Tempi Passati (Times Gone By)

¹ Rome can in no way forget its former glory and power—not its pagan glory, but Rome after the papal fashion, Rome!.. Urbs aeterna!.. Here, from the Castel Sant’Angelo, thunders and curses once pealed; here Gregory VII, Innocent III, and Boniface VIII issued their threats—and at their word, at their command, nations refused obedience to their own tsars, emperors, and princes; whole states groaned beneath the papal anathema. By the pope’s prohibition one could neither baptize, nor wed, nor bury the dead; the bells fell silent, the church doors were shut—for so willed, so desired the Pontifex Maximus, the Jupiter tonans, the supposed “successor” of the humble fisherman St. Peter, the “vicar of God,” the “infallible” visible “head” of the papal church!

² Ah, happy were those days! The whole West, the South, and in part the North listened in fear and trembling to his wishes, his words, and his commands; the East alone, where the apostolic light of Christ truly shone, would not bow its head before him. That East the popes did not spare the “sword of Peter”: by deceit and by force, to subdue the East, they entered into alliance with the enemies of the Church of Christ and blessed the Turkish hosts… Alas, that too is now “tempi passati.”

³ All that has passed away, all is tempi passati! In Rome—in aeterna Urbe—the pope is no longer master; over the Castel Sant’Angelo a foreign flag now flies, and so too over the Quirinal. The “infallible vicar (?) of God” plays the ridiculous part of a prisoner of the Vatican—though no one keeps him captive there; yet how keenly we feel that beside him another master dwells in urbe aeterna: the King of Italy!

⁴ Woe! woe! Who, then, stripped the pope of his earthly power? Pagans, heretics, schismatics? Oh no! The pope’s own beloved “chosen people,” from whose midst the Holy Spirit (?!) selects the popes—those very Romans, the Italians, drove the pope out of the Quirinal and abolished the kingdom of the popes—down to the bounds of the Vatican palace?! Henceforth the lightning of papal curses may still flash now and then, but no one any longer takes it seriously, for everyone knows it is nonsense, a papal plaything, a firework that harms no one!

⁵ Hard it is to forget those glorious, great times! “I remembered the days of old,” says the psalmist; and our whole world feels pain and grief at these words. The spirit of the age, and enlightenment, have sharply changed our century; but that is already past—it is all tempi passati!

⁶ But papism would not be papism if it rested content with such a state of affairs. It refuses to believe that the world will not return to the Middle Ages, that “Roma locuta, causa finita” is now mere fiction, that its significance, that papal power, is no longer the religio dominans—even there where the faithful of the papacy live! And meanwhile such powers as France, Austria, and Italy were the first to shake off the yoke and the darkness of papism, and in their social and political life the pope plays no greater part than a fifth wheel on a cart.

⁷ Papism, however, does not sleep; it works by stealth—no longer openly, but by sundry means, in Pharisaic fashion, quietly, under various mottoes of piety; and it bares its teeth only when it reckons that the foundations of that secret labor are already firm enough that no one can withstand papism! Examples in many instances show how far it has gone—and how it has deceived even itself—as, for example, lately came to pass at the London “Eucharistic Congress” of this year. The bygone glory of papism these various “congregations,” “Catholic unions,” so-called “Catholic assemblies,” “congresses,” “Apostleships of the Heart of Jesus”—and God knows what other names those societies bear, each with its own appointed secret aim—are eager to revive.

⁸ Already at the beginning of this year the papal newspapers began to discourse upon the coming congress—but very piano! First they had to feel out what the Protestants of England thought of it. But the moment they caught the scent, the papal press began to sniff it out in the loudest tones. They struck up a tune about what “glory” it would be for England—quite otherwise than in 1554, when Cardinal Pole first came to England in like manner; the paper “Echo de Paris” in particular poured itself out in “doxologies” to the congress—namely, that the papal legate, Cardinal Vannutelli, would take part in it…

⁹ …Vannutelli, and six other cardinals besides, a hundred bishops, and more than a thousand priests! And the chief thing—says this paper—is that the congress takes on great significance because it will be held on Protestant soil! By this the secret design of papism against Protestantism was plainly betrayed!.. And yet all the papal newspapers had insisted at first that the congress had no wish whatever to be demonstrative, that it did not intend to touch the feelings of the Protestants!.. This only roused the Protestants of England the more, especially when they learned how far in advance the audacity of the papists in England reached: the papists began to demand, with threats, that the papal legate, Cardinal Vannutelli, take part with honor in an official procession.

¹⁰ The Protestant union, the “Protestant Alliance,” protested against such a wish—that the “head” of the Anglican Church should officially receive the pope’s legate; more than that, the Protestant union went on to demand that no minister conduct a procession through the streets demonstratively with the “Host”—in general this Union wished to forbid all outward demonstrations. What especially galled the Protestants was the discovery that the government had mustered fifteen thousand constables to guard the papal procession during the public march… while the papists were ready, and even eager, to shed their blood for the faith, for the pope and his legate.

¹¹ The “Protestant Alliance” appealed directly to the Prime Minister, Asquith, with its demands, and laid upon him the whole responsibility for any disorders that might follow. The Prime Minister Asquith, with his resolute temper, replied that although he was indeed the “head” of the Anglican Church, he himself could not officially receive the pope’s legate; secondly, he forbade any procession with the “Host”; and he even forbade the cardinals, bishops, and priests to be vested in ecclesiastical robes during the procession! This was an unexpected, but also a heavy blow for the papists. In vain did the Westminster papal archbishop protest—nothing availed! Asquith held his ground, and the congress had to comply!

¹² At last the critical day of the procession arrived. A crowd of a hundred thousand awaited the cardinals, bishops, and priests as they came forth from the cathedral church, dressed indeed only in their “reverends’” cassocks, and not in ecclesiastical vestments! The papists began with enthusiasm to greet their bishops and cardinals, but at that very moment there arose a fearful shouting, din, whistling, and abuse from the Protestants! How that procession went is most vividly described by the New York Roman Catholic and tendentious newspaper “The Sun,” of 1/14 September 1908:

¹³ “Its approach was at last heralded by mounted police, behind whom some banners were visible. Then followed such a scene the like of which one who has taken part in every great crowd in London in the past eleven years has never seen. A hurricane of hoots and yells went up to greet the advance guard of the procession. The mob swept forward, bearing the police with it. Mingled with yells could be heard the shrieks of women, while children, sitting in safety in windows just above the heads of the crowd, could be seen crying in fright.”

¹⁴ “The police drove the crowd back foot by foot. They used all the force that was safe, hurling men to the ground right and left, until in a few minutes the line of processionists was cut in two, and for a couple of minutes it seemed as though it would never be able to go on. Then, once more, by a supreme effort, a narrow opening was made which allowed the parade to trickle through. Had Cardinal Vannutelli, the Papal Legate, carrying the Host, reached this corner at the moment the procession was cut, nothing could have prevented a most lamentable occurrence.”

¹⁵ “Through this yelling mob Cardinal Vannutelli walked slowly, with his head thrown back, looking straight forward, with a calm smile on his face, his tall figure towering above the other Cardinals behind him and the priests before him. Hundreds risked injury by kneeling as Cardinal Vannutelli passed with his hand raised in blessing. But throughout, even when the cheers predominated, there was an undercurrent of hooting, and such cries as ‘Go back to Rome!’ were heard.”

¹⁶ It is sad, of course, that the Protestants of England, especially in the twentieth century, should imitate the intolerance of the papists; but the Latin proverb says, “Exempla trahunt”—the Protestants have had good teachers: the papists! St. Bartholomew’s Night, the Spanish Inquisition, the stakes of Hus, of Jerome of Prague, of Savonarola and the rest—these are the most vivid examples of papal “tolerance,” and of the savagery of the papists in old Poland against the Orthodox! Where, then, is that historical “heritage” of tolerance of which the papists so love to boast?

¹⁷ Besides, one must say from the heart what the papists are really after with their “Eucharistic Congress”: here they wish to display in glory “Jesus Christ present in the Host,” but in truth they take thought for the glory and the supremacy of the pope, beneath whose slipper the papists would gladly subdue England. Yet by now both the papists and their “infallible” vicar (?) of Christ, for all his glory, can see that the present age can no longer be turned back into the Middle Ages, that the glory of the pope is gone, that all has passed away, that the golden days of Gregory VII and Innocent III are days long vanished… tempi passati!

¹⁸ Those times can be renewed neither by “Katholiken-Tag” rallies nor by “Eucharistic Congresses”… and the pope shall not win them back! These various demonstrations are mere soap-bubbles that will soon burst! Certain newspapers, it is reported, are pleased with the results of the “Eucharistic Congress”! Well, what is to be done? It seems that this consolation of the pope’s is nothing other than a Consolatio ad lachrymas!.. and in that he is hardly to be envied!

¹⁹ Archpriest Alexis Toth