ‘Act of Faith’ to be recited daily, as well as an act of contrition for those who have transgressed the commandments and offended the Father. There is also a travesty of the Lord’s Prayer which contains such gems as ‘Give us today our daily cartridges’…”[26]

 

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