c
nations broke the yoke as soon as they attained a national
self-consciousness. They escaped from a system which had educated, but
never suited them. Nor has the shrinkage been merely territorial. The
Pyrrhic victories over Gallicanism, Jansenism, Catholic democracy
(Lamennais), historical theology (Doellinger and the Old Catholics), each
alienated a section of thinking men in the Catholic countries. The Roman
Church can no longer be called Catholic, except in the sense in which
the kingdom of Francis II remained the Holy Roman Empire. It is an
exclusive sect, which preserves much more political power than its
numbers entitle it to exert, by means of its excellent discipline, and
by the sinister policy of fomenting political disaffection. Examples of
this last are furnished by the contemporary history of Ireland, of
France, and of Poland.

These considerations are of primary importance when we try to answer the
questions: To what extent is the Roman Church fettered by her own past?
Is there any insuperable obstacle to a modification of policy which
might give her a new lease of life? We have seen how much importance is
attached to the Church's title-deeds. Is tradition a fatal obstacle to
reform? Theoretically, the tradition which she traces back to the
apostles gives her a fixed constitution. So the Catholic Church has
always maintained. 'Regula quidem fidei una omnino est, sola immobilis
et irreformabilis.'[55] The rule of faith may be better understood by a
later age than an earlier, but there can be no additions, only a sort of
unpacking of a treasure which was given whole and entire in the first
century. In reality, of course, there has been a steady evolution in
conformity to type, the type being not the 'little flock' of Christ or
the Church of the Apostles, but the absolute monarchy above described.
It has long been the _crux_ of Catholic apologetics to reconcile the
theoretical immobility of dogma with the actual facts.

The older method was to rewrite history. It was convenient, for example,
to forget that Pope Honorius I had been anathematised by three
ecumenical councils. The forged Decretals gave a more positive sanction
to absolutist claims; and interpolations in the Greek Fathers deceived
St. Thomas Aquinas into giving his powerful authority to infallibilism.
This method cannot be called obsolete, for the present Pope recently
informed the faithful that 'the Hebrew patriarchs were familiar with the
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