The Vatican constantly asserted that its adherents were in a
majority--a claim which, if true, meant that the Kingdom of Italy rested
on a very precarious basis. But other Catholics sincerely deplored the
harm which the irreconcilable attitude of the Curia caused to religion.
They regretted to see an affair purely political treated as religious;
to have the belief in the Pope's temporal power virtually set up as a
part of their creed. The Lord's work was waiting to be done; yet they
who ought to be foremost in it were handicapped. Other agencies had
stepped in ahead of them. The Socialists were making converts by
myriads; skeptics and cynics were sowing hatred not of the Church
merely but of all religion. It was time to abandon "the prisoner of the
Vatican" humbug, time to permit zealous Catholics, whose orthodoxy no
one could question, to serve God and their fellow-men according to the
needs and methods of the present age.
At last, in the autumn of 1905, the new Pope, Pius X, gave the faithful
tacit permission, if he did not officially command them, to take part in
the elections.
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