Freemasonry And The Pope.

but they are now of about as much importance to the course of civil and religious life as any other of the now extinct associations of the Middle Ages . With a similar blindness to his real position , the Pope is said to be firmly convinced that the French troops will never be withdrawn from

Rome , and he obstinately refuses , therefore , to come to terms with the only Government which , when that inevitable event takes place , can afford " him any effectual protection . He and his church resemble nothing . so much as the city to which they cling . Anew world has grownup all around them , and they remain the venerable but decaying monuments of au ancient but now overthrown

empire , ihe very foundations of Catholicism are being sapped , its temporal and spiritual dominion is passing away , and the Pope , vaguely conscious of some impending danger , summons a secret consistory and launches his excommunications against Freemasonry !

( Liverpool Mercury . ) The recent papal allocution against the unfortunate Fremasons is one of the very oddest things we have como across for a long time . All of a sudden , without any imaginable why or wherefore , just when the queer bnt harmless fraternity of

Freemasonry is about the very last subject in men ' s thoughts , the Holy Father comes out with a tremendous volley of anathemas , in the best style of ecclesiastical Latinity , against a set of people of whom the world knows nothing worse than that they have an uncommonly eccentric way of

promoting certain very innocent and laudable objects . When all . mankind is thinking about Schleswig-IIolstein , or the cattle plague , or the cholera , or President Johnson , or the Fenians , or the bank rate of discount , or the Italian elections , or some other topic of intelligible mundane

interest , infallibility flares up into a blaze of holy wrath against a respectable ( though rather funny ) body of men who are chiefly known by giving good dinners and wearing curious aprons , and who have never been credibly accused of doing or meaning harm to any living creature . What , in the name of all that is rational , is the pother about ? What horrid crime have the Freemasons

been perpetrating or meditating ? There do happen to be secret societies in the world—our own Fenians for instance—against which a little papal invective might seem not absolute ^; . ' out of place ; yet his Holiness has not a word to say about Fenianismunless some remote allusion to

, it can be faintly detected under 0 : 10 or two of his sonorous generalities . But what have the poor Freemasons done to bring down on their heads this lava torrent of denunciation and abuse ? What on earth can it all mean ? We are told that

our Archbishop Manning , from a loyal wish to do the British empire a good turn , asked his Holiness to launch a handsome fulmination against the Fenians , and that this allocution is the result .

If so , the archbishop must be considerably surprised . Can it be that his Holiness has made a mistake—misunderstood the drift of the archiepiscopal suggestion , and hurled his thunders in the wrong' quarter ? We are not going to pause for a replyfor we

, might have to pause for a long time . We have not the slightest expectation that infallibility will so far condescend to human weakness as to explain its own oracles . All we are permitted to know is that these Freemasons are the most

wicked wretches that ever conspired , in the favourite phrase of the Papal vocabulary , to " violate all laws human and divine . " They are pernicious , perverse , impious , immoral , audacious , criminal , perfidious , depraved , and all the other ugly adjectives known to allocufcionaiy

Billingsgate . They " pursue crime and attack holy things . " They " give themselves up to impious and criminal acts . " They hold " fatal councils , " and make it their business to clra

" abyss of eternal perdition" to which they are hurrying themselves . They have but one single thought and single end , namely , to overthrow all rights , both human and divine . " They are at the bottom of all the mischief that is and has been in the world for at least a century or two . To their

account must be set down " the many seditious movements , the many incendiary wars , which have set the whole of Europe in flames , and the many bitter misfortunes which have afflicted and still afflict the Church . " Such is the Papal reading of the philosophy of modern history . It is a sir and shame that civil Governments should tolerate these implacable foes of all that is good and holy . The venerable Pontiff cannot contain himself

for rage when he remembers how they and their abettors have been excommunicated over and over again , and yet nobody seems to mind it . Clement XII . put them down ; and Benedict XIV . put them down again ; and so did Pius VII . ; and so did Leo XII . ; and yet they

are not realty put down at all , but flourish more exuberantly than ever , " existing * everywhere with impunity and carrying an audacious front . " What can have possessed " Catholic sovereign princes " that they have not " devoted all their efforts and all their solicitude to repress this most immoral sect

and defend society against a common danger ?" However , let it be hoped that Catholic sovereign princes and the faithful generally will be aroused at last to a sense of their perils and their duties . Henceforth let it be quite understood that these horrid Freemasons , one and all , are

excommunicated , and that their guilt and its punishment are shared by all who " promote or encourage them in any way whatever . " These wolves in sheep ' s clothing " are of the number of those whose society the apostle has forbidden to us , eloquently prohibiting us from saying unto them , " Hail ! " No true Catholic from this time forward must so much as say , " How do you do ? " to an acquaint-