in a place is a festival for the
inhabitants. They will see how the Church with us rests on the broad,
strong, and healthy basis of a well-organised system of pastoral
administration and of popular religious instruction. They will
perceive that we Catholics have maintained for years the struggle for
the deliverance of the Church from the bonds of bureaucracy
straightforwardly and without reservation; that we cannot entertain
the idea of denying to the Italians what we have claimed for
ourselves; and that therefore we are far from thinking that it is
anywhere an advantage to fortify the Church with the authority of the
police and with the power of the secular arm. Throughout Germany we
have been taught by experience the truth of Fenelon's saying, that
the spiritual power must be carefully kept separate from the civil,
because their union is pernicious. They will find, further, that the
whole of the German clergy is prepared to bless the day when it shall
learn that the free sovereignty of the Pope is assured, without
sentence of death being still pronounced by ecclesiastics, without
priests continuing to discharge the functions of treasury-clerks or
police directors, or to conduct the business of the lottery. And,
finally, they will convince themselves that all the Catholics of
Germany will stand up as one man for the independence of the Holy
See, and the legitimate rights of the Pope; but that they are no
admirers of a form of government of very recent date, which is, in
fact, nothing else than the product of the mechanical polity of
Napoleon combined with a clerical administration. And this
information will bear good fruit when the hour shall strike for the
return, and restitution shall be made....

Meanwhile Pius IX. and the men of his Council will "think upon the
days of old, and have in their minds the eternal years." They will
read the future in the earlier history of the Papacy, which has
already seen many an exile and many a restoration. The example of the
resolute, courageous Popes of the Middle Ages will light the way. It
is no question now of suffering martyrdom, of clinging to the tombs
of the Apostles, or of descending into the catacombs; but of quitting
the land of bondage, in order to exclaim on a free soil, "Our bonds
are broken, and we are free!" For the rest God will provide, and the
unceasing gif