America is Roman Catholic,
the same may be said of Central America and of Mexico, as also of the
Spanish and French West India possessions. In the United States and
Canada the Protestant population predominates. To Australia the same
remark applies. In India the sparse Christian population sinks into
insignificance in presence of two hundred million Mohammedans and other
Oriental denominations. The Roman Catholic Church is the most widely
diffused and the most powerfully organized of all modern societies. It
is far more a political than a religious combination. Its principle is
that all power is in the clergy, and that for laymen there is only the
privilege of obedience. The republican forms under which the Churches
existed in primitive Christianity have gradually merged into an absolute
centralization, with a man as vice-God at its head. This Church
asserts that the divine commission under which it acts comprises civil
government; that it has a right to use the state for its own purposes,
but that the state has no right to intermeddle with it; that even in
Protestant countries it is not merely a coordinate government, but the
sovereign power. It insists that the state has no rights over any thing
which it declares to be in its domain, and that Protestantism, being
a mere rebellion, has no rights at all; that even in Protestant
communities the Catholic bishop is the only lawful spiritual pastor.

It is plain, therefore, that of professing Christians the vast majority
are Catholic; and such is the authoritative demand of the papacy for
supremacy, that, in any survey of the present religious condition of
Christendom, regard must be mainly had to its acts. Its movements are
guided by the highest intelligence and skill. Catholicism obeys the
orders of one man, and has therefore a unity, a compactness, a power,
which Protestant denominations do not possess. Moreover, it derives
inestimable strength from the souvenirs of the great name of Rome.

Unembarrassed by any hesitating sentiment, the papacy has contemplated
the coming intellectual crisis. It has pronounced its decision, and
occupied what seems to it to be the most advantageous ground.

This definition of position we find in the acts of the late Vatican
Council.

THE OECUMENICAL COUNCIL. Pius IX., by a bull dated June 29, 1868,
convoked an Oecumenical Council, to meet in Rome, on December 8, 1869.
Its sessions ended in July, 1870. Among other matters submitted to it