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which last he had to reckon with as does every master of policy, were always carefully circumscribed by the iron firmness o the principles to which even the most conciliatory Papacy is committed by the Church. Leo also knew, as his condemnation of Americanism in 1899 proved, how to defend energetically the rigidly centralistic Roman system, which the centrifugal, individualistic tendencies of the century made doubly necessary. The shepherd and teacher in whom "the most conservative power on earth had successfully come to terms with democracy," bequeathed to his heirs the fruits of a wise reign. When at the age of ninety-four he closed his eyes, which had pierced so far into the depths of men and things, the Catholic world realized that the prophecy Lumen de ccelo had been fulfilled.
The succeeding pontificates take us to the threshold of the present time and manifest the rich, masculine vitality of the Papal faith. Pius X, saintly in his personal life, was the instigator of many reforms, in- cluding the revision of canon law. He appended to the liberal cultural policy of Leo XIII a clear definition of the borderline beyond which rapprochement could not go. His stubborn and uncompromising war on Modernism, which stirred the passionate interest of the whole world, was waged against the only real danger with which the Church and not the Catholic Church only must reckon today. The belief that the world together with all ideas of God and religion exists within man alone implies a devotional monologue of humanity before its own spirit. Though dominant in philosophy and given expression in all the arts and in all the manifestations of practical life, this belief is in the eyes of the Church the substance of all heresy, for the very nature of the Church is contained in the fact that there exists a divine, revealing Voice, which is not the echo of our own human voices. Sev- eral encyclicals, a new Syllabus, and the Pope's stern inquisitorial in- tervention were able to create the semblance of an armistice before the World War broke out as a consequence of other things or were they really other things? Then there followed under Benedict XV years during which all the battle-torn nations were open at least to the idea of an institution which, as a state transcending the states, preserves above the din of strife concepts of eternal values. The Pope, praised and bitterly assailed alike, gave much to and did much for all
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