Saint Peter by Bartolomé Esteban Murillo (1617–1682)

AMERICA, right down to its modern-day versions of gladiators and slaves, is similar in important ways to the world of ancient Rome when Saint Peter, the first pope, arrived there during the reign of Emperor Nero. He arrived without a security detail and without the imprimatur of the emperor. He brought his courage and the truth. He brought the facts of the Resurrection. He brought the love of the true God to a place of philosophical chaos, multiculturalism and moral relativism. Yes, America is similar. It has a similar air of permanence to the Rome of that time. It has similar dazzling luxury and forms of cruelty that are simply taken for granted. Fr. Michael Muller in his 1880 book The Church and her Enemies describes the scene which greeted the first pope in Rome:

One thousand eight hundred and forty odd years ago, a poor, meanly-clad wanderer went to the capital of the world, the wealthy, magnificent city of Rome. He passes its gates, and threads his way, unobserved, through populous streets. On every side he beholds splendid palaces, raised at the expense of down-trodden nationalities; he beholds stately temples, dedicated to as many false gods as nations were represented in Rome; he beholds public baths and amphitheatres, devoted to pleasure and to cruelty; he beholds statues, monuments, and triumphal arches, raised to the memory of blood thirsty tyrants. He passes warriors and senators, beggars and cripples, effeminate men and dissolute women, gladiators and slaves, merchants and statesmen, orators and philosophers of all classes, all ranks, all conditions of men, of every language and color under the sun. Everywhere he sees a maddening race for pleasure. Everywhere the impress of luxury, everywhere the full growth of crime, side by side with indescribable suffering, diabolical cruelty and barbarity.

And this poor, meanly-clad wanderer was St. Peter, the head of Christ s Church. How the noble heart of the poor fisherman of Galilee must have bled when he observed the empire of Satan so supreme; when he witnessed the shocking licentiousness of the temple and the homestead; when he saw the fearful degradation of woman, groaning under the load of her own infamy; when he saw the heart-rending inhumanity which slew the innocent babes, and threw them into the Tiber; when he saw how prisoners of war, slaves, and soldiers, were trained for bloody fights, and entered the arena of the amphitheatre, and strove whole days to slay one another, for the special entertainment of the Roman people!

Here, then, was to be the scene of his labors. Into this foul mass, into this carcass of a rotten society, St. Peter was come to infuse a new life, to lay the foundation of a new Rome, a Rome, which, instead of paganism and depravity, should convey the truth and the blessing of Christian virtues to the farthermost ends of the earth. When Peter, the first pope, came to Rome, that city was the condensation of all the idolatry, all the oppression, all the injustice, all the immoralities, of the world, for the world was centred in Rome. Peter laid his hand to the plough, and never once looked back. For twenty-five years he struggled, and succeeded in establishing, in the very midst of this centre of every excess of which the human mind and the human heart could be guilty, a congregation of Christians to whom St. Paul could address an epistle, and state in it that the fair fame of their faith had already spread over the whole world: “I give thanks to my God, through Jesus Christ, for you all, because your faith is spoken of in the whole world.” (Rom. i, 8 j xvi, 19.)

The foundation of a new world had been laid by St. Peter, the first pope. He established his see in Rome; there he suffered martyrdom for the faith.

— Comments —

Sven writes:

As an aside, I was reading the Roman historian Tacitus the other day and his description of late Rome was eerily similar to America. But comparing the two is almost too kind to America. Rome even at its worst still gave lip service to chastity, family, honor and martial valor. I’m not aware that they ever went as far as making whores, homosexuals and traitors out to be virtuous people like America does.

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