Page:Vactican as a World Power.djvu/384

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o THE THRONE IN THE TIME OF STORMS

now belonged to the past; and after the Italian annexation there re- mained only the difficult "Roman question," as to how a physical and political basis for a Papal sovereignty manifestly necessary was to be provided. This question arose on that very aoth of September on which the white flag was raised above St. Peter's as a sign of capitula- tion to secular might. This surrender to the threat of cannon by no means implied that the Papacy had abandoned its claims to the exercise of ecclesiastical world power. It was just as little a moral assent to the violation of justice, for the protest of Pius IX and his solemn re- fusal to recognize the Laws of Guaranty of 1871 anent the freedom of the exercise of the Papal office which freedom the World War brought to the fore anew was reiterated by all his successors until a final settlement was reached in 1929.

Rome had once conquered Italy and now Italy had conquered Rome. But during the sixty years that followed the loss of a territory it had governed even as kings of the world govern, the Papacy strengthened its power and position in the world both of action and of thought. Until the day of his death Pius IX beheld the revolutionary effects of what had been done and decided in the Vatican Council upon the new German Empire. Laws passed by the Prussian government were to insure to the state the right of supervision over the servants of a growing Church. Not only the Protestant spirit of the Imperial dynasty, but also the statesmanlike anxiety of Bismarck to unify public opinion brought about a Kulturkampf, the objective of which was a National Church establishment independent of Rome. The Chancel- lor himself realized that he was involved in the "age-old struggle for power between the kingship and the priesthood." Strong Catholic leaders Mallinckrodt, Ketteler, Reichensberger, Schorlemer, Windt- horst believed that patriotic German men could also serve their country by taking the field in defense of the religious liberties of their fellow Catholics and thus helping to ward off those real powers of revolution which Bismarck also knew were directed against state and nation. The Chancellor completely altered his domestic policy and abandoned the struggle with the Church toward the close of the seventies, realizing that the Catholic Party was not necessarily to be regarded as the implacable foe of his Imperial policy. "I am," he


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