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The Year 1909 in Church History
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 January 2009
Extract
The convent annalist in darker ages had slight sense of proportion and value in what he recorded. We, too, even in days of journalistic publicity, may not know the real significance of the day's happenings and the year's record is arbitrary until results apportion value. We do not know whether the high celebrations of institutional life or some simple deed or word hid in obscurity to us shall be to after times the great mark of our year. Our first thought must be of farewells spoken sadly and reverently for those who have been faithful doers in our engrossing tasks and now have ceased from their labor. For us the first remembrance is of James William Richard, Henry Charles Lea, Adolph Hausrath, and last of all George Park Fisher, and what they achieved will carry their memory into years far distant. The death also of Father George Tyrrell wakens poignant regret in all who have viewed his spiritual chivalry in the most recent struggle within the Roman Church. The year has been calamitously marked also in modern annals by the shocking massacre of Christians in Adana and Tarsus in the month of April, an atrocity relieved only by the fact that it was instigated in futile reaction against a reform of the Turkish Constitution and so may mark the end of an evil day. In the annals of the Roman Church the year may have permanent significance by the third volume of the Acta Pontificis Maximi appearing in March, a volume whose contents cancel the veto rights of secular powers in future papal elections and under pain of excommunication forbid the cardinals to allow, during the conclave, any direct or indirect influence of the secular authorities.
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- Copyright © American Society for Church History 1910