RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Roman Catholics
formal sanction to those scholastic theories and ecclesiastical traditions against which the Reformers protested. It has also again and again expressly condemned their doctrines, and, by claiming to be infallible, made itself doctrinally irreformable. In 1816 the first condemnation of Bible societies was issued by Pius VIL, who declared them " a most subtle invention for the destruction of the very foundations of religion" (Mirbt, Quellen, p. 347). Pius IV. in 1564 expressly condemned all versions of the Scriptures by heretical authors, i.e., Lutherans, Zwinglians, Calvinists, and the like.
In modern Romanism, again, two periods must be distinguished, which are divided by the reign of Pope Pius IX. (a) Tridentine Romanism is directed against the principles of the Protestant Reformation, and fixed the dogmas of the rule of faith (Scripture and tradition), original sin, justification by faith and works, the seven sacra-
5. Triden- men^gj the sacrifice of the mass, purgalne an tory, invocation of saints, the venera- Bomanism ^on °^ reucs> an(i indulgences. The " Old Catholics " (q.v.), who seceded in 1870 and were excommunicated, took their stand first on the Council of Trent, in opposition to the Council of the Vatican, and charged the latter with apostasy and corruption; although in fact, and as viewed from the Protestant standpoint, the one is only a legitimate, logical development of the other. (&) Vatican Romanism is directed against modern infidelity (rationalism), and against liberal Catholicism (Gallicanism) within the Roman Church itself. It created, or rather brought to full maturity and exclusive authority, two new dogmas and two corresponding heresies, — concerning the Virgin Mary, and the power and infallibility of the Roman pontiff, questions left unsettled by the Council of Trent. Gallicanism flourished in France during the golden age of its literature, and was formulated by Bossuet in the famous articles of Gallican liberties; but, since the restoration of the order of Jesuits in 1814, the Ultramontane school, which defends papal absolutism, has gradually gained the ascendency, and secured a complete triumph— first in 1854, when Pius IX. proclaimed the immaculate conception of the Virgin Mary to be a dogma of faith; and in the Vatican Council in 1870, which declared the pope to be infallible. The same pope, in 1864, issued the " Syllabus of Errors," — an infallible official document, which arrays the papacy in open war against modern civilization and civil and religious freedom. The reign of Pius IX. (q.v.) was very eventful in the history of the papacy: it marked the height of 6 _. __ _ its pretensions and the logical comple-
Leo XIII '•' ^on °f i*s doctrinal system, but also Pius X. ' the loss of its temporal power. On the very day after the passage of the papal infallibility dogma (July 18, 1870), Napoleon III., the chief political and military supporter of the pope, declared war against Protestant Prussia (July 19), withdrew his troops from Rome, and brought upon imperial France utter defeat and contributed to the rise of the new German Empire with a Protestant head, and the downfall of the temporal power of the papacy. Victor Emmanuel, supported by the vote of the people, marched into Rome, fulfilled
the dream of centuries by making it the capital of free and united Italy, and confined the pope to the Vatican and to a purely ecclesiastical jurisdiction (Sept. 20, 1870). History has never seen a more sudden and remarkable revulsion. The rule of Pius IX., lasting thirty-one years, broke the tradition that no pontificate would exceed that of Peter, said to have lasted twenty-five years. His successor, Leo XIII. (q.v.), who gained the respect of all Western Christendom by his culture and character, walked in the way of his predecessors in again denouncing Protestantism as the " Lutheran rebellion, whose evil virus goes wandering about in almost all the nations " (Encyclical, Aug. 1, 1897) and in exalting the scholastic theology by formally pronouncing Thomas Aquinas the standard theologian of the Roman Catholic Church and the patron of Roman Catholic schools {Mterni patris, Aug. 4, 1879). He also took an almost impossible position against Biblical scholarship in pronouncing the passage about the three witnesses, I John v. 7, genuine (Jan. 15, 1897). His successor, Pius X. (q.v.), in his encyclical Pascendi gregis, 1907, has taken a position against all freedom of Biblical and theological discussion by condemning Modernism (q.v.), forbidding all meetings of the clergy for theological discussion except in rarest cases and under severe restrictions, and ordering the appointment of " councils of vigilance " in every diocese to condemn, without giving reasons, all writings and teachings containing the scent of " Modernism." He has also shown his retrograde policy by forbidding women to sing in churches and limiting church music to the Gregorian chant. Both these popes have been as emphatic as was Pius IX., who made Alphonso da Liguori a doctor of the Church, in ascribing to the invocation of Mary infinite efficacy, and in calling upon the Roman Catholic world to pray to her.
The history of the Roman Church during the nineteenth century shows the remarkable fact that it has lost on its own ground, especially in Italy, France, and Spain, but gained large accessions on foreign soil, especially in England, by the secession of Cardinal Newman, Cardinal Manning, and 400 Anglican clergymen, and, by immigration, from Ireland, in the United States, and, to mention a small district, Geneva. Pius IX. reestablished the Roman Catholic hierarchy in England in 1850 and in Holland in 1853, and Leo XIII. in Scotland, 1878. On the other hand, this gain has been more than neutralized by the Old Catholic secession in Germany and Switzerland, under the lead of Drs. Dollinger, Reinkens, and von Schulte, and other eminent Catholic scholars, whose learning and conscience did not permit them to submit to the Vatican decrees of 1870 (see Old Catholics), and the Los von Rom (q.v.) movement in Austria, and by a growing spirit of enlightened Biblical discussion within the church by such men as Loisy of France and Father Tyrrell of England.