Note 47 — SARDINIA AND THE HOLY FATHER.[46]

The question, Mr. Dana really argues, is, whether Catholics in other than the Roman state have, under the law of nations, a right to insist that by virtue of their donations, or what the law treats as eleemosynary gifts, they shall continue to be vested in the Holy See? The answer must be founded on the acknowledged principle of law, that all gifts of the sort must be invested and appropriated according to the will of the donors; and in the interest of all Catholics in the Holy See, as the mistress and mother of all the churches, Catholics throughout the world have an ethical right that their gifts shall be invested and appropriated to the purposes for which they are given; but we doubt if their right can be juridically asserted, under international law, in the courts of the usurping state, or of any other state, since the state of the church is suppressed. But there can be no doubt, from the relation of all Catholics to the Holy See, the invasion of her rights and despoiling her of possessions, whether absolute or only fiduciary, gives to all Catholic powers the right of war against the invader and despoiler. At the order of the Holy Father, Catholics throughout the world would have the right, even without the license of their temporal sovereigns, to arm for the recovery and restoration to the Holy See of the possessions or trusts of which she may be despoiled, because these possessions and trusts belong to the spirituality, and the Holy Father has plenary authority in spirituals, and is the spiritual sovereign, not the temporal sovereign, of all Catholics. If Italian Catholics had understood that the Roman state belonged to the Holy See, and therefore to the spirituality, they would have understood that no order of their king could bind them to obey him in despoiling the Roman state, or in entering it against the order of the Pope, for in spirituals the spiritual sovereign overrides the temporal sovereign.