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Show THE CLAIM OF TEMPORAL RULE. The pope of Rome ia ill. Ilia close friends admit ad-mit that he should be removed to a higher altitude and to purer air than that of Rome, but they fear to remove him from the Vatican lest it be construed to mean that hia holiness had surrendered his claim to temporal power. If the cardinals close around the pope would write to Cardinal Gibbons and ask him for a candid can-did opinion of the situation we believe that he would give it aa hia best judgment that were the pope to surrender that claim it would be vastly better bet-ter for the church over which he presides. The claim to temporal power waa not made when he religion waa founded, and not for several centuries thereafter. Now France, a Catholic country, has repudiated it, so haa Italy, and Spain ia nursing a revolution in order to cauae the withdrawal of that claim. In the United State the insistence of that Vlaim woiill cause the disintegration of the church. i . There were many Roman Catholica in the con; vention thut framed the constitution of the United States, and every one of them voted for the constitution consti-tution aa jt reads today. Nowhere haa the church e-ver grown so rapidly aa in this country; nowhere baa it more devoted defenders, which ia a certain proof that were that claim surrendered,- it would do more tu exalt the faith than could any other one thing. At this age of tha world the insistence on the claim weakens any faith for the people, sav here and there a faction will no longer accept it. . There ia a pertinent reason for it. Intensely religious re-ligious men are bound to subordinate everything else to that religion, bound to look upon everything every-thing from the imperial standpoint, and where it is accepted free government ia impossible, and it ia too late in the world to force free born men to accept it . ' . . |