Henry Edward Cardinal Manning wrote this in 1877 after the Catholic
Church had been despoiled of all of her possessions and the Pope
had become the prisoner of the Vatican. The need for the Pope to be
free not only spiritually, but also politically is laid out very
well by Cardinal Manning. In fact, this independence is essential
to world peace. Cardinal Manning says: "All Christians believe that
when our Lord sent out His Apostles, He gave to them a supreme
spiritual power to govern the Church. Catholics further believe
that He had already given that power in its fulness to Peter, their
head and chief, the foundation of His Church; and, after He
ascended into Heaven, His Vicar upon earth. We believe also that
this Divine power exists in the world at this moment. It exists in
the office of Peter, perpetuated in the person of his successor."
"My purpose then will be to make clear the four following points:
First, What is the sovereignty or independence, or temporal power,
if men like so to call it, with which God in His Providence has
invested the Head of His Church upon earth. Secondly, What is the
violation of that independence and sovereignty by the acts of
violence which have been perpetrated in the last seven years.
Thirdly, What have been and what must be the consequences of that
violation. And, lastly, What is, therefore, the duty of every
Catholic throughout the world. And I will go further: I will say,
What is the duty of every Christian who believes that the Word of
God is supreme over all human law, and that the authority of the
Christian Church on earth is independent of all civil government.
And in this I shall appeal to the multitudes of upright Christian
hearts in these three kingdoms, who, though they be separated from
us by, I am sorry to say, many points of faith, by more, I fear,
than points, by many wide distances, which I would fain see closed
up, nevertheless do openly, manfully, and justly defend the liberty
of the truth and of the Church of God in the sense in which they
understand it. This sovereignty I cannot better explain than in
these two sentences-It is the dependence of the Head of the Church
upon God alone; and his consequent independence of any human
authority. These two sentences include the whole subject. Now, we
often hear it said, and I have heard it said within these last
days, that "in the beginning the Head of the Church, or the Bishop
of Rome, as men call him, had no temporal power. Why should he have
now what he had not then?" Secondly, they say "He was subject to
the Roman Emperors then; why can he not be subject to any civil
power now?" Thirdly, they ask, "If it had been the will of God to
give him a sovereignty of his own He would have done so; but, if He
did, as you affirm, then He has taken it away." Now, these are
three common objections. There is a fourth, indeed, which I may
mention in passing only to dismiss it. They say, "If the temporal
power be essential to the spiritual, how was it that for so many
centuries the Popes exercised their spiritual power without it?"
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