who
buckled on the armor of Justice, and humbled the pride of princes--even
if, as a consequence, they had to say, with a Gregory VII., "Dilexi
Justitiam et odivi iniquitatem; ideo morior in exilio"--"I die in exile
because I have loved justice and hated iniquity."

The influence of Catholicity tends strongly to break down all barriers
of separate nationalities, and to bring about a brotherhood of citizens,
in which the love of our common country and of one another would absorb
every sectional feeling. Catholicity is of no nation, of no language, of
no people; she knows no geographical bounds; she breaks down all the
walls of separation between race and race, and she looks alike upon
every people, and tribe, and caste. Her views are as enlarged as the
territory which she inhabits; and this is as wide as the world. Jew and
Gentile, Greek and barbarian, Irish, German, French, English, and
American, are all alike to her. The evident tendency of this principle
is to level all sectional feelings and local prejudices, by enlarging
the views of mankind, and thus to bring about harmony in society, based
upon mutual forbearance and charity. And, in fact, so far as the
influence of the Catholic Church could be brought to bear upon the
anomalous condition of society in America, it has been exercised for
securing the desirable result of causing all its heterogeneous elements
to be merged in the one variegated but homogeneous nationality.
Protestantism isolates and divides; Catholicity brings together and
unites.

The Catholic Church is a grand fact in history--a fact so great that
there would be no history without it--a fact permanent, repeating itself
perpetually, entering into the concerns of all the nations on the face
of the earth, appearing again and again on the records of time, and
benefiting, perceived or unperceived, directly or indirectly, socially,
morally, and supernaturally, every individual who forms part of the
great organism of human society.

Around this Church human society moves like a wheel around its axle; it
is on this Church that society depends for its support, its life, its
energy, like the planetary system on the sun. Show me an age, a
country, a nation deprived of the influence of Catholicity, and I will
show you an age, a country, a nation without morals, without virtue.
Yes, if "Religion and Science, Liberty and Justice, Principle and
Right," are not empty sounds--if they have a meaning--they owe th