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THE STATE OF THE ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH

IN ITALY.

THERE is a wide-spread desire in this country to promote, in some way or other, a religious reformation in Italy; but the knowledge of the materials on which to work in such a cause limited. There is some difficulty in collecting facts. Religious questions are involved in the political; access to the interior of Italian society is denied to strangers; and few English travellers do more than cast a hurried glance at the surface, and often form their opinions from insufficient observation. There is ample room, therefore, in this field of inquiry, for any contributions which may add to the scanty stock of knowledge for ascertaining the real condition of religion in Italy. The following statements go over a period which may be considered the most eventful in the history of the Italian kingdom, that is, from the year 1861 to the present time. But in order to understand the present, it is necessary to learn something of the past.

STATISTICS.

The Cavaliere Nigra, Secretary of State during the regency of the prince Carignano in the ex-kingdom of Naples, gives the following return as to the number and resources of the clergy of that country. There are between 10,000 and 11,000 mendicant friars, who, although having nothing and under Vows of poverty, possess an annual revenue of 38,000 francs. The monks, not mendicant, are about 3840; they are recognized possessors of a revenue of 1,940,011 francs, their real revenue exceeding 2,000,000 francs, or £80,000. The nuns of the city of Naples alone belong to 13 different orders, and they possess 24 monasteries, tenanted by about 1495 persons; in the whole kingdom there are 250 nunneries, containing 5000 souls, and enjoying a revenue of 2,000,000 francs. The population of the Vol. 64.-No. 326.

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kingdom is 6,500,000. It forms 20 archbishoprics, and 77 bishoprics. The revenue is 1,956,219 fr., which gives to each prelate an average payment of 20,171 fr., or £800. They all have residences and fees at discretion, and many of them hold additional preferment. The Neapolitan bishops, in proportion to the population, are six times more numerous than those of France. The whole of the clergy, secular and regular, is estimated at an army of 40,000; they have acknowledged to a revenue of 6,000,000 of francs, but the Government did not succeed in getting an account of the ecclesiastical revenues, except to a certain extent. It is supposed that 12,000,000 fr., that is, £480,000 per annum, is the real revenue of the Neapolitan clergy.

The Educational Statistics, as officially published by Luigi Settembrini, the Delegate Minister of Public Instruction at Naples, show that there are 1845 communities, of which 816 are destitute of any school or means of instruction whatever. The numbers who get any education at all, are 39,884 males, and 27,547 females, total 67,431; which, out of a population of 6,500,000, will give one out of every 100 inhabitants receiving any kind of instruction whatever. The highest salary of a schoolmaster or mistress is 120 ducats = £19. 14s.; the lowest, 24 ducats=88.; the average is 18 ducats = £2.18s. per annum. The whole sum spent on public instruction, in the Neapolitan territory, amounts to about £20,000. It is obvious that, in this fair region, teachers' certificates have but little money value, and must have been for some time under the operation of a "Revised Code." Count Cavour is said to have left a large portion of his fortune for schools, impressed no doubt with the importance of extending education, for the better security of liberty itself. But in the north of Italy there is a more favourable state of things. In Lombardy, e. g., from 30 to 40 in 100 can read; in Piedmont, from 20 to 30 in 100; in Tuscany, from 10 to 20; and in the districts around Rome, not 1 in 100. It may be safely affirmed that, out of the 22,000,000 of Italians, you would not get 2,000,000, of all classes and ages, who would pass in the simplest elements of reading, writing, and arithmetic; 20,000,000 are dependent upon oral teaching, and oral teaching is dependent on the priests.

THE PRIESTS-PADRE LUIGI PROTA.

In order to ascertain the present feeling of the Italian clergy, we must have recourse to certain types, or representatives of the different classes, who have expressed their opinions through a free press. But it is to be observed that the distinctive differences of character, and the idiosyncracies of the several old States, are in no way touched by the recent

political union. The clergy of Naples must furnish their type from themselves. The Roman clergy cannot be represented by a Neapolitan; nor the Piedmontese, or the Lombards, by one of their order from central Italy; and much less can we generalize the opinions and feelings of the various monastic orders. It is not a little remarkable that the open manifestations of the clergy in Italy should have come from Naples, and the southern part of the Peninsula. A large section of the Neapolitan clergy is represented, in their views of the temporal dominion of the Pope, by the Padre Luigi Prota. This portly Dominican friar walks in the Toledo, in his flowing white robe, and is respectfully greeted by his many admirers. In 1861, he attracted great crowds to his preaching, in which, in no measured terms, he denounced the existing state of Rome. The following is a specimen of his language and opinions :-"Yes, verily, Rome with the popeking will always be the central point of all the dissolving and corrodent elements of our national unity; and gradually, as our political national existence is developed, there will be developed with it the poisonous germs of its premature death. And how is it possible that it should be otherwise, when Rome at the present day, as in time past, presents to us the frightful aspect of a pit of hell (bolgia d'inferno) from whence the demon of discord, and spirit of falsehood, of destruction, and of disorder, extends his dominion over the whole of our afflicted provinces, and fans the devouring fire of fraternal hatreds and civil wars, arming with the parricidal dagger the hand of those who ought do nothing but forgive and bless? How shall Italy ever become a nation, if in Papal Rome those can find an asylum and protection, who would destroy 20,000,000 of lives at a single blow, without shedding a tear of compassion, or feeling a single touch of humanity, at the astounding sight of our secular misfortunes?" &c.

It must not, however, be supposed that this eloquent friar, who thus thunders out his patriotic indignation against the temporal policy of Rome, has lost any of his former reverence for the holy see. He is as strong as ever in his attachment to "the Catholic faith," and will, as devoutly as before, kiss the feet of the holy Father. And in this he represents thousands of the priests and friars of Italy. The Padre Prota firmly believes that the loss of the Pope's temporal dominion will be the greatest gain to the Church, and never dreams of any dogmatic reforms, or any change in the hierarchy of Rome. Many of the priests in every part of Italy, as well as pious laymen, have come to the conclusion that the Church can only be saved in Italy by the abdication of the Pope's temporal dominion. But when that is done, they believe the Church will assume such power, and acquire such an increase of

spiritual dominion, as will amply recompense the supreme Pontiff for the loss of his kingdom of this world. In a pamphlet of 120 pages, the Padre Prota has expressed the thoughts and feelings of 400 priests at Naples-now swelled, it is said, to more than 3000-upon the future glory of the Church. The pamphlet is entitled "Rome, the Capital of the Italian Nation and Catholic Interests;" published at Naples, 1861.* The eloquent Dominican defends and maintains the sacred and inviolable rights which belong to the Catholic Church as a society. Italians recognize in the Roman Pontiff the successor of St. Peter, and the representative of Him who founded Christianity, and is of it the invisible Head. The liberty of the Church will be secure, because the national government of Italy has pledged itself, in the sight of God and of men, to leave her all she ever had before the Popes became kings. The propagation of her faith will be secured; because the Church, having full and complete liberty in the exercise of her spiritual power, and the Italian nation being able to dispose of great material resources, the diffusion of Catholic ideas will acquire a celerity and importance such as were never known in the annals of Catholicism. "Yes," he adds, "then our Italian missionaries, conveyed to the most distant points of the globe by our formidable fleets, will be able, beyond all former example, under the protection of the national flag, to announce the glad tidings to all nations." Whether all this will be the result of this first reform of the Papacy, may be with us a matter of opinion; but the belief of this increase of spiritual dominion is rapidly spreading through the whole of the peninsula. The partisans of the temporal sovereignty maintained by a foreign force are gradually diminishing in number, and the adherents to the Spiritual theory are daily becoming more enthusiastic. The effect of this state of things is the increasing unpopularity of the higher order of the clergy, especially at Rome; and religion itself comes to be considered as opposed to the liberties of Italy. The statesmen at Turin declare that the Catholic Church is suffering every day from the non-settlement of the Roman question. The section of the Confederate clergy, represented by these ideas of Luigi Prota, have no intention to effect a religious reformation. They may advance in their career of liberalism, and finally entangle themselves in questions of a more religious complexion; but at present they have no idea of dogmatic reform. But there is another large section which goes much further, and in spiritual matters also threatens the unity of the Church. These are headed at Naples by the priests Zaccaro and Miella, two men of intelligence and character. This party is con

* Motto, "Why tempt ye me, ye hypocrites ?" &c.

tinually receiving acquisitions from the provinces, as appears from a programme issued by a dignitary of the Church from the neighbourhood of Salerno.

This programme of Church reform professes to deal with. discipline only; but we cannot but observe how nearly it passes the border which separates discipline from doctrine, and how ill the Romish doctrine concerning purgatory, pardons, &c., would fare, if once in the hands of the priest of Salerno. It cannot be a matter of surprise, that several priests have sought to escape altogether from officiating at an altar they no longer reverence, and have taken refuge among the Evangelici, offering their services as schoolmasters, or for any other employment as teachers, for a piece of bread. Two have gone from Naples, and been received, after a strict examination, into the Waldensian College at Florence. It does not properly belong to this subject to give any account of the various efforts (some of them very desultory) which are making in Italy to introducé and commend to the ill-affected members of the Roman Catholic Church a purer and more scriptural system of Christian doctrine and practice; but it is at least indirect information on the present state of the Roman Catholic Church in Italy to know how, in the course of one year at Naples, the exclusive privileges of that Church have been invaded by the change of feeling among the people themselves. In this great city, where the very oppression of thought seems to have prepared a recoil, meetings for religious discussion over Diodati's Bible have assumed the character of worshipping assemblies. It is surprising to find, all on a sudden, so much moral energy displayed among a people known only for the indolence of their character and the indifference with which they regarded everything of a spiritual nature; in a society, too, which, in the daily course of active life, and amidst the noise and tumult of a city which had no parallel on earth, showed no eagerness for anything but for the daily supply of maccaroni or the indulgence of idle passion and a coarse fetichism, until the recent purging of those inimitable streets. The description which Forsyth made of them and the people fifty years ago, was strictly true. "If Naples be 'a paradise inhabited by devils,' it is certain they are merry ones. Even the lowest class enjoy every blessing that can make the animal happy-a delicious climate, high spirits, a facility of satisfying every appetite, a conscience which gives no pain, a convenient ignorance of their duty, and a Church which ensures heaven to every ruffian who has faith. Here tatters are no misery, for the climate requires little covering; filth is not misery to them who are born to it; and a few fingerings of maccaroni wind up the rattling machine for the day. They are, perhaps, the only people on earth that do not pretend to virtue.' What has