The faith of our fathers - Carmel Apologetics

""180 THE FAITH OF OUR FATHERS.predicting the downfall of the Papacy, from thepresent situation of the Head of the Church, as ifthe temporary privation of his dominions involvedtheir loss irrevocably or, as if even the perpetual;destruction of the temporal power involved thedestruction of the spiritual supremacy itself. Thethey say,is gone. Its isglory vanished.Papacy,"Its sun is set. It is sunk below the horizon, neverto rise again." Ill-boding prophets, will you neverprofit by the lessons of history Have ? not numbersof Popes before Pius IX. been forcibly ejected fromtheir Sees, and have they not been reinstated intheir temporal authority? What has happened sooften before, may and will happen again.For our part, we have every confidence thaterelong the clouds which now overshadow the civil throneof the Pope will be removed by the breath of a righteous God, and that his temporal power will be reestablished on a more permanent basis than ever.But whatever be the fate of the Pope s Temporalities, we have no fears for the spiritual throne of thePapacy. The Pontiffs have received their earthly dominion from man, and what man gives manmay take away. But the spiritual supremacy theBishops of Rome have from God, and no man candestroy it. That divine charter of their preroga*of England, and to his romance of "Tristram Shandy," thatthe English-speaking world is indebted for this infamouscompilation.