We cannot eliminate religion from our life. And as the State cannot but acknowledge the great power of social and political action, it be longs to the Church to contribute to the renewal of spiritual vitality, instead of yielding to worldly and political aims as. she formerly did. The Catholic Church could also purify and simplify the ritual, bringing the liturgy closer to the intelligence of the people by the use of the vulgar tongue, limitirig and rendering more intelligent the worship of saints, elevating Church music (as did Pius X by restoring the Gregorian music), and instructing the clergy in the culture of the arts. In this way the clergy and then the people would restore to the sacred images the dignity of religious art, in the place of all the paltry and unattractive ornaments that now disfigure them. External nature may lend its aid to the religious sentiment in a people born to art and beauty; and the crosses raised on the summits of the Alps and Apennines may prove to be symbols of this regenerated religions spirit.
But above all things the popular reading of the Bible and instruction in the New Testament should be diffused in order to destroy that in difference which is the greatest enemy of re, ligion in Italy; and the people should be made to feel that the mediation of the priest cannot suffice for the needs of the soul, even of a Cath olic; and religious truth should be presented in a manner to display more vividly than is now done the incompatibility of immoral life with a Christian conscience, and the inefficacy of re ligious rites alone to reform a sinful life.
But it happens also that the Christian Church, and more particularly the Roman Catholic Church, recognizes two fundamental necessities of the modern spirit; one that re gards the system of faith, and the other that refers more especially to the Church organiza tion as a social institution, which alone can bring it in touch with the life and culture of our day. The doctrine of th.i immobility of dogma, not alone in substance, but also in formula, and still more the papal infallibility, preclude all possible doctrinal development in religion. Now religious knowledge, like every other form of knowledge, should be open and capable of perfection in interpreting doctrines of faith; and the same concept of revelation for whoso ever looks upon history as a divine education of humanity does not exclude, but rather im plies, a gradual progress. Whatever lives must
develop and perfect itself ; immutability means death; and if the doctrinal system of the Church is a living organism it must also submit to the general law of evolution. And this is necessary tor the social equilibrium. Religion is the cus todian of tradition and is tenacious of what Schiller, in Wallenstein, calls the eternal yes terday"; while science and history woo the fu ture of humanity. But as both powers are necessary to the economy of life, so science on the one hand profits by the continuity of the work which unites the present and the future with the past. On the other hand religion must seek in the past the germ of the future, and the strength of regeneration.
The Church must also learn that religious life should reflect in itself spiritual liberty, the essential form and condition of modern social life in all its manifestations. If it be true that where the spirit is, there is liberty, it is none the less true that where liberty exists there lives also the spirit. The institutional and con fessional character of religion is what chiefly repels modern thought. In Italian society in which the individual is no longer a member of an organization or institution, hut acts freely with the consciousness of his rights, no religion is possible but one that is founded on intellec tual liberty and individual initiative. The So cialists also recognize religion as a personal and private matter, and that is certainly what it should he, a personal and intangible right. Again, if religion as a universal fact would have the value of a social function and for that reason be always represented by an in stitution, the secret of its strength and the pivot on which it must turn in the future must ever he liberty of individual conscience. It is only by reconciling the cure of souls and the inherent spiritual need of the Italian race with the profound and necessary ex actions of modern civilization, that the Ro man Catholic Church can exercise a beneficial social power according to the forms permitted by civil liberty and by the progress of human culture.