This is the continuation of Dr. Boetter’s book, Roman Catholicism and the next chapter after Roman Catholicism By Lorraine Boettner Chapter XVII By What Moral Standard?
1. “The Only True Church”
We have had occasion through the earlier chapters of this book to cite numerous cases of Roman Catholic intolerance in practice, and we shall have occasion to cite others. In this section we cite examples as set forth in the official creeds and authoritative statements of church leaders. The most authoritative of all Roman Catholic creedal statements is that of the Council of Trent. Concerning the pope it declares: “He hath all power on earth. … All temporal power is his; the dominion, jurisdiction and government of the whole earth is his by divine right. All rulers of the earth are his subjects and must submit to him.”
The 14th article of the Creed of Pope Pius IV, which is an abbreviated form of the Creed of the Council of Trent, refers to what it terms “this true Catholic faith, out of which none can be saved.”
“Heretics may be not only excommunicated, but also justly put to death” (Catholic Encyclopedia, Vol. XIV, p. 768).
“Protestantism of every form has not, and never can have, any rights where Catholicity is triumphant” (Bronson’s Review).
“Non-Catholic methods of worshipping God must be branded counterfeit” (Living Our Faith, by Flynn, Loretto, and Simon; a widely used high school textbook; p. 247).
“In themselves all forms of Protestantism are unjustified. They should not exist” (America, January 4, 1941).
The Baltimore Catechism, after declaring that the four marks by which the church can be known are, that it is one, that it is holy, that it is Catholic, and that it is apostolic, asks: “In which Church are these marks found?” (Question 133), and it answers: “These attributes and marks are found in the Holy Roman Catholic Church alone.”
Pope Boniface VIII made the claim: “We declare it to be altogether necessary to salvation that every human creature should be subject to the Roman Pontiff.”
The late pope Pius XII had the impudence to tell an American audience in a radio broadcast that the pope in Rome is “the only one authorized to act and teach for God.” In 1953 he declared that, “What is not in accord with truth [i.e., Roman Catholicism] has objectively no right of existence, propagation, or action.”
Pope John XXIII, the Second, was no sooner inaugurated in November, 1958, than in his coronation address he gave expression to the same sentiment. Speaking of the “fold” of Jesus Christ, by which is meant the company of the saved, he said: “Into this fold of Jesus Christ no one can enter if not under the guidance of the Sovereign Pontiff; and men can securely reach salvation only when they are united with him, since the Roman Pontiff is the Vicar of Christ and represents His person on this earth.”
We have already cited arrogant and intolerant statements from the Syllabus of Errors of Pope Pius IX.
The following excerpts in a similar vein are taken from the more than 500 items compiled by Raywood Frazier in his book, Catholic Words and Actions, all documented and based on writings approved by the Roman Catholic Church or on statements of Roman Catholics in positions of authority:
“The true [Roman Catholic] Church can tolerate no strange churches besides herself” (Catholic Encyclopedia, Vol. XIV, p. 766).
“The Roman Catholic Church… must demand the right of freedom for herself alone (Civilta Cattolica, April, 1948; official Jesuit organ; Rome).
“The pope has the right to pronounce sentence of deposition against any sovereign” (Bronson’s Review, Vol. I, p. 48).
“We declare, say, define, and pronounce that every being should be subject to the Roman Pontiff” (Pope Boniface VIII; Catholic Encyclopedia, Vol. XV, p. 126).
“No Catholic may positively and unconditionally approve of the separation of church and state” (Msgr. O’Toole, Catholic University of America, 1939).
“The pope is the supreme judge, even of civil laws, and is incapable of being under any true obligation to them” (Civilta Cattolica).
“Individual liberty in reality is only a deadly anarchy” (Pope Pius XII; April 6, 1951).
“All Catholics, therefore, are bound to accept the Syllabus [of Errors, of pope Pius IX]” (Catholic Encyclopedia, Vol. 14).
These claims are precise and clear. The official doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church, therefore, is that it alone is the true church, that all other churches and religious groups are in error, either heretical or pagan, and that such churches and groups have not even the right of existence. Without hesitation it consigns them to perdition. Truly Romanism, like Diotrephes “loveth to have the preeminence” (3 John 1:9). In sharp contrast with that teaching and practice, no Protestant church holds that it is the only way of salvation. Protestants hold rather—and they find this teaching written clearly in the Bible—that all who accept Christ as their personal Savior, all who obey and worship Him as Lord and Master, will be saved regardless of what church they belong to. To hold that only those who belong to a particular group can be saved, and only because they belong to that group, marks that group as merely a sect. For a sect, in the strict sense of the term, is a group that cuts itself off from the main stream of Christianity, a group which attempts to shut itself in as the Lord’s people, while shutting all others out. Such practice reveals, in the first place, a narrow-minded attitude, and in the second place, an inexcusable ignorance of what the Bible really teaches.
It is from that false premise, that the Roman Church is the only true church, that the well-known Roman Catholic intolerance logically springs. If Rome is the only true church, then it automatically becomes her duty to suppress and destroy all other churches which, not being true churches, are, of course, false churches. In order to accomplish that purpose she invariably seeks a union of church and state, in order that she may use the power of the state to that end. And any government to which the Roman Church becomes legally joined, through a concordat or otherwise, is inevitably led into that course of action. Throughout the centuries that has been the method employed by the Roman Church in her efforts to destroy Protestantism.
Freedom of religion logically involves separation of church and state. Such separation precludes the state from making concordats or treaties of any kind with the Vatican or any other spiritual power. But Rome does not like that limitation nor does she like being treated as an equal among the various churches. During the Middle Ages she was mistress of most of Europe through her alliances with and control over civil governments; and she maintained that position for centuries, suppressing all opposition, usually with the help of the civil authorities. Yet she failed utterly to Christianize those lands. Instead that unchristian monopoly produced the “Dark Ages” when ignorance, superstition, illiteracy, and immorality reached their worst state.
2 Roman Catholic Intolerance
The practice followed by the Roman Catholic Church in the countries where it has been in power confirms that it means what it says in the statements just quoted. We need only look at the countries of southern Europe and Latin America where Rome has had control to see what will happen in the United States if she gains control here. In this country where Protestantism is dominant Roman Catholics enjoy all the advantages of freedom of religion. But in countries where they have control they limit or prohibit any religion other than their own. In various countries today it is practically impossible for the dissenter to hold public office, or to practice his profession, or even to secure employment unless he gives some allegiance to the Roman Church. He has to pay taxes to support a creed in which he does not believe. If he is a member of the Roman Church and leaves it, he is likely to find himself discriminated against at every turn. Under such conditions he becomes a second class citizen. True religious freedom includes the right to change one’s religion, as well as the right to practice it—a right which Roman Catholics themselves insist upon as they seek to make converts in Protestant countries.
The Apostle Paul said: “If any man hath not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his” (Romans 8:9). And the Lord Jesus was kind, loving, and peaceful, even to sinners. He never persecuted anyone, not even those who were in error. But the arrogant Roman Church, with the blood of the Inquisition on its hands, unrepentant and defiant, presumes to set itself up as the final authority in the realm of faith and morals, and has cruelly slaughtered tens of thousands and has persecuted millions of others merely because they did not submit to its domination.
It is interesting to notice the difference between the Roman Catholic and the Protestant definition of the term “heresy.” For Protestants it means something contrary to what the Bible teaches, while for Roman Catholics it means lack of conformity to the practice of the Roman Church—which may be something quite different. Roman Catholics, for instance, are forbidden to attend “heretical” services, that is, services in any other church. Thus a Catholic cannot take part in a Protestant service without committing a mortal sin and so offending the hierarchy. And having committed such a sin he would be bound to go to a priest, confess his sin, promise not to repeat the offense, and receive a penance by way of punishment.
In free Protestant America the Roman Catholics have the right freely to preach their beliefs and to promote their church. They receive the full privileges of tax exemption for their churches, schools, and other properties on precisely the same basis as do Protestants. But they are frank to tell us that if ever the tables are turned and they become the dominant power things will be different. They will deny us the privilege of preaching the Gospel according to what we believe, and they will deny tax exemption to our churches. A frank statement of their attitude toward other churches—as frank as Marx’s Communist Manifesto against capitalistic nations, or Hitler’s Mein Kampf against the German Republic—is found in the official Jesuit organ, Civilta Cattolica, published in Rome. This journal enjoys high prestige among church scholars, and is known to be close to the pope. It is, therefore, one of the most authoritative of all Roman Catholic sources. Listen to these words:
“The Roman Catholic Church, convinced through its divine prerogatives of being the only true church, must demand the right of freedom for herself alone, because such a right can only be possessed by truth, never by error. As for other religions, the Church will certainly never draw the sword, but she will require that by legitimate means they shall not be allowed to propagate false doctrine. Consequently, in a state where the majority of people are Catholic, the Church will require that legal existence be denied to error, and that if religious minorities actually exist, they shall have only a de facto existence without opportunity to spread their beliefs. … In some countries Catholics will be obliged to ask full religious freedom for all, resigned at being forced to cohabit where they alone should rightfully be allowed to live. But in doing this the Church does not renounce her thesis which remains the most imperative of her laws, but merely adapts herself to de facto conditions which must be taken into account in practical affairs… The Church cannot blush for her own want of tolerance as she asserts it in principle and applies it in practice” (April, 1948).
This is the “classic” Roman Catholic position in regard to religious liberty. It is echoed by numerous other sources. Msgr. Francis J. Connell, whom we have referred to as the highest ranking Roman Catholic theologian in the United States, says:
“We believe that the rulers of a Catholic country have the right to restrict the activity of those who would lead their people away from their allegiance to the Catholic Church. … They possess the right to prevent propaganda against the Church. This is merely a logical conclusion from the basic Catholic tenet that the Son of God established one religion and commanded all men to accept it under pain of eternal damnation” (American Ecclesiastical Review, January, 1946).
At the college and seminary level a textbook with imprimatur by Archbishop (now cardinal) Francis J. Spellman, after saying that the state should acknowledge and support the Roman Catholic religion to the exclusion of all others, has this to say concerning religious toleration:
“Does State recognition of the Catholic religion necessarily imply that no other religion should be tolerated? Much depends upon circumstances and much depends upon what is meant by toleration. Neither unbaptized persons nor those born into a non-Catholic sect should ever be coerced into the Catholic Church. This would be fundamentally irrational, for belief depends upon the will and the will is not subject to physical compulsion. Should such persons be permitted to practice their own form of worship? If these are carried out within the family, or in such an inconspicuous manner as to be an occasion neither for scandal nor of perversion of the faithful, they may properly be tolerated by the State. … Their participation in false worship does not necessarily imply a willful affront to the true Church nor a menace to public order or social welfare. In a Catholic State which protects and favors the Catholic religion whose citizens are in great majority adherents of the true faith, the religious performances of an insignificant and ostracized sect will constitute neither a scandal nor an occasion of perversion to Catholics. Hence there exists no sufficient reason to justify the State in restricting the liberty of individuals.
“Quite distinct from the performance of false religious worship and preaching to the members of the erring sect is the propagation of the false doctrine among Catholics. This could become a source of injury, a positive menace, to the religious welfare of true believers. Against such an evil they have a right of protection of the Catholic State. On the one hand, this propaganda is harmful to the citizens and contrary to public welfare; on the other hand, it is not among the natural rights of the propagandists. Rights are merely means to rational ends. Since no rational end is promoted by the dissemination of false doctrine, there exists no right to indulge in this practice” (p. 317; from Catholic Principles of Politics, by John A. Ryan and Francis J. Boland. Copyright 1940, by the National Catholic Welfare Conference. Used by permission of the Macmillan Company).
Professors Ryan and Boland, after noting that at present the Constitution of the United States guarantees freedom of religion, make this statement (cited previously, re. schools):
“Suppose that the constitutional obstacles to proscription of non-Catholics have been legitimately removed and they themselves have become numerically insignificant: what then would be the proper course of action for a Catholic State? Apparently, the latter State could logically tolerate only such religious activities as were confined to the members of the dissenting group. It could not permit them to carry on general propaganda nor accord their organization certain privileges that had formerly been extended to all religious corporations, for example, exemption from taxation” (p. 320).
Here the method of dealing with the problem of religious liberty in the event that the Roman Catholic Church becomes the dominant power in the United States is that of changing the Constitution so that every word about religious liberty is wiped out! The writers then ask what protection Protestants would have against the Roman Catholic state and go on to say that they would have none at all. They say that dissenting churches would lose their exemption from taxation, while the Roman Catholic Church would retain such exemption. They also say that the Roman Catholic state could logically tolerate only such religious activities as were confined to the members of the dissenting group—which means that no public meeting of any Protestant church would be allowed. The only meetings tolerated would be those of the members held in private. Under such an arrangement the church would die of strangulation. Ryan’s and Boland’s assurance that they are talking about an idealized Roman Catholic state which presumably is some considerable distance in the future, and that Protestants therefore need not worry for a long time to come, is completely worthless, and even frivolous. Actually what they are saying is that Protestants need not worry until it is too late to worry.
Ryan’s and Boland’s comment, of course, is not merely a personal one, but one that is in harmony with the general tenor of Roman Catholic thinking. We might point out in behalf of Protestantism that during the economic emergency that has existed in so many countries following the Second World War, this nation has distributed much food and other supplies freely among needy nations without discriminating against religious beliefs, and that in numerous instances Roman Catholic relief agencies in those countries have distributed those supplies as if they were gifts from the Roman Catholics of the United States. No such acts of friendship and generosity were ever extended by a Roman Catholic nation to a Protestant nation in the entire course of world history, and we can be sure that they never will be. But how utterly devoid of any sense of gratitude and fair play Romanism is toward Protestantism! What Ryan and Boland threaten is indeed the kind of treatment that we can expect from the Roman Church after having nurtured it in our free land—if and when it becomes dominant. Protestants at least have had fair warning, for these things have not been plotted in secret, but published openly and taught in the schools.
Rome still follows the policy set forth by the French Roman Catholic writer, Louis Veuillot, who said to a group of Protestants:
“When you are in a majority we ask for religious liberty in the name of your principles. When we are in a majority we refuse it to you in the name of ours.”
There is in this regard a close parallel between the Roman Catholic demand for full religious freedom in the United States so that they can build their church and lay the groundwork for the destruction of religious liberty, and that of the Communists as they claim the protection of our Constitution and demand full civil liberties while building a system which if successful will destroy ours. This land still is predominantly Protestant and free. But if we are indifferent we can lose all of our freedoms, either to a totalitarian church or a totalitarian state.
We know that today Rome is seeking by every means at her disposal to “Make America Catholic”—that is her motto—and thus to eliminate the world’s stronghold of Protestantism. But for many centuries the Roman Church had a monopoly in Europe, and the results were deplorable. In the countries that she controls she continues to fail to raise either the religious or the social standards of the people. Almost invariably monopoly is bad, whether in religion, business, manufacturing, labor unions, or government. And an ecclesiastical monopoly is worst of all. There is too much greed in the human heart and too much pride in the human mind, for any such system to work, whether in the church or in the state.
In Protestant countries the Roman Church hides her true character. When confronted by an alert and watchful Protestantism she becomes reasonably tolerant. She establishes schools, hospitals, orphanages, and at times even holds out a fraternal hand to those of differing views. In many an American town or village the Roman Church seems much like any Protestant church. The priest is friendly, as also are the people, and there is little outward difference between them and their Protestant neighbors. The Roman Catholic people in such communities are for the most part perfectly sincere, sharing in general the American ideals of freedom and liberty. Occasionally a local priest, or even a leader of prominence, makes a high-minded pronouncement on the subject of religious liberty—as even Cardinal Spellman has done on occasions. Many Protestants have been deceived by such semblances of charity. But as the Roman Church gains strength the priests invariably indoctrinate their people with a more aggressive attitude, and they begin to place restrictions on Protestantism and to outlaw it as far as possible. Those who want to know what Roman Catholicism really is should look at the clerical system that it has developed in those countries where it has control, not at the restrained, half-Protestant and comparatively mild form that is found in many American communities.
American Roman Catholics, like their fellow church members in all other parts of the world, belong to a completely totalitarian church. Policy in their church is not made at the local level or national level, but at the top, in Rome. The people are not consulted; they are told. We had that brought to our attention quite forcibly in the 1960 election when the Roman Catholic people of Puerto Rico were threatened with excommunication if they did not follow the political advice of the hierarchy. When in deference to popular opinion American priests and bishops sometimes express themselves as favoring religious freedom and toleration, they do not speak for anyone—not even for themselves. They are allowed to proceed on a certain course as long as that seems expedient; but when the appropriate time comes, Rome issues an official policy statement and that settles the matter.
While the Roman Church manifests a degree of good will and tolerance in the United States, her real nature is revealed in the cruelties and intolerance that she practices on those of other faiths in countries where she is dominant—at the present time most clearly seen in Spain and Colombia. The pope could stop the persecutions and abuses in those lands at once if he wanted to do so. Let it be remembered by all Americans that no matter how friendly individual Roman Catholics are now, once their church gains control even the laymen will have to change their attitude. They will not be permitted to mingle freely with Protestants and be cooperative and friendly. This deceptive pose, not primarily on the part of the people but on the part of the hierarchy, is what makes that church so dangerous. Such diverse behavior is based not on the teaching of Scripture nor on principle, but on expediency and Canon Law. It should arouse only disgust and resentment on the part of all informed people.
The famous British historian, James Anthony Froude, analyzed the character of Romanism well when he wrote:
“Where it has been in power, the Church of Rome has shown its real colors. … In Protestant countries where it is in opposition, it wears the similitude of an angel. It is energetic and devoted; it avoids scandal; it appeals for toleration, and, therefore, pretends to be tolerant. Elsewhere it has killed the very spirit of religion, and those who break from it believe nothing.”
Most American Roman Catholic writers seek to point to some sources of religious freedom within Roman Catholicism. Almost invariably they mention the Religious Toleration Act of Maryland as an event contributing to the establishment of religious freedom in America. They are fond of pointing out that Maryland was established with a Roman Catholic majority and that its legislature passed the act just mentioned. But the passage of that act becomes rather amusing when we remember that Roman Catholicism in Maryland was at that time only a small island in a sea of Protestantism, and that most of the colonists having come to America to escape religious persecution in the various European countries were strongly opposed to any church controlled state. It is, after all, standard Roman procedure to speak up for religious toleration when they are in the minority, and to deny it when they are in the majority. Furthermore, the Maryland colony, which was founded in 1634 under Roman Catholic sponsorship, soon lost that distinction; for after 1691 the Protestants were in the majority. At the time of the American Revolution the Roman Catholics numbered only about one percent of the population of the thirteen colonies. No Huguenot was allowed to land in Quebec during the colonial period.
A further consequence of Roman Catholic intolerance in the European countries was that it alienated the Jews and turned them strongly against Christianity. Nearly all evangelistic work among the Jews has been done by Protestants. Rome has avoided the really hard mission work of the world, that among the Mohammedans and among the Jews. For 1,200 years the Roman Church persecuted the Jews, so that they came to look upon Christians as their natural enemies. On different occasions the Jews were forced to flee from Rome, and one of the most cruel persecutions came in Spain at the time of the Inquisition. In some countries they had to live in ghettos, and sometimes had to wear hated yellow identification badges. Many occupations were closed to them. Often they were denied education. Because the Roman Church was for so long dominant in Europe, the average Jew doesn’t differentiate between the different branches of Christianity. To him even yet Romanism is Christianity, and he therefore is quite sure that Christianity is anti-Semitic. Because of that past record the cause of Jewish evangelism suffers a historic handicap. The persecutions are not easily forgotten.
3 Freedom of Conscience
The First Amendment to the Constitution reads:
“Congress shall make no laws respecting the establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peacefully to assemble.”
What a sharp contrast there is between these sentiments and the categorical statement of Pope Leo XIII (1903) in Libertas that “It is not lawful to demand, to defend, or to grant unconditional freedom of thought, or speech, or writing, or religion, as if these were so many rights given by nature to man.”
Persecution of those who conscientiously differ with us is so out of harmony with Protestant ideal that we can scarcely realize the vigor with which that practice, together with that of excommunication and the interdict was carried out by the Roman Church in former ages. Yet so bowed down were the people and nations during the Middle Ages that usually little more than the mere threat of such action was required for the church to secure whatever obedience or property it wanted.
Freedom of religion, as we have indicated earlier, must include the right to change one’s religion. The United Nations Charter of Human Rights has quite properly insisted upon this, even in the face of strong opposition from Romanist countries. The right of private judgment is one of the most precious benefits that we have received from the Protestant Reformation. Even in Protestant states which have established churches, as in Sweden for instance, where all the people are supposed to belong to the Lutheran Church, anyone who wants to withdraw can do so merely by stating his desire to that effect. That is the sensible course to follow, for certainly the person knows his own mind better than does anyone else. No priest or governmental official should attempt to make that decision for him. And yet it is almost impossible anywhere to secure a release from the Roman Catholic Church. Even after one announces that he has changed his views and asks for a dismissal the Roman Church still attempts to hold him, to persuade him, perhaps even over a period of years, and her policy is never to give up one who has been baptized into that church. We do not see the principles of democracy and freedom in that church, but rather those of totalitarianism and dictatorship.
One of the most flagrant denials of freedom in the Roman Church is the Index of Forbidden Books, a device which deprives the people of freedom of judgment as to what they may read. This restriction is imposed on the pretense of shielding them from error; its real purpose is to isolate them from liberal and Protestant ideas, to maintain control over them, and so to hold them in the Roman Church. Even the Bible was put on the Index by the Council of Valencia, in 1229, and was not removed until centuries later. And to the present day all versions of the Bible except those which contain the official Roman Catholic explanatory notes still are on the Index. It is for this reason that in Roman Catholic countries the priests seek to confiscate and destroy all copies of the Bible put out by the Protestant churches or by the Bible societies. All editions of the Bible, all portions of it, and all Biblical commentaries in any language that do not show the imprimatur or nihil obstat of some Roman official are forbidden. A long list of books and other publications are blacklisted, not always because they are anti-Christian, but because they are or are suspected of being anti-Romanist. The laws of the Index are binding on the priests as well as on the people. Only the bishops, cardinals, and others whose rank is not below that of bishop are free from the Index.
The intolerance of the Roman Catholic Church even toward its own people is perhaps seen most clearly in this restriction which forbids them to read anything that others write about its history or doctrines. And well do they keep their people in the dark concerning its history; for most of the people, if they knew its real history, probably would leave it immediately. This one church alone in the civilized world follows such an obscurantist rule and tells its people that they commit mortal sin if they so much as read what others say about them. A Roman Catholic young man who reads a criticism of his church, or who attends a lecture criticizing his church will be rebuked more severely by the priest than if he commits a sexual irregularity or some other crime against society. The reasoning is that the latter may be repaired, but the former leads to irreparable loss of faith.
This attitude on the part of the hierarchy and priesthood shows a glaring lack of scholarship and of confidence in their own doctrinal position. Although they claim to have the truth, and even to be the only true church, they do not dare risk a comparison of that “truth” with the supposed error which they oppose. They choose rather to keep their people in as complete ignorance as possible concerning all other systems. But that is the position of the special pleader. True scholars who are sure of their own position do not hesitate to state the position of an opponent, and then to expose its errors if such there are. Even in dealing with Communism and atheism we want to know what they hold, then we proceed to show their falsity. Protestants do not hesitate to acquaint their people with the Roman Catholic system, and then to point out its errors. In fact it is Protestant practice to study and discuss all of the other religions. Failure on the part of the Romanists to do the same reveals a conscious weakness, a reluctance to join the battle in a fair and open way and face logical conclusions. We challenge the Roman hierarchy to let its priests and its people investigate Protestantism fairly and openly or to give up the claim that it alone has the truth. It has often been said that a person who does not know both sides of a question really does not know either side. Not until he knows what his own doctrinal system sets forth, and what can be said against it, does he know what he believes and why.
The reader may wonder how it is possible in countries such as the United States, England, Holland, etc., for the Roman Church to fence its people away from the learning of modern times. If the facts of papal history and of European and American history are as we have represented them, it may be thought incredible that any church could maintain in its schools and in its churches a version radically at variance with those facts. The explanation however, is just this, that the Roman Catholic is restricted to the literature of his own church. Every book he reads must have been passed by the censor. He has been taught from childhood that the reading of forbidden books is a grave sin, a sin against faith and morals. The Index has indeed proved to be an effective weapon for keeping both the clergy and the laity in obedient submission. It keeps them from thinking, and therefore from rebelling.
The devout, sincere Roman Catholic, priest or layman, finds it very difficult to change his religion. The church, of course, has planned it that way. Even though he may have doubts concerning some things, he finds it hard to make an investigation. He must not even carry on a conversation with a Protestant about religious matters unless his priest is also present. Even among the priests many would not dare to read a heretical book, or carry on such a conversation without permission from a bishop. Some, however, whose duty it is to defend their religion against attacks do find it necessary to investigate evangelical Christianity. And not infrequently one of them is won by the sublimity and simplicity of its teaching. But in the main the Roman Church withholds from its priests and people that broader knowledge and outlook on the world which makes for a well-rounded personality. Incidentally the minister of the Methodist church in Rome, Rev. Reginald Kissack, reports that some Roman Catholic priests in Italy are unsettled and are making tentative inquiries about Protestantism and that nearly always the question, “What started your unrest?” gets the answer, “I started to read the Gospels.”
4 Bigotry
The dictionary defines a “bigot” as “one obstinately or intolerantly devoted to his own church, party, belief or opinion.” And the adjective “bigoted” is defined as, “so obstinately attached to some creed, opinion, or practice as to be illiberal or intolerant.”
A strange thing happened in the United States during the 1960 political campaign, in which the candidates for president were a Roman Catholic, John F. Kennedy, and a Protestant, Richard M. Nixon. In this land that had been comparatively free from religious prejudice in past elections the Roman Catholics attempted and, because there was no organized or effective Protestant reply, succeeded to a surprising extent in muzzling free men by the cunning use of the word “bigot.” A widespread campaign was launched to popularize the idea that anyone who for whatever reason voted against their candidate was a “bigot,” and the term was freely used over the radio and television, in the newspapers, and in political discussion. Along with this they sought to label as a “hate monger” and as “hate literature” any person or any literature that even so much as mentioned the Roman Catholic Church in connection with the political campaign. This was their strategy in the Protestant United States, although in all Roman Catholic countries the religious issue immediately becomes a prominent feature in any campaign if a Protestant is involved—if indeed they do not forbid by constitutional requirement any Protestant from even being nominated for the position of head of state, as is the case in Spain, Colombia, Argentina, and Paraguay. In various other countries where Romanism is strong, practical considerations make it next to impossible for a Protestant to become head of the state.
Early in that campaign Mr. Nixon announced that he would not discuss religion, nor would he allow his workers to bring the religious issue into the campaign. Mr. Kennedy, too, gave lip service to that principle; but on repeated occasions he “defended” his right to belong to the Roman Catholic Church, a point which of course was not lost on his fellow Roman Catholics. Also, his national party campaign committee made extensive and effective use of a television film and recording that was made during an appearance which he made before a group of Protestant ministers in Houston, Texas, which film had been edited to present him and his religion in a very favorable light. Whether it was wise to attempt to keep religion out of the campaign is open to question. Personally we think it was not, for two reasons: first, a man’s religion does affect his actions, particularly his conduct of an office such as the presidency; and, secondly, from a practical standpoint it clearly was impossible to suppress such an important factor.
When the facts became known it was shown that the charge of bigotry that had been brought against Protestants was for the most part groundless. The Gallup Poll, which after repeated surveys forecast the closeness of the election with remarkable accuracy, showed that the proportion of Roman Catholic Republicans who switched their votes to Kennedy was approximately twice that of the Protestant Democrats who switched to Nixon. The veteran political commentator, David Lawrence, observed that, “It is obvious that something has happened to stir up the Catholic voters and cause a big number apparently to disregard all other considerations and support the Democratic nominee, who happens to be of their faith” (The Kansas City Times, November 2, 1960). These same sources indicated that the Roman Catholic vote went about 80 percent, or approximately four to one, for Kennedy, while the Protestant vote went about 60 percent, or approximately three to two, for Nixon. An impartial post-election analysis by the Survey Research Center of the University of Michigan, as published in U. S. News and World Report, May 1, 1961, reached substantially the same conclusion. Hence the evidence is that Roman Catholics showed themselves twice as “bigoted” in voting their religion as did Protestants. And certainly it is just as much an act of bigotry to vote for a man because of his religion as it is to vote against him because of his religion.
But is it bigotry to oppose the election of a Roman Catholic for president of the United States, or for other positions of influence? The basic doctrines of the Roman Catholic Church as they affect political and social life are diametrically opposed to our American ideas of freedom and democracy. The Roman Church has repeatedly condemned the separation of church and state, which is one of the basic principles of our American way of life; and it attempts to regulate even in detail the lives of its members. Roman Catholic officials are inevitably subjected to pressures from their church which could not be brought against other men. Believing that theirs is the only true church, that their eternal welfare is dependent on obedience to their church, and that it is their duty to promote their church so far as practicable, loyal Roman Catholic office holders are subject to what are sometimes unbearable pressures in the confessional and from the hierarchy at large. We submit that because of these obligations which rest in a peculiar way upon all members of that church it is unwise to entrust high office to any member of that church unless he gives convincing evidence that he will not allow his church to influence his conduct—assurance which a “good” Roman Catholic cannot give, and which a “poor” Roman Catholic should not need to give, for the simple reason that if he does not accept those principles he should not be in that church.
But further as regards the charge of bigotry as directed by the Roman Church against all who oppose it: In its announced goal to “make America Catholic,” the Roman Catholic Church proposes to force its doctrines and practices upon our nation regardless of their truth or falsity and regardless of the desires of the majority of our people. This it plans to do by silencing everyone who disagrees with it. And how does it propose to do that? One important item in that plan is to label everyone who opposes it a “bigot.” A former Roman Catholic who studied for the priesthood in a Jesuit seminary, and who knows that church well, wrote in 1957 (three years before the 1960 political campaign got under way):
“The Roman Catholic Church, whatever may be its other faults, is never lacking in shrewdness or in good strategists. … The Jesuits have urged the Catholic Church in America to label every criticism of the Roman Church as ‘bigotry’” (Christianity Today, issue of October 28).
But when the facts of history are examined Protestants stand forth clearly not as “bigots,” but as the real champions of religious and political liberty, while on the other hand Roman Catholicism has maintained a religious despotism wherever it has been in power, even to the extent of putting to death those who disagree with it. The facts are so clear that they cannot be denied. And yet the recent propaganda campaign was conducted so skillfully and persistently that the Roman Church actually came to be looked upon by many as the victim of bigotry and intolerance. When the facts are presented, the Roman Church itself stands forth as the biggest bigot of all time. In proof of that statement we submit the following. It is bigotry:
·To claim to be the only true church.
·To teach that all outside the Roman Church are lost.
·For the pope to claim infallibility, or that he is the very mouthpiece of God on earth.
· For the pope to claim for himself the title “Holy Father”—a claim which is simply blasphemous.
· For the Roman Church in its official pronouncements, such as those of the Council of Trent, to pronounce anathemas upon all who dare to differ with it.
· For the Roman Church to persecute or kill those who dare to differ with it, as it has done on so many occasions in the past.
· For the Roman Church to refer to Protestants as “heretics.”· For the Roman Church to teach its people that it is a mortal sin to attend a Protestant church.
· For the Roman Church to restrict and persecute Protestants in Spain, Portugal, Italy, and various Latin American countries while it is accorded full freedom of religion in Protestant countries.
· For the Roman Church to teach its people that it is a mortal sin to read any Bible other than their own annotated one.
· For the Roman Church to force its premarital agreement upon Protestants who wish to marry Roman Catholics.
· For the Roman Church to teach that the marriage of a Roman Catholic and a Protestant before a Protestant minister or an official of the state is null and void, that such is only “attempted marriage,” that the parties thereafter are living in sin, and that their children are illegitimate.
· For the Roman Church to teach its people to “detest” other churches and groups, as in the pledge which converts to Romanism take as a part of the induction ceremony, which reads: “With a sincere heart, therefore, and with unfeigned faith, I detest and abjure every error, heresy and sect opposed to the said Holy Catholic and Apostolic Roman Church.”
· For the Roman Church to maintain the Index of Forbidden Books.
· For the Roman Church in Latin America to tell its people that Protestantism and Communism are the same thing.
Many other such practices could be cited.
There is a striking parallel between the practice of the Russian Communists who, knowing themselves to be the promoters of a system which resorts to violence, untruth, treachery, and every immoral practice as it serves their purpose, attempt to cover up their shortcomings by representing themselves and their allies as the “peace loving nations” and as the champions of the world’s downtrodden masses, while accusing us of being “imperialists,” “war-mongers,” and “militarists” who are attempting to “enslave” the less developed nations, and the practice of the Roman Catholics who, knowing that for the most part their distinctive doctrines and rituals are not found in the Bible or are even contrary to the Bible, persistently designate themselves as “the only true church,” and hurl the epithet “heretic” at all who differ with them. The Communists claim to “liberate” people when they take possession of a country, but what they actually do is to enslave them. They talk of “the People’s Democratic Republic” (e.g., of Red China and East Germany), and of the “People’s Courts” (as in Russia and China), while in fact the people of those countries have no voice at all in their government or in their courts. In similar manner the Roman Catholics, where they are in control, consider it their privilege and duty to “Christianize” or “convert” all others and to conform them to their church practices, by persuasion if possible, by force if necessary. The Communists hold that men will be free only when they are governed by the Communist state, and Roman Catholics hold that men are really Christian and can be saved only when they submit to the Roman Catholic Church and acknowledge the authority of the pope. Such terminology involves an absolute reversal of the meaning of words. Both groups, as smokescreens to cover up their own misdeeds and errors, accuse their opponents of the very things of which they know themselves to be guilty.
When Protestantism is stronger than Romanism, and when democracy is stronger than communism, the latter groups talk of tolerance and freedom. They want us to co-exist peacefully until they become stronger than we are—then they will really put the screws on. Peaceful co-existence means peaceful co-existence as long as we are stronger, but when they become stronger it means peaceful submission.
A further parallel between these two groups is that the Communists often are able to do their most effective work through “pinkos” and fellow travelers, and Roman Catholics often are most effective when they can persuade gullible Protestants under the pretense of being broad-minded and liberal to parrot their charges for them. But the facts of history are clear, and the doctrinal tenets and practices of both of those groups are a matter of public record. Any informed person knows that the terms used by both of those groups in the present controversies are falsely used, that the accusations are baseless, and that the facts are exactly the reverse of what they allege. In the light of history as manifested in the nations of Europe, the Communist charge of “war-mongers” as brought against the democratic nations, and the Roman Catholic charge of “bigotry” as brought against Protestants, are so ridiculous that no one should be deceived by them.
Let Protestants protest orally and in writing whenever these fraudulent charges of “bigotry,” “hate-mongering,” and “hate literature” are made over the radio, television, in public discussion, or in print, and their falsity and injustice will soon be exposed.
5 Persecution
It has been said that,
Rome in the minority is a lamb.
Rome as an equal is a fox.
Rome in the majority is a tiger.
The Roman Church has never acknowledged that the use of force to compel obedience is wrong in principle, although she has been compelled to abandon the practice in Protestant countries and the fires of the inquisition are no longer burning. Even in those countries that have remained under her control, an enlightened public opinion indirectly influenced by Protestantism has been sufficient to bring about a considerable degree of restraint.
While in the United States the priests often are friendly to Protestants, in Romanist countries they continue to be the instigators and leaders of riots against them. Regardless of attempts by some Roman Catholics to deny that Protestants are to be hated or persecuted, the fact is that they are charged with heresy by the Roman Church; and heresy, by Roman Canon Law, is punishable by death if need be. The undeniable fact is that today Protestant ministers behind the Iron Curtain, in such countries as Poland, Czechoslovakia, and East Germany, have more freedom to hold church services and to distribute Christian literature than they have in Spain.
Even today every Roman Catholic bishop at the time of his consecration takes an oath of allegiance to the pope which contains these words:
“With all my power I will persecute and make war upon all heretics, schismatics and those who rebel against our lord [the pope] and all his successors… So help me God and these the holy gospels of God” (Pontificale Romanum Summorum Pontificum. Belgium. Mechlin, p. 133. Cited by Emmett McLoughlin, in American Culture and Catholic Schools, p. 125).
Thomas Aquinas, prominent in the Dominican Order and the most authoritative philosopher and theologian of the Roman Church even to the present day, held that the church had the right to hunt out and kill heretics as a means of maintaining its purity. He wrote:
“Though heretics must not be tolerated because they deserve it, we must bear with them, till, by a second admonition, they may be brought back to the faith of the church. But those who, after a second admonition, remain obstinate in their errors, must not only be excommunicated, but they must be delivered to the secular power to be exterminated” (Summa Theologica, Vol. IV, p. 90).
And again:
“So far as heretics are concerned, heresy is a sin, whereby they deserve not only to be separated from the church by excommunication, but also to be severed from the world by death” (Vol. II, p. 154).
And still further:
“If counterfeiters of money or other criminals are justly delivered over to death forthwith by the secular authorities, much more can heretics, after they are convicted of heresy, be not only forthwith excommunicated, but as surely put to death” (Vol. II, Q. 2, Art. 3).
Dr. Marianus de Luca, S. J., Professor of Canon Law at the Georgian University in Rome, said in his Institution of Public Ecclesiastical Law, with a personal commendation from Pope Leo XIII, in 1901:
“The Catholic Church has the right and duty to kill heretics because it is by fire and sword that heresy can be extirpated. Mass excommunication is derided by heretics. If they are imprisoned or exiled they corrupt others. The only recourse is to put them to death. Repentance cannot be allowed to save them, just as repentance is not allowed to save civil criminals; for the highest good of the church is the duty of the faith, and this cannot be preserved unless heretics are put to death.”
The official newspaper of the large Roman Catholic diocese of Brooklyn, New York, The Tablet, in its issue of November 5, 1938, declared:
“Heresy is an awful crime… and those who start a heresy are more guilty than they who are traitors to the civil government. If the State has the right to punish treason with death, the principle is the same which concedes to the spiritual authority the power of capital punishment over the arch-traitor to truth and Divine revelation. … A perfect society has the right to its existence… and the power of capital punishment is acknowledged for a perfect society. Now… the Roman Catholic Church is a perfect society, and as such has the right and power to take means to safeguard its existence.”
In the following words by a present day American Roman Catholic theologian, Francis J. Connell, with imprimatur by Cardinal Spellman, even the right of existence is denied to other churches:
“The Catholic Church is the only organization authorized by God to teach religious truth and to conduct public religious worship. Consequently, they [Roman Catholics] hold that any creed which differs from that of the Catholic Church is erroneous, and that any religious organization which is separated from the Catholic Church lacks the approval and the authorization of God. The very existence of any other church is opposed to the command of Christ, that all men should join His one church. From this it follows that, as far as God’s law is concerned, no one has a real right to accept any religion save the Catholic Church” (pamphlet, Freedom of Worship, the Catholic Position).
These are representative samples of the “tolerance” that can be expected when the Roman Church has things its own way. Add to these the more than one hundred anathemas— “Let him be anathema,” which means, “Let him be accursed”—pronounced by the Council of Trent, the most authoritative of Roman Catholic councils, upon all who dare to differ with its pronouncements. Such violent, intemperate language in a creed which purports to set forth the basic principles of the Christian system reveals clearly the unchristian nature of the men who pretend so to speak. How alien is all of that to the noble sentiments expressed in the American Declaration of Independence, which says:
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness—that to secure these rights governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”
Pope Boniface VIII, in 1302, issued the Unam Sanctam, a document in which he claimed to be the representative of God on earth, and concurrently claimed authority over every nation and government on earth. This decree, which sets forth the doctrine of “the two swords,” reads as follows:
“In her [the Church] and within her power there are two swords, we are taught in the Gospels, namely, the spiritual sword and the temporal sword… the latter to be used for the Church, the former by the Church; the former by the hand of the priest, the latter by the hand of the princes and kings, but at the nod and sufferance of the priest. The one sword must of necessity be subject to the other, the temporal authority to the spiritual. … For truth being the witness, the spiritual power has the function of establishing the temporal power and sitting in judgment on it if it should not prove good… but if the supreme power [the papacy] deviate, it cannot be judged by man but only by God alone.”
This power of control over the two swords is assumed to be inherent in the papal office and superior to all other such powers. Men are to be compelled to submit to the Roman pontiff by the sword of the state, as wielded by kings and soldiers, but at the direction of the priesthood. This is, in fact, the traditional position of the Roman Church, that the actual persecution or execution of those judged by the church to be heretical should be done, not by the church, but by the state at the direction of the church. By such subterfuge the church seeks to escape responsibility for her crimes.
The doctrine of “the two swords” was the basis for the persecution and massacre of thousands of the Waldensians in Italy and France, one of the worst massacres having taken place in France, in 1545, when twenty-one of their towns were burned and the inhabitants plundered, tortured, and murdered in circumstances of the utmost cruelty. Two years later the dying monarch, Francis I, remembering with bitter remorse his ultimatum to the Waldensians that they embrace Roman Catholicism or be destroyed, pleaded with his son that the men who persuaded him to that course and led the massacre be given their just deserts.
Perhaps the most notorious of all massacres was that which was carried out against the Protestants of France, beginning on St. Bartholomew’s Day, August 24, 1572, and continuing throughout France for five or six weeks. Some 10,000 “Huguenots,” as the French Protestants were called, were killed in Paris alone, and estimates of the number killed throughout the country run from 40,000 to 60,000. The Standard International Encyclopedia places the number at 50,000. Hundreds of thousands more fled from France to other countries. Many of their descendants eventually made their way to the United States. When the news of the massacre reached Rome church bells were rung and there was wild rejoicing in the streets. Not long before that time Germany had become Protestant, as had also parts of Switzerland; and the new movement had made such progress in France that nearly a fourth of the population was Protestant and there was a real possibility that if it remained unchecked the whole country might become Protestant.
So pleased was the pope, Gregory VIII, to be rid of the Protestants in France that he ordered Te Deum’s (hymns of praise and thanksgiving) sung in the churches of Rome, and had a medal struck with his own profile on one side and the destroying angel on the other. He also sent Cardinal Ursini to convey his felicitations to the queen mother of France, Catherine de Medici, who at the promptings of the Jesuits had organized the plot. Primarily through that massacre France was preserved a Roman Catholic country, and has remained such, nominally at least, to the present day.
The Inquisition was created by the Roman Catholic Church to search out, examine, and punish heretics. Its worst excesses took place in Spain, under the inquisitor Torquemada, whose appointment was made by Ferdinand and Isabella in 1483 and confirmed by Pope Alexander VI. The Jews too were driven out of Spain by Torquemada. As Columbus set sail from Palos in 1492 for his explorations in the new world he saw other ships in the harbor taking the Jews into exile.
An earlier Spanish king, Ferdinand III of Castile (died 1252), had so pleased the Roman Church by his vigorous actions against dissenters that he was made a saint in 1671 and the church inserted in the Breviary (book of daily readings and prayers for the priests) these words in praise of him:
“He permitted no heretics to dwell in his kingdom, and with his own hands brought wood to the stake for their burning” (The Stability and Progress of Dogma, by Cardinal Lepicier, p. 202; 1910).
The Inquisition also carried on its work with great effectiveness in Italy, where thousands of Protestants were put to death simply because they would not give up their faith and become Roman Catholics. Today Spain, Italy, Portugal, and to some extent France, Quebec, and Latin America, remain the devout children of the Inquisition. That, at any rate, was the method by which whole nations were made, or kept, Roman Catholic. Indeed, when we see the medieval attitude of the hierarchy, still manifesting itself in the present day persecutions in some of those countries, we are forced to conclude that the Roman Catholic Church is either the most decadent of all anachronisms, or the most dangerous of all survivals from a past that we wish were dead and buried.
The Inquisition was Rome’s masterpiece for the control of people and nations, and the tribunal of the Inquisition has never been abolished. Today in Rome it is known as the Congregation of the Holy Office.1 It is composed of cardinals and prelates, with the pope himself as its head, and its principal work is that of maintaining the doctrines of the Roman Church against errors and heresies. The excesses of the Inquisition are no longer practiced, but the principles which made those excesses possible still are in effect. The late bishop Segura, of Seville, Spain, who was prominent in the recent persecutions in that country, said shortly before he died: “I regret I was not born in the days of the Holy Inquisition.”
1 In 1966 Pope Paul VI again changed the name to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith; also known as the Doctrinal Congregation.
For another authoritative voice in Romanism let us listen to that of Ignatius Loyola, founder of the Jesuit order and held in high honor by the Jesuits who today are the real masters in the Roman Church. Said he:
“It would be greatly advantageous, too, not to permit anyone infected with heresy to continue in the government, particularly the supreme government, of any province or town, or in any judicial or honorary position. Finally, if it could be set forth and made manifest to all, that the moment a man is convicted or held in grave suspicion of heresy, he must not he favored with honors or wealth but put down from these benefits. And if a few examples could be made, punishing a few with the penalty of their lives, or with the loss of property and exile, so there could be no mistake about the seriousness of the business of religion, this remedy would be so much more effective. …
“It would be advisable that whatever heretical books might be found, on diligent search, in the possession of dealers or individuals, should be burned or removed from all the provinces of the kingdom. The same may be said of books written by heretics, even when not heretical themselves, such as those which treat of grammar or rhetoric or dialectic, which it seems, ought to be cast aside utterly out of hatred toward the heresy of their authors. …
“Of all rectors and public professors in universities and academies, and likewise rectors of private schools and schoolteachers as well, and even tutors, it should be required that long before being accepted in their posts they should all be found true Catholics, through examination or secret information. and should be recommended by the testimony of Catholics; and they should swear that they are and will always remain Catholics; and if any such men should be convicted of heresy, they should be severely punished if only on the grounds of perjury” (Obras Completas de San Ignacio de Loyola, edicion Biblioteca de Autores Cristianos. Translated by Dwight Cristoanos; Madrid; 1952; 880 pp.).
We need not ask ourselves what the Roman Catholic Church would do in the United States if it came into power. All we need do is to look at what it has done where it has been in power. Even the children in the parochial schools are being taught that the Roman Church has the right to suppress other churches and that it has the right to punish with death anyone who is a traitor to it. And history teaches that when people have the power they usually do what they have a right to do. Before the Reformation the Roman Church was able to quench all opposition in blood and violence. But since that time it has lived under the eyes of an alert and fiercely critical body of writers who have been free to express their opinions without fear of reprisal. But the doctrines concerning the temporal power of the pope, and the right of the Roman Church to use physical force to attain spiritual ends, have never been renounced by any pope or church council. Nor has that church ever repented of or apologized for the crimes that she has committed. An infallible church simply cannot repent.
6 Spain Today
The Protestant population of Spain today is estimated at only 20,000, about half of whom are foreigners, with a constituency of about 10,000 others who may be termed sympathizers, out of a total population of approximately 28,000,000. There are about 230 organized Protestant groups, with only 70 or 80 pastors in the entire nation. That means that Spanish Protestants number only about .07 of one percent of the population. The government is clerical-fascist. Only one political party exists, that of dictator Franco. In present day Spain Protestants are not permitted to:
Establish a Protestant church without a license.
Be elected to any public office, national, provincial, or municipal.
Obtain employment as teachers in the public schools.
Obtain employment as nurses.
Establish a Protestant school for their children.
Establish a theological seminary to train their ministers.
Publish or distribute Protestant literature without a license.
Be married in a Protestant wedding service—only civil marriage is legal for Protestants.
Have a Protestant funeral service in many towns.
Bury their dead in the public cemeteries.2
2 Under the much publicized religious liberty law passed by the Spanish Parliament In 1967, most of the old restrictions remain and some new ones have been added, including government supervision of non- Roman Catholic church finances and required lists of names and addresses of non-Roman Catholic church members; also, home evangelism, which is the primary practice through which the Protestant churches in Spain grow, is forbidden.
All but a few of the Protestant churches that were in existence when Franco came to power in 1936 are now closed. New churches cannot be established without government permission, which under Franco’s concordat with the Vatican is almost impossible to obtain. Meetings in private homes and in unmarked buildings are permitted within limits, but often are spied upon by the police and frequently stopped if they appear to be having too much success, that is, making converts to Protestantism.
In 1958 a Baptist minister, Jose Nunez, held services in a church that had been closed, and after a trial that attracted international attention was sentenced to a month in prison. Protestant churches are not allowed to have distinctive church architecture, nor a church bell, nor to locate on a prominent street, nor to broadcast their services by radio, nor to advertise their services in the newspapers.
Since the Franco regime came to power, the government, at the instigation of the Roman Catholic Church, has forced the closing of all Protestant schools, including the Union Theological Seminary in Madrid. Protestants are not allowed to have Christian schools even for their own children, but must send them to parochial or government controlled schools where religion is taught by priests and nuns, or obtain private schooling for them if they can afford it. The public cemeteries usually are owned or controlled by the Roman Catholic Church; Protestants are excluded from “holy ground,” and are required to bury in public plots set aside for atheists, criminals, and paupers.
Civil law in Spain conforms closely to Roman Catholic Canon Law. Protestant marriage services are illegal, and a license for a civil ceremony is difficult, sometimes impossible, to obtain if either or both parties have been baptized in the Roman Catholic Church, even in infancy, as most people in Spain have. Even if they have left the Roman Church and have become Protestants the record stands against them. They are claimed by the Roman Church unless they can “prove” that they have severed all connection with it—which places a meddlesome power of investigation not only in the hands of professional judges, if they choose to abuse it, but often in the hands of municipal justices of the peace in every town and village, many of whom are almost illiterate. Some young couples have been forced to wait for years for permits to be married outside the Roman Church. Some have gone to England or France to be married, only to find when they return that their marriages are not recognized in Spain. Protestants who press their case with court action usually obtain the permit. But that involves from $150 to $200 expense, and few can afford it.
The public professions, such as medicine, law, teaching, banking, and nursing are for the most part closed to Protestants. Often it is difficult to obtain any kind of employment unless they pay some allegiance to the Roman Church. Trusted men and women who have been employed by a firm for years have been dismissed when it has been found that they have joined a Protestant church. The unemployed and destitute find it difficult, in some cases impossible, to get public relief. Protestants in the army are not allowed to attain officer rank. Sometimes even non-Christians receive better treatment; a Moslem has been promoted to lieutenant-general. Young men, obliged to do military service, are expected to kneel before the image of the Virgin Mary during special mass. To disobey is a military offense which may mean up to two years imprisonment. The controlled press tells the people that Protestants are not only heretics, but subversive Leftists, Communists, and Masons; and Protestants are not allowed to purchase space in the newspapers to reply to attacks made upon them. Jews too are restricted, but in general are treated better than are Protestants because they do not try to make converts. The Jews are few in number and for the most part can be ignored.
The spirit of the Inquisition still lives in Spain. It hardly seems possible that such conditions could exist in a country that professes to be Christian and civilized. But the arrogant intolerance of clericalism is ever the same. Back of these restrictions are the so-called “charter of the Spanish People,” of 1945, and the concordat between Franco and the pope. The key clause of the Charter reads:
“The profession and practice of the Catholic religion, which is that of the State, shall enjoy official protection. No one shall be disturbed because of his religious beliefs or the private practice of his worship. No other outward ceremonies or demonstrations than those of the Catholic religion shall be permitted.”
Articles 1 and 19 respectively of the Concordat read:
“The Catholic Apostolic Roman Religion will continue to be the sole religion of the Spanish nation and will enjoy the rights and prerogatives which are due it in conformity with the Divine Law and the Canon Law. …
“The State, by way of indemnification for past confiscations of Church property and as a contribution to the Church’s work for the good of the nation, will provide the Church with an annual endowment.”
The major part of the salaries of the priests and other church officials is paid by the state. Thus Protestants and others are taxed to support a religion in which they do not believe.
If anyone has any doubt about what the Roman Catholic Church wants, we have an excellent, made-to-order demonstration in Franco’s Spain. There, through the working of an official concordat, Protestants are treated exactly as the pope thinks they should be treated. The Roman Church never tires of referring to what it terms “Christian Spain”; and its ideal, the establishment of the Roman Catholic religion and the elimination of all other religions, is more closely approximated in Spain than in any other present day nation. As one evangelical has expressed it, if you are a Protestant in Spain, your marriage is illegal, your children are illegitimate, and you can’t vote. What a contrast all of that is with the liberty that Roman Catholics enjoy in Protestant United States!
Concerning the Spanish situation Paul Blanshard has written:
“The same pope who appoints every bishop and cardinal in the United States also appoints every bishop and cardinal in Spain. The same pope who permits American bishops to declare in the United States that they favor the separation of Church and State in this non-Catholic country encourages his Spanish bishops to pursue a directly opposite policy in Catholic Spain. It is the Vatican and the Franco government that jointly deny to all Protestant churches and Jewish synagogues those liberties which leaders of the church in the United States profess to believe in. Between them they have abolished both political and religious democracy by a union of church and state which is the pluperfect negation of American principles” (pamphlet, Ecclesiastical Justice in Spain).
And Walter M. Montano, writing in Christian Heritage, says:
“Spain has had a long history of intolerance. The number of victims sacrificed by the Inquisition in Spain almost exceeds credulity. Yet it has been shown by Llorente, who carefully examined the records of the Tribunal, and whose statements are drawn from the most authoritative sources, that 105,285 victims fell under the inquisitor general Torquemada; 51,167 under Cisneros; and 34,952 fell under Diego Perez. It is further reckoned that 31,912 were burned alive! Half that number, 15,659 suffered the punishment of the statute, and 291,450 were sent to penitentiaries. Half a million families were destroyed by the Inquisition, and it cost Spain two million children!”
And concerning the present day restrictions and persecutions in Spain he says:
“Let it never be forgotten that this is the heritage of the Roman Catholic Church, the end result of the dread Inquisition in a country that never knew Reformation” (September, 1959).
Small wonder it is that the Protestant population of Spain is almost infinitesimally small! And yet in spite of all of these persecutions and abuses, the Protestant United States continues to pour into Spain great sums of relief money as well as supplies distributed by voluntary relief agencies. Under the Eisenhower administration nonmilitary aid has been at the rate of more than $200,000,000 a year (Church and State, September, 1959). The United States maintains military bases in Spain, and the military aid has been vast and varied. Our governmental officials know of the abuses practiced there—such have been called to their attention many times. The clerical-fascist government of Spain has been bankrupt for years, and has been able to survive only because of American aid. The United States, therefore, has been responsible for its continuance. Back of this policy, of course, is the political influence of the Roman Catholic Church on our government in Washington. This American branch of the Roman Church is not only a friend of the Franco regime, but is an integral part of that world system which makes such regimes possible and supports them.
7 Italy, Yugoslavia
In Italy there are approximately 300,000 Protestants in a population of 50,000,000, a ratio of about 1 to 165. The Inquisition there, too, did its work almost as ruthlessly as in Spain. Since the Second World War, Protestant work in Italy has increased to some extent. The new Italian Constitution, adopted under pressure from the western democracies after the Second World War, declared for freedom of religion. But practical considerations, primarily the power of the Roman Catholic Church, have made it ineffective much of the time. However, in 1958 there were two different court decisions which were favorable to Protestants. The Constitutional High Court, Italy’s highest tribunal, invalidated a provision in Italian law which made it necessary to secure a government permit to operate a house of worship such as was required under the concordat that was signed between Mussolini and the Vatican and which had been continued in force ever since. And in another case a complaint had been brought by Roman Catholic owners of an estate against three Protestant tenant farmers who had refused to permit a local priest to bless their cattle. The court decision was in favor of the defendants, and declared: “If a citizen associates himself with another citizen of different religious creed he must not force on him the rites of his own faith with regard to things that concern both of them.”
Protestants in Italy have found it almost impossible to establish schools for their children even in the primary grades, despite the desperate need for schools throughout the country. Before the 1958 decision Protestants were not allowed to put signs on their churches designating them as such.
To post such signs was an illegal “public display” of religion, and the police promptly tore them down and arrested the people responsible.
On the other hand, within the Roman Catholic Church early in 1960, a new “constitution” for the diocese of Rome was proclaimed by Pope John XXIII tightening the ecclesiastical discipline for both priests and laymen. This is the pope’s own diocese, and its provisions usually are followed in other dioceses throughout the world. Among other things it forbids laymen to join or vote for political parties or persons disapproved by the Roman Church, under threat of excommunication; forbids them to enact any laws detrimental to the Roman Church; and makes them liable to excommunication if they support doctrines or ideas in the press or publicly which differ from those of the Roman Catholic Church.
In Italy remarks concerning the pope which the Vatican considers “slanderous” are punishable by law. Article 297 of the Italian Penal Code provides sentences up to three years for “whoever on Italian territory offends the honor and prestige of the head of a foreign state”—the pope in Vatican City qualifies as the head of a foreign state. In December, 1960, an Italian newspaper editor was given a five-month suspended sentence for asserting that the pope and the hierarchy had acted unconstitutionally by interfering in Italian civil affairs when its daily newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano, upheld the right of the Roman Church to “guide the faithful” through ecclesiastical directives concerning political affairs.
In Yugoslavia there occurred during the Second World War one of the cruelest episodes in history, in the massacre of Eastern Orthodox Serbs by Roman Catholic Croats, in an effort to make the province of Croatia solidly Roman Catholic. So hideous were the massacres that they surpass even those of the Duke of Alva in the Netherlands and those of St. Bartholomew’s day in France. Most astonishing was the manner in which those crimes were ignored or hushed up at the time by the news services even in the United States, although similar massacres of Jews in Germany were given the widest publicity— another demonstration of how subtly and efficiently Roman clericalism exerts its influence over the press and radio. But now a French author, Edmond Paris, who was born a Roman Catholic, has told the story in his fully documented books, The Vatican Against Europe (1959, translated 1961) and Genocide in Satellite Croatia (1959, translated 1960). Another French author, Herve Lauriere, also a Roman Catholic by birth, has recorded the same events in his Assassins in the Name of God. Both Paris and Lauriere put the responsibility squarely on the priests of the Church of Rome.
By way of background, after the First World War the Roman Catholic states of Croatia and Slovenia were united with the Eastern Orthodox state of Serbia to form the nation of Yugoslavia. Croatia had approximately 5,000,000 Roman Catholics and 3,000,000 Eastern Orthodox. At once the Croats began to intrigue against the Serbs. Terrorist Ustashi bands were organized. They received support from Mussolini, who financed them. When king Alexander I of Yugoslavia visited France in 1934, he was assassinated at Marseilles. The leader of the gang was Ante Pavelich, who escaped to Italy where Mussolini gave him protection and refused to surrender him to the Yugoslav government although he was convicted of the crime in both French and Yugoslav courts.
When in 1941 the Nazis invaded Yugoslavia, the Croats, with Pavelich as their leader, joined them. As a reward Hitler made Pavelich the puppet head of the new “Independent State of Croatia.” His minister of religion was Andrija Artukovic, another Roman Catholic. Then began a war of suppression or extermination of all Serbs and Jews. Nearly 10,000 of the 80,000 Jews in the new state were killed or forced to flee, their property being confiscated. Official records and photographs show that Pavelich and Archbishop Stepinac were closely associated in governmental, social, and ecclesiastical affairs. Stepinac was appointed supreme military apostolic vicar of the Ustashi army led by Pavelich. He was, therefore, in a position to know of the atrocities that were constantly taking place.
In May, 1941, after innumerable massacres had been committed, Pavelich went to Rome and was received by Pope Pius XII, and on the same occasion signed a treaty with Mussolini. In June of that year more than 100,000 Orthodox Serbian men, women, and children were killed by the Ustashi. In all some 250 Orthodox churches were destroyed or turned over to Roman Catholic parishes and convents. Documents requesting and authorizing such transfers are now in the state prosecutor’s office at Zagreb and Sarajevo, bearing the signature of Archbishop Stepinac. In February, 1942, a Te Deum was sung in Stepinac’s church in Zagreb, the then capital of Croatia, with special honors paid to Pavelich. In a pastoral letter Stepinac declared that in spite of complexities, what they were seeing in Croatia was “the Lord’s work,” and called on his priests to support Pavelich. Stepinac twice visited Pope Pius XII, in Rome, in 1942. He reported that 244,000 Serbs had accepted (forced) conversion to Roman Catholicism. So the pope, too, was well informed as to what was going on in Serbia and Croatia. Edmond Paris places the total number of men, women, and children killed by the Ustashi during the four years of the occupation at more than 500,000 (The Vatican Against Europe, p. 224).
When it became necessary for the Nazis to retreat from Yugoslavia, Pavelich, Artukovic, and almost all of the Roman priests went with them. After the war ended Yugoslav courts sentenced Stepinac to sixteen years imprisonment for his Nazi-Fascist collaboration. After serving five years he was released, but was kept under house arrest. The pope, however, rewarded his services by naming him a cardinal. Until his death in 1960, he was played up in Roman Catholic circles, particularly in the United States, as a “martyr,” even to the extent that Cardinal Spellman, in New York, named a parochial high school after him.
Pavelich again fled to Italy, where for some time he lived in disguise as a monk in a monastery, and later escaped to Argentina. Artukovic too avoided capture, and eventually entered the United States under a false name and with a forged certificate of identity from Southern Ireland, and settled in California. Both Pavelich and Artukovic successfully resisted all efforts of the Yugoslav government to extradite them as war criminals. Pavelich eventually returned to Spain, where he died in 1960. Los Angeles newspapers reported that through two court trials the principal support for Artukovic to prevent his extradition came from the Roman Catholic Church, of which he had been a lifelong member. So reads another chapter of church-state intrigue as dark as any played out during the Middle Ages. Let it also be noted that both Hitler and Mussolini were Roman Catholics, but that despite their crimes against humanity neither was ever excommunicated, nor even severely censured, by the Roman Church.
8 Latin America
The most glaring example of persecution in our western hemisphere in recent years, and continuing to some extent to the present day, is found in the nation of Colombia. There a reactionary government with the support of the Roman Catholic Church came into power in 1948. A concordat was signed with the Vatican, under which severe restrictions were placed on Protestants. Sixty percent of the country was declared “mission territory” and closed to Protestant work of any kind. During this period 116 Protestants have been killed, 66 Protestant churches or chapels have been burned or bombed, and over 200 Protestant schools have been closed. (Report of the Evangelical Confederation of Colombia, Bulletin No. 50; June 26, 1959). Protestants, however, have refused to acknowledge the validity of the concordat, because certain features of it are in open violation of the Colombian constitution, and it has never been submitted to the congress for ratification as is required by law for all treaties with foreign powers. Evidently its supporters doubt that they could secure ratification. But the course that has been followed by the Roman Church in Colombia in recent years seems to have had the full approval of the Vatican, for the archbishop of Bogotá was promoted to cardinal by Pope John XXIII in December, 1960.
Originally all of Latin America was intolerant toward Protestantism. But during the past fifty years the area as a whole, through more or less open conflict with the Roman Church, has been moving toward religious freedom. Some of the countries now have almost as much freedom of religion as is found in the United States. Practically all of the Latin American nations, following the example of the United States, have written into their constitutions articles guaranteeing freedom of religion. But the continuing power of the Roman Church often makes their enforcement impractical or impossible. About half have separation of church and state. In general the people are proud of this liberalism and resent the machinations of the reactionary minority which in some areas is trying to restore the old order.
Almost invariably the anti-Protestant demonstrations and riots that have taken place have been incited or led by local priests. In some areas the priests have undue influence with the civil officials, police, editors, and radio executives, and too often it happens even yet that the most powerful man in a Latin American town is not the mayor, nor the chief of police, but the Roman Catholic priest who controls them both. But the Roman Catholic people, if left to their own desires, prefer to live in peace with their Protestant neighbors. One telephone call from the pope could put an end to all of the harassment, slander, and opposition on the part of his priests within an hour if such were his desire. But no such call ever comes. The responsibility for continued persecution rests squarely with him.
For the most part the masses of the Latin American people, sensing the superstition and sham connected with the only kind of religion that they have ever known, have forsaken it and have become largely agnostic to all religion. The laboring class has become largely anti-Catholic, as have also the educated classes. The colleges and universities, though few in number, are largely independent and impartial as regards religion. As even North American Roman Catholics know only too well if they are willing to admit it, the Latin American Roman Catholic Church has proved to be one of the major spiritual derelictions in the history of Christianity.
In colonial days the Roman Church became a powerful political force. Vast amounts of land and wealth came into its hands, and complaints were often heard about the excess accumulation of wealth on the part of the clergy. The Inquisition was transplanted to Latin America—the original “Gestapo,” as John Gunther calls it—and every movement of the mind toward new truth and greater freedom was immediately crushed out. Clerical politicians helped maintain the hold of the church on the masses, while the church in turn supported their ambitions. With few exceptions the Latin American dictators have been aided by the church, and in turn have given their support to it. These are simply the facts of history, part of the heavy impedimenta under which Latin America began her struggle toward freedom.
For years the Roman Catholic hierarchy in the United States, through the power that it was able to exert on our government and through the press and radio, carried on an aggressive campaign to discredit Protestant mission work in Latin America and to deprive American Protestant churches of their right to carry on missionary work there. They sought to create the impression that such missions were not needed and not wanted by the people. Strong pressure was brought to bear on the State Department to refuse passports to Protestant missionaries, while at the same time every facility was placed at the disposal of Roman priests and nuns who applied for such passports. Repeatedly Protestant mission board secretaries tried to find out why their missionaries were discriminated against. This was particularly the situation in the 1930’s and 1940’s, during the Roosevelt and Truman administrations. But fortunately Protestantism is now making progress in almost all parts of Latin America. A new day is dawning for the church in most of those lands. The old feudal system, with its few large land owners and the poor peasant masses, is crumbling. A new middle class is emerging.
Many Latin Americans find it difficult to understand why the United States took part in the destruction of the Spanish Republic in the late 1930’s, why it refused to sell supplies to the legitimate nationalist government and by so doing enabled Franco, with help from Mussolini and Hitler, to overthrow that government. They also find it hard to understand why so often our influence has been on the side of the dictators in the Latin American republics instead of following the principles that inspired the democratic founders of our nation. It became almost a fixed policy for this nation to appoint Roman Catholic ambassadors and consuls to represent it in Latin America. Such men obviously were unfitted properly to represent a Protestant nation in its dealings with other nations. In this connection both Mr. Roosevelt and Mr. Truman showed themselves very responsive to Roman Catholic pressures. Mr. Roosevelt, for instance, in defiance of public opinion, appointed a personal representative to the Vatican, with a $12,000 a year allowance. And Mr. Truman proceeded to nominate an American ambassador to the Vatican, receiving, of course, an ambassador in return, and to have congress make that a permanent diplomatic arrangement. But the plan was defeated in the Senate. It is difficult to explain to our South American neighbors the machinations of the Roman Catholic Church in Washington and why the hierarchy should have such a big influence in our government. But certainly it is not unreasonable for them to expect that our foreign policy would reflect those principles of religious and civil liberty which have contributed so much to this nation’s greatness.
Actually the competition that the Roman Catholic Church in Latin America has received from Protestantism has been a stimulus to it. When it held a monopoly as the state religion in most of those countries and other churches were excluded, it stagnated and decayed. But as has been the case in the United States where it is faced with an alert Protestantism, in recent years it has been forced to give better service, to build more and better schools and hospitals, and to provide better trained priests and nuns. In many Latin American countries two thirds or more of the priests regularly have come from Spain. Separation of church and state, though strongly opposed by the Roman Church, has been for it a blessing in disguise both in the United States and in Latin America.
Ask the average thoughtful Latin American, “What is Latin America’s most serious problem?” and the answer usually is: “The spiritual problem.” Far from opposing Protestant missions, most Latin Americans welcome them and see in Protestantism many elements that they desire for their own religious life but which they do not find in Roman Catholicism. Many of them have reacted bitterly against a religion based on ignorance and superstition, and realize that what their people desperately need is a religion that is more than formalism, a faith that issues in purity of life and in strengthened moral character.
George P. Howard, in his book, Religious Liberty in Latin America, written a generation ago, said:
“Nowhere is Christianity so devoid of inner content or real spiritual life as in Latin America. There is a vast difference between the Latin American Catholic Church and the Roman Catholicism of Northern Europe or North America.”
And then he adds:
“Never has Christianity had such a magnificent missionary opportunity as was given the Roman Catholic Church in the period of the conquest and colonization of the Indies, as Latin America was then called. The field was wide open, support from the civil authorities was complete, no other rival church was on the ground, there was no opposition. And yet, after four centuries of undisturbed possession, the Christianization of the continent still lags. It is, therefore, no exaggeration to say that Latin America is Christianity’s most shocking failure” (p. 42; The Westminster Press, Philadelphia; 1944).
Concerning the relation of the schools in Latin America to Christianity, Mr. Howard says:
“A very large proportion of the student and educated classes as well as the new middle class, which is just emerging in Latin America, has not been won to Christianity. These people are traditionally indifferent and even hostile to religion. To be religious or to go to church is still the sign of inferiority among the large numbers of the intellectuals. They threw off the shackles of obscurantist religious faith weighted with superstition and they have not yet been shown that a man can be a Christian and preserve his intellectual respectability. Will Durant remarked that ‘the failure of the Reformation to capture France left Frenchmen no halfway house between infallibility and infidelity.’ The reaction in university centers of Latin America against religion and all that was reminiscent of churchly influence was so radical that all forms of academic garb were barred. It is necessary to go to Protestant countries to find the cap and gown in use” (p. 28).
In Colombia, where Roman Catholic persecution of Protestants has been worst during the past 12 years, a recent survey by the Ministry of Education shows that 42 percent of the entire Colombian population is illiterate, that only 44 percent of the children of primary age are enrolled in any school, and that a serious shortage of schools and teachers exists. And yet during these past 12 years the Roman Church, which poses as the guardian of education in that nation, has forced the closing of more than 200 Protestant mission schools. The attitude of the Colombian Roman Catholic Church is: Better an illiterate Colombian than one educated by Protestant teachers.The Director of UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization) has said:
“In 1956, the average level of education for Latin America as a whole did not exceed the first grade; those who did enter school did not stay, on an average, beyond the fourth grade. After the first three years UNESCO, with the grudging support of most of the Latin American governments, could count nearly 25 million children at school (some 19 million still get no schooling at all) and 90 thousand more teachers at work in new classrooms. The major project is scheduled to run until 1968; on the horizon, by the end of the decade, is the goal: Decent primary education for every child in Latin America” (Quoted in Christian Heritage, May, 1961; p. 6).
Commenting on this situation, Stuart P. Garver, editor of Christian Heritage, says:
“The deficiencies of Roman Catholic education are of such a nature that an aroused national spirit retaliates against the Church like a man reacts upon discovering he has been cheated by some slick salesman. … The failure of the hierarchy to educate for responsible exercise of freedom by the people themselves has produced a world-wide pattern of trouble for Catholic education” (May, 1961).
Undoubtedly the present trouble in Cuba is to be explained in part by this very cause. The Roman Church in that island, which under earlier regimes enjoyed a favored position and which always has had control of education, sensed that change in the political and social areas threatened its position. It opposed the revolutionary movement and encouraged student demonstrations against it. Castro in turn took over the schools and carried the movement over into Communism—a not unfamiliar pattern where the people have known no church other than the Roman. Castro himself is a member of that church, as are 90% of the Cuban people. By a strange anomaly Roman Catholicism fights Communism, but, because of the ignorance and poverty that develop in Roman Catholic countries, has itself become a seedbed for Communism. On more than one occasion this has proved to be a serious embarrassment for the hierarchy.
And yet in both Europe and Latin America our government officials, in a more or less open bid for the Roman Catholic vote in this country, have been backing dictatorial and oppressive governments with generous American aid. Dee Smith stated this problem well when he wrote that we have…
“…a State Department which deliberately backs with American tax dollars the Roman Catholic party in foreign countries against much more liberal and democratic non-Catholic elements, a State Department which sanctions with silence outright tyrannies, pouring millions into countries where persecution of Protestants is in full swing while exacting no promise whatever that such persecution will cease. In fact, our State Department takes a position which cannot fail to be recognized by both persecutors and persecuted as tacit endorsement of religious persecution” (Christian Heritage, May, 1960).
9 Contrast between the British-American and the Southern European-Latin American Cultures
How are we to explain the glaring contrast that over the centuries has developed and which continues to manifest itself so prominently between Protestant and democratic Britain and the United States on the one hand and the Roman Catholic countries of southern Europe and Latin America on the other? The former are known for the stability of their governments, the latter for the ease and rapidity with which they overthrow their governments. Mr. Howard has given an explanation that is for the most part unknown even to Protestants, but which we believe lies at the very heart of the matter. He first calls attention to the difficulty that the people in southern Europe and Latin America have even today in governing themselves, and points out that the political institutions in those countries are largely servile copies of Anglo-Saxon models. A constitutional monarchy such as existed for a time in Spain and Italy, the republics of France and Portugal, or the federal governments in Latin America are only imitations, and poor ones at that, of the constitutional forms found in Great Britain and the United States. The Anglo-Saxons have been able to carry forward and strengthen political institutions which the Latins have found almost unworkable.
“The Latins and the Anglo-Saxons,” says Mr. Howard, “have followed two different traditions whose synthesis has never yet been accomplished. The one is the Greco-Roman classic tradition. The other is the Hebrew-Christian tradition. The democracies were the product of Christianity. The classic tradition made no contribution. Democracy did not exist in the Greek republics. They were true aristocracies, or oligarchies, composed of a minority that exercised authority over a great mass of slaves on whose labor that handful of citizens lived. Even less democracy can be found in the imperial tradition of Rome.
“Democracy has existed, and can exist, only among men who believe in but one God, in human equality and fraternity. A political democracy has never yet appeared outside of the bounds of Christianity nor will it prosper where ‘personal religion’ is unknown.
“The seed of Christianity fell among the Latin people of Europe and with the development of this new spiritual leaven, a movement toward democracy was started. Then came the Renaissance with the powerful resurrection of interest in the Greco- Roman pagan culture and ideals. The pagan aspect of the Renaissance never reached the northern countries of Europe with much strength. But southern Europe fell under the spell of the new culture. No enthusiasm was felt in the northern countries for the pagan aspects of the Renaissance hence it never took such deep root. The Renaissance had the tragic effect in the Latin countries of killing the incipient movement toward democracy which Christianity had started.
“In the northern countries Christianity was able to continue its quiet work. Thus the Reformation appeared, and we must not forget that, just as the Renaissance meant the coming to life of the old paganism, so part of the deep significance of the Protestant Reformation lies in the fact that it was a strong protest against the pagan elements that were so powerfully leavening life in the countries of southern Europe.
“As a reaction against this pagan tendency of their day, some great spiritual personalities appeared in Latin countries, but they constituted only a small majority. The trouble with Latin America is that neither the saving influence of these great Latin mystics nor the invigorating breezes of the Reformation ever reached its lands. Only the spirit of the Renaissance, the materialism and vanity of a superficial culture, reached South America. The vast majority of those who landed on the shores of the southern continent were dominated by the sensual pagan influences of the Renaissance. The settlement of the continents of North and South America thus assumed widely divergent patterns” (pp. 103-105).
To the same effect an editorial which appeared in the great daily, La Prenza, in Buenos Aires, in October, 1943, summarized these two different historical trends and interpreted them:
“Let it not be forgotten that the stream of immigration that flowed toward the northern continent was entirely spontaneous. In lands that fell to the Spanish crown immigration was of a totally different sort. To North America went groups of settlers who on their own initiative left their native lands seeking freedom, and above all freedom of conscience…
“Here on our continent, on the other hand, a different system was established and very diverse also were the effects of three centuries spent under the authority of the mother country. Absolutism characterized the government. Everything that was fundamental was kept under the control of the sovereign with the advice of the Crown Councils. Immigration was limited only to those of Hispanic origin and those who professed the religious faith which not only dominated the Spanish peninsula but which excluded all other faiths. Education was so completely neglected by the government that at the commencement of the 19th century the number of literates among the population was very scarce.
“The influence of all these diverse factors weighed heavily on our slow and painful social and economic revolution, which never went very far beyond the most rudimentary conditions. Thus poorly equipped were we on the eve of our struggle for independence.
“There we have the great results of the two different policies; the one held liberty as its norm, the other exercised its greatest zeal in suffocating the most elementary manifestations of liberty.”
Another Latin-American statement emphasizing the religious variance between North and South America was published in America, a liberal magazine in Havana, Cuba (May, 1943). It said:
“As the history of the Americas has developed in two different ways, so there are two different types of Christianity in the new world. Anglo America is a child of the Reformation: Latin America is the product of Catholic sculpturing. … The thirteen American colonies were founded by pilgrims who fled from religious and political intolerance and who reached the shores of America with the purpose of establishing a new society based on respect and liberty for man. Their first governments were pure democracies and a very significant detail is the fact that the first assemblies of those simple austere colonials for the purpose of dealing with the affairs of government were held in the same buildings that served as a place of worship. Such was the intimate relation between their faith and their social and political ideas.
“Latin America is the reverse of the coin. Among us Roman Catholicism has always been incompatible with democracy. During the period of the conquest and in colonial times the official religion served the purpose of weakening the conscience so that the people would more easily tolerate despotism and be more ductile under oppression. Clerical and absolutist Spain employed the physical force of her soldiers and the moral influence of her priests in a perfect partnership which led to the enchaining of these embryonic settlements and their more easy exploitation. Democracy appeared in our lands in answer to the intuitive cry of popular agony and under the inspiration of Anglo-Saxon democracy and the emotional impulse of the French Revolution. In the North democracy was born under the shadow of religion; here, among us, it appeared in spite of religion.”
In these penetrating analyses we have the problem of Latin America. It is the problem of a bad start—religiously, politically, economically, and socially. We may add further that the Spanish Inquisition had the effect of developing a hard, ruthless character, and that this was reflected in Spain’s treatment of her colonies. The Inquisition sanctified cruelty in the service of the church. Having become accustomed to plundering and murdering their neighbors whose orthodoxy was questionable, they did not hesitate to deal ruthlessly and selfishly with their colonists, and particularly with the Indians whose land they had seized. The uncivilized natives could be enslaved and plundered at will. The conquistadors had not been nurtured in a religion that issued in ethical living and moral character. The cross and the sword were supposed to advance together. Usually the sword led the advance. Latin America had a bad start.
We want to emphasize again that the Roman Catholicism that we see in the United States is not representative Roman Catholicism, but a modified form that has been greatly influenced by our ideals of democracy and freedom and which has adjusted itself to life with a Protestant majority. And still more important, it has been influenced by evangelical moral standards. Romanism has the ability to compromise and adjust itself to conditions as it finds them. It has, for example, one form in Spain, another in England, another in France, another in Latin America, and still another in the United States. For the sake of expediency and for the time being it acquiesces in the American principle of freedom of religion, while at the same time working to change this system.
We call particular attention to two facts, mentioned earlier: (1) every Roman Catholic nation in the world today is bankrupt; (2) every Roman Catholic nation in the world today is looking to Protestant United States for help, in the economic, social, educational, and financial spheres. We submit, therefore, that in view of the incomparably greater progress that this nation has made through the relatively short 186 years of its national existence, with a free church in a free state, surely the logical course would be for the Roman Catholic nations to follow our example and grant full freedom of religion to their people, not for us to follow theirs in granting a religious monopoly to one church and in denying freedom of religion to the people.
In the United States our Constitution clearly forbids any establishment of religion. That clearly means separation of Church and State. On June 28, 1971, the Supreme Court in two related cases strongly reaffirmed that position as regards State aid to Church schools, by decisions of 8 to 0 and 8 to 1. Fortunately in this country we have never had a tax on religion or a tax for religion. We want to keep it that way! No man should be taxed to promote another man’s religion.
One of the most effective ways to establish a Church is to finance it. That may be done either directly or through its projects. If the people of a Church will not support its projects, then clearly those projects should be dropped. Surely when a Church has to call in the sheriff and resort to force to collect its money, it is in effect if not in reality a spiritually dead Church and is not worthy of support.
We submit further that as regards our western hemisphere, what Latin America needs more than anything else is not more foreign aid from the United States, nor more priests from Spain and Portugal, but a change of religion, specifically a change to evangelical Christianity; and that not until such a change takes place can there be substantial and permanent progress in those nations.
(Continued in Chapter XIX A System Tested by its Fruits.)
All chapters of Roman Catholicism By Lorraine Boettner
