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Show AN AMERICAN POPEP Serious Consideration of the Transfer of St. Peter's Chair to New York. (London Tablet.) The question in what sense the papacy pa-pacy Is united to the bishopric of the local Roman church is discussed in the pages of the Irish Eccleclastical Record Rec-ord by Father Pope of Rugely. The following comprises the bulk of hid argument: "Such a change, startling as It is, is not inconceivable. We may not always al-ways be blessed with pontiffs of the stamp or Leo XIII; without a recurrence recur-rence of the dark periods of the papacy, pa-pacy, we may yet have pontiffs whose ken is not so far-reaching, whose sympathies sym-pathies are not so all-embracing as we could desire: it may well be that the New World, through no fault of its own, finds itself out of touch with the spiritual head of Christendom. Modern Mod-ern views may in time so predominate that the large number of members of the sacred college may hail from America, there may spring up a feeling feel-ing that an up-to-date pope, in other words an American pope, would be an advantage. All this is possible, but is it possible that the holy see should be removed from Rome to New York? that the successor of St. Peter should no longer be bishop of Rome but bishop bish-op of New York? "The question really depends for its answer upon another much disputed point. By what right is the bishop of Rome the successor of St. Peter? Was it merely because St. Peter's sagacity led him to choose Rome for his see as being the future mistress of the world? or are we to say that he was divinely led to "do so? We certainly have no New Testament authority for claiming a Divine command to St. Peter on the subject, nor even a Divine Di-vine ratification of his choice. And yet if we concede that it was merely a choice based on human perspicacity, on what grounds can we deny the possibility pos-sibility of New York becoming the see of Peter's successor? "This was a question which naturally natural-ly attracted a good deal of attention during the papal residence of Avignon. The Roman people clamored for the return re-turn of the popes, and they urged the prescriptive rights of their city. Yet many of these pontiffs would have been glad to be able to call Avignon the papal see had it been possible. The truth is that" they never seemed to conceive of such a change as possible. The idea that Rome was divinely, and therefore inalienably, chosen as the see of the Fisherman and his successors, success-ors, -appears repeatedly in papal documents. docu-ments. - "The sentiment is everywhere the same, but the grounds assigned for It vary. Gelasius, Boniface VIII and Nicolas I simply declare that it was a Divine act; Innocent III says that it is not due to St. Peter's initiative, but that he was led by a Divine revelation to remove . from Antioch; while the tradition given us by St. Ambrose might imply that the choice was St I Peter's, ratified by the Divine admonition admoni-tion he received to go back to Rome and die. Hence theologians differ much when discussing the question of the alienability of the primacy of the church from the Roman bishopric. "Still, when all is said, we have not got beyond the realm of tradition and opinion. ' Have .we any grounds a priori, as well as a posteriori, for j maintaining that, if the world were to ' last 10,000 years longer, it would still j see the successor of the Fisherman enthroned at Rome? "When we reflect upon the vicissi- j tudes through which Rome has passed, when we recall the low ebb to which it has sunk, and that not merely morally but physically, it is hard to shut our eyes to the clear designs of Providence, which willed that the City of the Seven Hills should be called and should be 'The Eternal City.' "One day, perhaps, a son of America's Amer-ica's soil will fill Peter's chafr. but we think it impossible that a successor of. St. Peter will ever set up his see on America's soil." |