By Rev. Francis A. Cunningham Boston The Pilot Publishing Company 1911 Copyright 1911, By Rev. F. A. Cunningham. Nihil Obstat : David J. Toomey, Ph. D., S. T. D. Censor Deputatus. Imprimatur : ✠ GULIELMUS Archiep. Boston. Influence of the Reformation— Jansenism— The Abbey of Port Royal— Quesnel— The Bull "Unigenitus"— Destructive Influence of Jansenism— Not Quite Extinguished Even Yet— Quietism— Molinos and Madame Guyon— Louis XIV. and Gallicanism— The Gallican Liberties— Resistance to Them— Gal

If it is true that a nation is what its doctrines are, it becomes very easy to discover in the doctrines of contemporary Europe the last reason of the troubles and revolutions which keep it in constant turmoil. It has sowed the wind, now it is reaping the whirlwind. It has destroyed the foundations, and it is but natural that the edifice should begin to fall to its ruin. The English Socinians, followed by Voltaire, uprooted the Christian idea, and Rousseau after denying the true nature of God, s

The history of Christ's Church on earth has ever been a story of storm and stress. The faithful heart of today mourns in discouragement over the evils that afflict the Church in the opening decade of the twentieth century; yet it needs but a glance at the past to convince us that the severest trials of the Spouse of Christ have happened in times long gone by. She has seen the tempest arise out of the clear sky; the clouds of persecution have hung low, at times even enveloping her in their gloomy

All the various forces indicated in the preceding chapter came together in one appalling union towards the year 1789, forming a veritable cauldron seething with malign influences. An unhappy public opinion had been created, "a power vague and terrible, born of the confusion of all interests, strong in its opposition to every power, constantly caressed by princes who feared it, and feared by those who pretended to defy it." The masses of France, provoked by the arbitrary government of Louis XIV.,

Never did the shadows of night gather with more sorrow and hopelessness around the afflicted Spouse of Christ, than on that sad August 29, 1799, when, in the prison house of Valence, the form of the gentle Pius VI. lay still and cold in death. Gazing out from that Chamber of silence, upon the races of men, she might well be tempted to apply to the troubled world that expression whereby the prophet characterized the abode of eternal misery: Ubi nullus ordo, sed sempiternus horror inhabitat ; "whe

Pius VII. re-entered his capital May 24, 1814. In the meantime the princes of Europe had remade the map of Europe; but in spite of all hopes of permanent peace, their efforts only served to sow more widely the seeds of trouble and revolution. The Congress of Vienna, in session from November 1, 1814, to June 9, 1815, was, through the triumph it accorded to Protestantism, a triumph for the Revolution. That coalition was termed the Holy Alliance. Never was appellation more misleading, for the work

Looking into the history of the times just preceding the Kulturkampf, and the nature of the events transpiring during its progress, among the causes may be enumerated the following: 1, the liberalism of the rationalists; 2, the liberalism of certain pseudo-Catholics; 3, the desire for Protestant ascendancy; 4, the hatred of ultramontainism as incarnated in the "Old Catholic" sect; and 5, the determination of Caesarism to reduce all religion in Germany to the domination of the State. Emanuel Kant

The Second Empire, especially during its last ten years, had proven itself no less hostile and treacherous to the Church than had many of its predecessors. This was evident most of all in the unworthy treatment of the Holy See during its trying conflict with the revolutionists of Italy. France had encouraged the spoliation of the Papal States by the forces of Garibaldi and Victor Emmanuel, and in 1870 it was forced to abandon Rome to the Italian Unionists. Before this last act had been consummat

The twentieth century dawned with black and lowering skies, presage of storms to come. Even while the hymns of thanksgiving were echoing among the vaulted roofs of cathedral and chapel, the powers of darkness were assembling in high places to formulate plans of destruction. The word had gone forth that Catholicity must die, the oath had been taken in the secret lodges, the generals of the campaign were chosen, and work began in earnest. The war with the Church was on. It had its skirmishes ever

Although the Catholic faith has always been deeply rooted in the hearts of the Spanish people, yet during the nineteenth century the anti-Christian spirit contrived at times to create disorder and to introduce persecution. The spirit of the French Revolution made its way early into the Peninsular. The reign of the weak king, Carlos IV., who was misled by his shrewd and unscrupulous minister Godoy aroused dissatisfaction to such an extent that his own son, the future Ferdinand VII., joined with t

Portugal has never yet recovered from the disasters which crushed it at the end of the sixteenth century. At the end of the eighteenth it was already in a state of decadence, which followed principally on the ruin of the marvelous empire of the Indies, won by Vasco de Gama, Albuquerque, and Juan de Castro, the subjection of Portugal to England by the Treaty of Methuen, and finally in a moral abasement such as the times were then producing in France and all countries affected by the French Revolu