The Independence of the Holy See

Henry Edward Cardinal Manning wrote this in 1877 after the Catholic Church had been despoiled of all of her possessions and the Pope had become the prisoner of the Vatican. The need for the Pope to be free not only spiritually, but also politically is laid out very well by Cardinal Manning. In fact, this independence is essential to world peace. Cardinal Manning says: "All Christians believe that when our Lord sent out His Apostles, He gave to them a supreme spiritual power to govern the Church. Catholics further believe that He had already given that power in its fulness to Peter, their head and chief, the foundation of His Church; and, after He ascended into Heaven, His Vicar upon earth. We believe also that this Divine power exists in the world at this moment. It exists in the office of Peter, perpetuated in the person of his successor." "My purpose then will be to make clear the four following points: First, What is the sovereignty or independence, or temporal power, if men like so to call it, with which God in His Providence has invested the Head of His Church upon earth. Secondly, What is the violation of that independence and sovereignty by the acts of violence which have been perpetrated in the last seven years. Thirdly, What have been and what must be the consequences of that violation. And, lastly, What is, therefore, the duty of every Catholic throughout the world. And I will go further: I will say, What is the duty of every Christian who believes that the Word of God is supreme over all human law, and that the authority of the Christian Church on earth is independent of all civil government. And in this I shall appeal to the multitudes of upright Christian hearts in these three kingdoms, who, though they be separated from us by, I am sorry to say, many points of faith, by more, I fear, than points, by many wide distances, which I would fain see closed up, nevertheless do openly, manfully, and justly defend the liberty of the truth and of the Church of God in the sense in which they understand it. This sovereignty I cannot better explain than in these two sentences-It is the dependence of the Head of the Church upon God alone; and his consequent independence of any human authority. These two sentences include the whole subject. Now, we often hear it said, and I have heard it said within these last days, that "in the beginning the Head of the Church, or the Bishop of Rome, as men call him, had no temporal power. Why should he have now what he had not then?" Secondly, they say "He was subject to the Roman Emperors then; why can he not be subject to any civil power now?" Thirdly, they ask, "If it had been the will of God to give him a sovereignty of his own He would have done so; but, if He did, as you affirm, then He has taken it away." Now, these are three common objections. There is a fourth, indeed, which I may mention in passing only to dismiss it. They say, "If the temporal power be essential to the spiritual, how was it that for so many centuries the Popes exercised their spiritual power without it?"