Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 12.djvu/170

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PITTS


136


PIUS


3M mUlion lire ($650,000), and exterritoriality to a few papal palaces in Rome, was never accepted by Pius IX or his successors. (See States of the Church ; Rome; Guarantees, Law of.)

The loss of his temporal power was only one of the many trials that filled the long pontificate of Pius IX. There was scarcely a countrj-, Catholic or Protestant, where the rights of the Church were not infringed upon. In Piedmont the Concordat of 1S41 was set aside, the tithes were abolished, education was laicized, mon- asteries were suppressed, church property was confis- cated, religious orders were expelled, and the bishops who opposed this anti-ecclesiastical legislation were imprisoned or banished. In vain did Pius IX protest against such outrages in his allocutions of 1850, 1852, 1853, and finally in 1855 by publishing to the world the numerous injustices whiich the Piedmontese gov- ernment had committed against the Church and her representatives. In Wiirtemberg he succeeded in concluding a concordat with the Government, but, owing to the opposition of the Protestant estates, it never became a law and was revoked by a royal re- script on 13 June, 1861. The same occurred in the Grand Duchy of Baden where the Concordat of 1859 was abolished on 7 April, 1860. Equally hostile to the Church was the policy of Prussia and other German states, where the anti-ecclesiastical legislations reached their height during the notorious Kiiltur- kampj (q. v.), inaugurated in 1873. The violent out- rages committed in Switzerland against the bishops and the remaining clergy were solemnly denounced by Pius IX in his encyclical letter of 21 Nov., 1873, and, as a result, the pajial internuncio was expelled from Switzerland in January, 187-1. The concordat which Pius IX had concluded with Russia in 18-17 remained a dead letter, horrible cruelties were committed against the Catholic clergy and laity after the Polish insurrec- tion of 1863, and all relations with Rome were broken in 1866. The anti-ecclesiastical legislation in Colom- bia was denounced in his allocution of 27 Sept., 1852, and again, together with that of Mexico, on 30 Sept., 186 1 . With Austria a concordat, very favourable to the Church, was concluded on 18 August, 1855 ("Con- ventiones de rebus eccl. inter s. sedem et civilem po- testatem", Mainz, 1870, 310-318). But the Protes- tant agitation against the concordat was so strong, that in contravention to it the emperor reluctantlj' ratified marriage and school laws, 25 March, 1868. In 1870 the concordat was abolished by the Austrian Govern- ment, and in 1874 laws were enacted, which placed all but the inner management of ecclesiastical affairs in the hands of the Government. With Spain Pius IX concluded a satisfactory concordat on 16 March, 1851 (Nussi, 281-297; "Acta Pii IX", I, 293-341). It was supplemented by various articles on 25 Nov., 1859 (Nussi, 341-5). Other satisfactory concordats con- cluded by Pius IX were those with: Portugal in 1857 (Nussi, 318-21); Costa Rica, and Guatemala, 7 Oct., 1852 (lb., 297-310); Nicaragua, 2 Nov., 1861 (lb., 361- 7); San Salvador, and Honduras, 22 April, 1862 (lb., 367-72; 349); Hairi,28 March, 1860 (lb., 346-8); Ven- ezuela, 26 July, 1862 (lb., 356-61) ; Ecuador, 26 Sept., 1862 (lb., 349-56). (See Concordat: Summary of Principal Concordats.)

His greatest achievements are of a purely eccle- siastical and religious character. It is astounding how fearlessly he fought, in the midst of many and severe trials, against the false liberalism which threat- ened to destroy the very essence of faith and religion. In his Encyclical "Quanta Cura" of 8 Dec, 1864, he condemned sixteen propositions touching on errors of the age. This Encyclical was accompanied by the famous "Syllabus errorum", a table of eighty previously censured propositions bearing on panthe- ism, natiu-alism, rationalism, indifferentism, socialism, communi.sm, freemasonry, and the various kinds of religious liberalism. Though misunderstandings and


malice combined in representing the Syllabus as a veritable embodiment of religious narrow-mindedness and cringing servility to papal authority, it has done an inestimable service to the Church and to society at large by unmasking the false liberalism which had be- gun to insinuate its subtle poison into the very marrow of Catholicism. Previously, on 8 January, 1857, he had condemned the philosophico-theological writings of Giinther (q. v.), and on many occasions advocated a return to the philosophy and theology of St. Thomas. Through his whole life he was very devout to the Blessed Virgin. As early as 1849, when he was an ex- ile at Gaeta, he issued letters to the bishops of the Church, asking their views on the subject of the Im- maculate Conception (q. v.), and on 8 Dec, 1854, in the presence of more than 200 bishops, he proclaimed the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin as a dogma of the Church. He also fostered the devotion to the Sacred Heart, and on 23 Sept., 1856, extended this feast to the whole world with the rite of a double major. At his instance the Catholic world was consecrated to the Sacred Heart of Jesus on 16 June, 1875. He also promoted the inner life of the Church by many important liturgical regulations, by various monastic reforms, and especially by an unpre- cedented number of beatifications and canonizations. On 29 June, 1869, he issued the Bull "^terni Patris" (q. v.), convoking the Vatican Council which he opened in the presence of 700 bishops on 8 Dec, 1869. During its fourth solemn session, on IS July, 1870, the papal infallibilit}' (q. v.) was made a dogma of the Church. (See Vatican Council.)

The health}' and extensive growth of the Church during his pontificate was chiefly due to his unselfish- ness. He appointed to important ecclesiastical posi- tions only such men as were famous both for piety and learning. Among the great cardinals created by him were: Wiseman and Manning for England; CuUen for Ireland; McCloskey for the United States; Diepen- brock, Geissel, Reisach, and Ledochowski for Ger- many; Rauscher and Franzelin for Austria; Mathieu, Donnet, Gousset, and Pitra for France. On 29 Sept., 1850, he re-established the Catholic hierarchy in Eng- land by erecting the Archdiocese of Westminster with the twelve suffragan Sees of Beverley, Birmingham, Clifton, Hexham, Liverpool, Newport and Menevia, Northampton, Nottingham, Plymouth, Salford, Shrewsbury, and Southwark. The widespread com- motion which this act caused among English fanatics, and which was fomented by Prime Minister Russell and the London "Times", temporarily threatened to re- sult in an open persecution of Catholics (see Eng- land). On 4 March, 1S53, he restored the Catholic hierarchy in Holland by erecting the Archdiocese of Utrecht and the four suffragan Sees of Haarlem, Bois- le-Duc, Roermond, and Breda (see Holland).

In the United States of America he erected the Dioceses of: Albany, Buffalo, Cleveland, and Galves- ton in 1847; Monterey, Savannah, St. Paul, Wheeling, Santa Fe, and Nesqually (Seattle) in 1850; Burhng- ton, Covington, Erie, Natchitoches, Brooklyn, New- ark, and Quincy (Alton) in 1853; Portland (Maine) in 1855; Fort Wayne, Sault Sainte Marie (Marquette) in 1857; Columbus, Grass Valley (Sacramento), Green Bay, Harrisburg, La Crosse, Rochester, Scranton, St. Jose])h, Wihnington in 1868; Springfield and St. Au- gustine in 1870; Providence and Ogdensburg in 1872; San Antonio in 1874; Peoria in 1875; Leavenworth in 1877; the Vicariates Apostolic of the Indian Territory and Nebraska in 1851; Northern Michigan in 1853; Florida in 1857; North Carolina, Idaho, and Colorado in 1868; Arizona in 1869; Brownsville in Texas and Northern Minnesota in 1874. He encouraged the con- vening of provincial and diocesan synods in various countries, and established at Rome the Latin American College in 18.53, and the College of the Ignited States of America, at his own private expense, in 1859. His