The Position and Prospects of the Roman Catholic Church

Extract

In the Cambridge Modern History and in a later work, Studies in Modernism, the present writer has given an account of the last three pontificates, those of Pius IX, Leo XIII, and Pius X. Each of the three was in its own way a momentous pontificate, and has left a lasting mark on the Church. With the present Pope a new period opens. It will be one of harvest. The passions unloosed by his immediate predecessors have burned themselves out; but their works follow them. Benedict XV will reap what they have sown. Also—and this is the real key to the position—he will have to meet the situation created by the European war. His is a pathetic, almost a tragic, figure; for it combines the appearance of power with the fact of powerlessness. Never was man less master of his fate than he. His infallibility binds him hand and foot; he inherits the legacy of evil left by his predecessors; he is crushed under the crimes of kings.