On one hand she wishes to be the leader of Europe, on the other she clings to a dead past.

For the sake of propitiating her ignorant classes, she enters upon lines of policy which her intelligence must condemn.

So evenly balanced are the two sovereignties under which she lives, that sometimes one, sometimes the other, prevails; and not unfrequently the one uses the other as an engine for the accomplishment of its ends.
INTENTIONS OF THE POPE.

But this dual system approaches its close.

To the northern nations, less imaginative and less superstitious, it had long ago become intolerable; they rejected it summarily at the epoch of the Reformation, notwithstanding the protestations and pretensions of Rome, Russia, happier than the rest, has never acknowledged the influence of any foreign spiritual power.