Reading Time: 542 minutes

Chapter XXIV. The Church and Literature.

It is of the highest importance that the papal interpretation of the decree of infallibility should be understood. This can be ascertained only by obtaining information from authoritative sources, from those who bear such relations to the pope as entitle what they say of the intentions and purposes of those charged with the administration of Church affairs, not merely at Rome but elsewhere throughout the world, to the highest consideration. In the absence of any direct avowal sent forth from the Vatican, the next best evidence is embodied in the papal literature, manifestly provided to explain the character of such teachings as it is designed to introduce into Roman Catholic religious schools in the United States, and into our common schools, provided Mgr. Satolli should make his mission here a success. The conscientious “searcher after truth”—whether Protestant or Roman Catholic—will find himself well rewarded for whatsoever labor he may expend in this method of investigation. If he be a Protestant, he will see that all the principles of Protestantism, religious and civil, are threatened; and if he bea Roman Catholic, not belonging to the ecclesiastic body, he will be likely to discover that his silence is construed by his Church authorities into acquiescence in _politico-religious opinions which his conscience repudiates and condemns.

During the progress of the Italian revolution in 1868, a work appeared in Italy from the pen of P. Franco, wherein the relations between the Church and secular Governments, as well as individuals and communities, were elaborately discussed. This work was evidently authoritative, and if it did not have the special approval of Pius IX, it undoubtedly had that of those high in position at the Vatican. It had two controlling objects: First, to check the revolution, and to bring the Italian people into a proper state of obedience to the pope, as a temporal monarch with absolute authority; second, to prepare the way for the acknowledgment of the infallibility of the pope, which was then in contemplation. It failed in the first, because that involved the, civil and political rights of the Italian people, which they had determined not to leave longer under the dominion of irresponsible monarchical power; and aided, it is supposed, in accomplishing the second, because it was asserted and believed that it had reference only to matters of religious faith. At all events, the passage of the decree encountered no direct resistance from the Italian people, as it would undoubtedly have done if they had supposed it intended to counteract and destroy the influences of the revolution, in so far as they affected their political rights.

After the decree was passed, it was considered important that this work of Franco should be translated into the English language, so as to bring all English-speaking Roman Catholics to the point of accepting papal infallibility, both as an accomplished fact and the only true religious faith; and to convince them of the enormous sin they would commit by refusing todo so. Lord Robert Montagu, a Roman Catholic member of the British Parliament, became the translator, following the original, as far as he considered it expedient, upon points of religious doctrine, and adding some reflections of his own. It was published in London in 1874— four years after the passage of the decree—in order to create English opinion in favor of the restoration of the temporal power of the pope, and the recognition of his infallibility. This work has 428 pages, almost every one of which contains assertions designed to prove that the spirit of the present progressive age is offensive to God, and that mankind can be saved from eternal perdition in no other way than by conceding to the pope the universality of dominion which it claims for him, and which, if granted, would over turn every Government existing in the world, and, first of all, the present Government of Italy. It is almost impossible, within a reasonable compass, to explain anything more than his general ideas, and such of these only as are intended to show how the powers and authority of the Church and the pope—made equivalent terms by the decree—are viewed by those whose position and character entitle them to speak knowingly and authoritatively. For the want of such information as this volume, and others of the same kind, contain, multitudes of good-intentioned people, both Protestants and Roman Catholics, are misled.

He attributes the present “spread of false principles,” now prevailing in the progressive nations, to two causes: First, “modern civilization;” and second, “freedom of conscience,” or “the right of private judgment.” He considers all who “respect every religion” as guilty of “formal apostasy;” and says that “Catholics certainly are intolerant, and so they ought to be,” because “if a Catholic is not intolerant, he is either a hypocrite, or else does not really believe what he professes.” He insists that when a contest shall arise “between an ecclesiastical and a lay authority, the Church knows infallibly that it belongs to her to determine the question,” not only over “spiritual matters,” but “whether the point in dispute be a spiritual matter, or necessarily connected with a spiritual matter.” Hence he argues, in explanation, that “therefore the temporal authority must be subordinate to the spiritual; the civil authority, and its rights and powers, must be placed at the absolute disposal of the Church;” that is, the State must obey the pope in whatsoever he shall command or exact. Consequently, says he, “the Church, whose end is the highest end of man, must be preferred before the State; for all States regard only a temporary or earthly end. If, then, we have to avoid an imperium in imperio, it is necessary that the temporal State should give way to the eternal Church;” that is, the laws of the Church must be obeyed before those of the State. He is careful to designate the duties of a secular Government like ours as follows: ” Let it look to the civil and criminal laws, its army, its trade, its finance, its railways, its screw-frigates, and its telegraphs; but let it not step out of its province, and, like Oza, put forth its hand to hold up the ark of God.” To make the Church free, the pope must be absolutely independent, and not “in the power of any Government—with the control of education, and the right to “administer and dispose of her own property.’” Referring to a free Government, such as that of the United States, he says: “A State which is free from the Church is an atheistical State; it denotes a godless Government and godless laws, . . . which knows nothing of any kind of religion, and which, therefore, determines to do without God.” In order to avoid confusion, the State must be subordinate to and dependent upon the Church, because, “by separating Church and State, you cut man in two, and make inextricable confusion,” and because also “a separation of Church and State is the destruction both of the State and the religion of the people.” And so he argues that “the State can not be separated from the Church without commencing its decadence and ruin;” wherefore “the State must obey the legitimate authority of the Church, and be in subordination to the Church, so that there may be no clashing of authorities, or conflict of jurisdictions.”

He fiercely denounces secret societies, such as the Freemasons, but strangely omits the Jesuits, whose proceedings have always been sheltered behind an impenetrable veil. All such as are not favorable to the papal demands he calls the “slaves of the devil,” and represents them as belonging to “the synagogue of Satan,” only for the reason that they do not bow their necks to the pontifical yoke—a method of denunciation as persistently indulged in by such writers, as if Christ had commanded the passions of hatred and revenge to be cultivated, and not suppressed. Referring to the bulls of Clement IX, Benedict XIV, Pius VII, and Leo XII, excommunicating all who show favor to or harbor them, he declares that any oaths they may take are not binding. He does not base this upon the conclusion that they are not authorized by law, and are merely voluntary, but upon the third canon of the Third Council of Lateran, which applies to all oaths of whatsoever character, and provides that “it is not an oath, but an act of perjury, when a man swears to do anything against the Church;” as, for example, our oath of naturalization and allegiance, which requires fidelity to heretical institutions, and the maintenance of the atheistical principle, which requires the State to be separated from the Church.

The “liberty and independence of the pope in his spiritual government,” he makes to mean ““not only the liberty and independence of his own person, but also that of the numerous great dignitaries of the Church who assist him, and of the officials and ministers and employees of every order whom he requires, and who are required by the numerous ecclesiastical institutions which surround him, and which extend their operations over the whole world.” In this extraordinary and pretentious claim there is no disguise—not even equivocation. All appointed by the pope, including a whole army of employees, of every grade, are to be exempt from the operations of the public laws of all Protestant Governments and answerable alone to the pope! Let the friends of popular government mark well the reason for this universality of the pope’s absolute jurisdiction over the world. It is this, that “if any Government were to have jurisdiction over them, except that of the pope alone, or if any Government were able to impede their action, then the pope would have less immunity and freedom of action than an ambassador of the meanest power in the world,” because he could not compel them to obey his laws and commands—that is, the Canon law—instead of those of the State. And he carries this idea of antagonism between the laws of a State and the Canon laws, to the extent of the excommunication of the former for “sanctioning some antichristian principle;” such, for example, as the separation of Church and State, secular education, or civil marriages. In any of these cases, “that luckless State may find itself confronted by the two hundred million Catholics in the world, and the God of armies, who protect the Church!? And because these ““two hundred million Catholics”’—which exceeds the actual number by twenty-five million—do not protest against such vain threats as this, the Church authorities interpret their silence to mean approval, and thus they convert their follies of one day into the infatuation of the next, and finally into positive hallucination. This distinguished author furnishes many additional evidences of this—evidences sufficient to convince any unbiased mind, beyond any ground for reasonable doubt, that the Jesuits obtained complete triumph over the pope, and he over the Church.

All independent Governments claim and exercise the right to regulate and manage their own affairs, and when this right is lost, from whatsoever cause, their independence is brought to an end. Yet this author lays it down as a settled principle of ecclesiastical law that the Church—that is, the pope—possesses the exclusive authority to decide its own jurisdiction over spirituals and temporals. After averring that “the Church alone is competent to declare what she is and what belongs to her,” he affirms the doctrines announced by the celebrated Syllabus of Pius IX, and charges those who do not accept these teachings with renouncing the only true faith. “The pope,” says he, “can not sanction indifferentism or liberty of worship, nor civil marriages, nor secular education; he can not concede liberty, or rather license, of the press; nor recognize sovereignty of the people; nor admit the necessity of the “social evil;’ nor legalize robbery and murder”—thus placing some of the essential principles of our Government upon a level with the most flagrant crimes. He characterizes “the daily paper” as the “common sewer of human iniquities,” and considers popular government such an abomination that the Church must not be silent wheresoever “a false principle—the sovereignty of the people”—shall prevail. Hence, in order to correct these evils and extirpate these heresies, the “priests must enter into politics,” because the Church “has a right and duty to meddle in every question, in so far as it is in the moral order”—giving, by way of illustration, “trade, commerce, finance, and military and naval matters.” If a State shall do anything to hinder the accomplishment of any of the supernatural ends sought after by the Church, it must be reduced to subordination, as “it is the duty of the superior society to correct it.” Hence ““religion must of necessity enter into politics, if government is not to become an impossibility.” And, surveying the whole field occupied by the modern nations, he admonishes society to avoid a republic, and adds: “Let the form of government be a republic, and you will then endure the horrors of the democracy of ’89, or of the Commune of ’71; for a nation will assuredly plunge itself into misery as soon as it attempts to govern itself.”

He devotes a chapter to liberty, in which he says “liberty of thought is, in fact, the principle of disorder and uncertainty, and a license to commit every crime.” He condemns “liberty of speech,” “liberty of the press,” “freedom of worship, religious liberty, or equality of Churches,” and declares that “freedom of worship, or religious liberty, is a false and pernicious liberty.” But being compelled to realize that Roman Catholics are allowed freedom of religious belief and worship in Protestant countries, he finds himself constrained to make an explanation. In doing so, however, he makes a startling exhibition of Romish and Jesuit intolerance, wheresoever the power to enforce it is possessed. What is to follow from his pen should command the most serious attention from all American readers, whatsoever their religion. His book was not written and published under influences favorable to the liberty of the press, but under papal auspices exclusively. It is fairly to be presumed that he was chosen by the proper papal authority for the purpose, and that so far from its having been placed upon the ““ Prohibitory Index” it has the highest papal sanction. He says: “Thus it is that Catholics, in some countries, ask for liberty of education, liberty of worship, liberty of speech, liberty of the press, and so forth; not because these are good things, but because, in those countries, the compulsory education, the law for conformity of worship, the press law, ete., enforce that which is far worse. In the Egyptian darkuess of error, it is good to obtain a little struggling ray of light. It is better to be on a Cunard steamer than on a ra(t, but if the steamer was going down the raft would be pyeferable. So it is relatively good, in a pagan or heretic country, to obtain liberty of worship, or religious liberty; but that choice no more proves that it is absolutely good, and should be granted in Catholic countries also, than your getting on a_raft in midocean proves that every one, in all cases, should do so. Still less does it follow that, because liberty of worship is demanded in Protestant countries, therefore it should be granted in Catholic countries. To deny religious liberty would be contradictory of the principle of Protestantism, which is the right of private judgment. But the principle of Catholicism is repugnant to a liberty of worship; for the principle of Catholicism is that God has appointed an infallible Teacher of faith and morals.” He proceeds, with marvelous complacency, to argue that Protestants have no right to be intolerant toward Roman Catholics, because “they have no business to imagine that truth is on their side,” and “lies and errors have no rights;” but Roman Catholics have a right to be intolerant towards Protestants because truth abides only with them.

The liberty of the press is especially denounced. It is called “the most hurtful of liberties,” and restraints and “checks should be imposed upon the press.” It is condemned as “a crime,” and, it is said, “ there is no right to a freedom of the press.” In order to prove how hard the popes and Councils have struggled to put a stop to “ telling lies in public” by “newspaper editors,” he cites the “strict orders” issued by the Lateran Council, under Leo X, that nothing should be published which the bishops did not approve; and the renewal of these orders by the Council of Trent. He then enumerates the following popes, who prescribed rules and injunctions to prevent these commands from being evaded: Alexander VI, Clement VIII, Benedict XIV, Pius VI, Pius VII, Leo XII, Pius VII, Gregory XVI, the last of whom is represented as saying that “the freedom of the press is ” detestable’ and “execrable;’” and lastly, Pius IX, in the seventy-ninth proposition of his Syllabus.

He expresses the most sovereign contempt for the people and to the principle of fraternity which unites them in a mutual bond for the establishment and maintenance of their own civil and religious liberty. “(As dogs have their bark,” says he, “and “brindle cats’ their mews, as horses have their neighs and donkeys their brays, so have the populace their cries.” He continues: “Dirty democrats overthrow those who are above them, in order to leap into their seats and oppose all other dirty democrats.” ° He condemns the idea of the sovereignty of the people, as it is established in the United States, in the severest terms. Where this maxim prevails, according to him, ““no government would be possible,” because everything would be in “fearful disorder,” for the reason that “men have always lived in submission,” and every society should continue to have “a permanent authority over” it. And as this authority must have its derivation from God, the pope must be this permanent ruler, because he alone represents God. He draws a picture of the people performing the “juggling trick and acrobat feat of functioning the office of sovereign.” He mocks at the “supreme wisdom in the legislation of tinkers;” the ” farsighted prudence in the commands of clodpoles, hucksters, and scavengers;” and the ” docility and readiness to obey in their beer-wrought, undisciplined minds.” Classing all peoples who have established Governments subject to their own will, as included in the false picture he has drawn, he avers “that the people possess no authority, and as they have it not, they can not delegate it.” “The sovereignty of the people, on the contrary, is the origin of every sort of evil, and the destruction of the public good or ” commonweal.’” “The people can not ever understand the principles of justice; they have lost, behind their counters, the little sense of right they had.”

In the chapter from which these extracts are taken, there are a couple of sentences intentionally passed by as worthy of special notice and comment. They are pregnant with meaning, and especially interesting to us in this country, in view of the fact that Protestants are regarded as rebels against the Church, and are, as a class, still held to be within its jurisdiction, and subject, like sheep that have strayed away, to be brought back into the fold again. These questions are asked:

“Tf you refuse to recognize the authority of Christ in the Church, how can you expect your subjects to recognize your authority in the State? If it is lawful for you to revolt from the Church, it must be lawful for others to rebel against the State?”

Whilst this does not openly assert the right of Roman Catholics to revolt against Protestantism and Protestant institutions, it not only suggests, but leaves it to be inferred. Everybody knows that Protestantism was the fruit of a revolt against the authority of the Church at Rome. According to this author, and the teachings of that Church, no just rights were thereby acquired, because none can grow out of resistance to its authority. Consequently, Protestantism has no right to exist, and it is the duty of the Church to reduce it to obedience—that is, to destroy it—whensoever it can be accomplished. Hence the suggestions of the author include two propositions: First, that as Protestantism is rebellion against the Church, it has set an example which may be rightfully followed in rebellion against itself; and, second, that if Protestantism has, by its rebellion against the Church, established civil institutions which the Church considers inimical to itself, “it must be lawful” to rebel against such institutions until they shall be made to conform to the interests and welfare of the Church. Hence, as his theories advance, he denies that any such thing as nationality, as understood by all modern peoples, can have any rightful existence, because “it is opposed to the Church’s precept of submis. sion to lawful authority;° in other words, it is opposed to the right of the infallible pope to ignore all the boundary lines of States, and make himself the sovereign and universal dispenser of the governing authority of the world within whatsoever jurisdiction he himself shall define. In the same connection he condemns the doctrine of non-intervention among nations, and insists that it is their duty to interfere with the affairs of each other, for the reason that “Christian charity commands men and nations to come to the rescue of each other.” “Mutual help,” says he, “is a fundamental duty of Christianity; and therefore non-intervention must be a principle belonging to paganism.” This doctrine is manifestly employed to convince all Roman Catholics throughout the world that it is their duty to bring, not only themselves, but the Governments under which they live, to the point of interfering with the affairs of Italy, by force, if necessary, in order to secure the restoration of the pope’s temporal power. In so far as it applies to the United States it advises that our non-intervention laws shall be disregarded, because, in enacting them, the Government usurped a power which did not belong to it, inasmuch as it tends to results prejudicial to the sovereign rights of the pope. In furtherance of the same idea, he strenuously resists the doctrine of what is known as accomplished facts—what the French call fait accompli; that is, the recognition of the independence and nationality of a Government which has been successful in maintaining itself, as the kingdom of Italy has done, by revolutionary resistance to the arbitrary temporal power of the pope. Therefore, as the present Government of Italy is an “oppressive tyranny,” has acquired no rights, but has shown “only crime upon crime in a never-ending chain of iniquities,” the “old order of things,” with the pope as a temporal monarch, possessed of absolute power to dictate all the laws, should be returned to.”

We must follow this author somewhat farther, because, before closing, he reaches a point absolutely vital under civil institutions like those of this country. He devotes over a dozen pages to “liberal Catholics,” in order to prove that, as the Church must necessarily be intolerant, liberalism is one of the forms of heresy. “To be Catholic with the pope, and to be liberal with the Government, are contradictory characters; they can not exist in the same subject;””because the former involves that which is true, and the latter that which is false, where the civil constitution does not conform to the papal ideas. Such “liberal Catholics” as “put their faith in liberty of the press, representative government, ministerial responsibility, or the like”—as all foreign-born Roman Catholics who have taken the oath of allegiance to the United States have sworn to do—”betray not only an ignorance or oblivion of what is vital to religion, and of the principles which Christianity requires in Governments and constitutions; but also a most false and pernicious opinion.” And in expressing his amazement that there are any in the Church so liberal towards a Government that is entirely secular and not subject to the dictation of the pope, he asks this question: “Is it not a matter of marvel that any one should imagine himself to be a Catholic, while he is liberal with the Government?” He recognizes no authority for the government of society but that of the Church, because conformity to the law of God can be obtained in no other way; and therefore he says: “Tf this idea of authority is contradicted, counterbalanced, or checked in the constitution of a country, then the Government is founded on a basis which is opposed to reason, to nature, and to the Christian faith.” And for this reason, “modern constitutions have therefore put themselves into direct antagonism to the Catholic religion.” ‘ Consequently, he continues, “every honest man, in every country, now sighs out a new prayer to his litany: “From a Legislative Chamber, ” good Lord, deliver us!” He insists that fidelity to the Church consists in the observance of all the dogmas set forth in the Syllabus of Pius IX, and thus enumerates these important propositions contained in it: The 55th condemning the separation of Church and State; the limitation of the rights of Governments declared by the 67th; the liberty of worship condemned by the 77th; the freedom of the press censured by the 79th; civil marriage reprobated by the 65th to the 7Ath; secular education, which is called usurpation, proscribed by the 45th to the 48th; oppression of the clergy denounced in the 49th; and “all the principles of liberalism, of progress, and of modern civilization,” declared in the 80th, “to be irreconcilable with the Catholicism of the pope.”

With a few more brief comments upon “civil marriage,” the “secularization of education,” and the Jesuits, this extraordinary book is brought to a close by admonishing the faithful not to permit their children to receive “a godless education” in such public schools as are authorized by the laws of all our States—because all education should be under the supervision of the Church—and by announcing in serious and solemn phrase, that “Protestantism has filled the world with ruins!

What an extent of infatuation must have incited this last remark! There need be said of it only that, in former times, there were powerful Governments subject to the dominion of the popes, but all these have passed away—not a single one is left. Protestant Governments have risen out of the ruins of some, and are now rising out of those of others of them, and all these are happy, prosperous, and progressive; whilst the pope himself, with the vast multitude of his allies assisting him, is devoting all the power given him by the Church to persuade them to retrace their steps and return to the retrogressive period of the Middle Ages. The author of the work to which so much space has been appropriated, is one of his conspicuous allies, far from being the least distinguished among them; and for that reason the doctrines he has announced in behalf of the papacy have been set forth at unusual length. This having been done, in order that what he has said may be thoroughly comprehended, it needs only to be further remarked here, that, according to what he has laid down as the established religious teachings of the Roman Church, with an infallible pope at its head, it is impossible for any man to maintain those teachings and at the same time be loyal to the Government of the United States. There is no escape from this; but before further comments upon this point, there are other evidences to show how, since the pope’s infallibility was decreed, the lines of distinction between the popular and papal forms of government have been so distinctly announced that it requires very little sagacity to distinguish them, and even less to realize that they can not co-exist in the same country.

A reverend educator attached to St. Joseph’s Seminary, Leeds, in England, has, since the Vatican Council, also entered upon the task of instructing the English-speaking world what are the only relations between civil Governments and the Church which an infallible pope can approve. His views were first communicated through the columns of the Catholie Progress, a periodical of extensive circulation; but they were deemed to be of so much importance and such an essential part of the permanent literature of the Church, that in 1883 they were published in book form so as to assure more general reading. This book, entitled “The Catholic Church and Civil Governments,” contains but little over one hundred pages, and, being in cheap form, has found its way to the United States, where it is expected, of course, that its teachings will inoculate the minds of all the faithful, and furnish instructors to conduct education in religious schools. What it is expected to accomplish will be seen from the following references to its contents.

At the opening of the volume the reader is apprised beforehand of what he shall expect in the way of doctrinal teaching. It is dedicated to the present pope, Leo XIII, who, besides being designated as the vicar of Christ, is addressed as “The Curis ON EARTH!”—not as man, with the faculties and frailties of human nature, but as God himself! Although the author is not represented as a Jesuit, it may well be inferred that he is one, from these blasphemous words, which shock the sense of Christian propriety, and ought to excite indignation in every intelligent Christian mind.

He starts out by assuming that the present pope “is still a king,” and that “he exercises a real authority over his subjects, irrespective of the country to which by birth they belong.” In this he agrees with the Italian P. Franco, and the English statesman Lord Montagu, that the principle of nationality can not be permitted to prevail against the pope in his march to universal dominion—that State lines and even ocean boundaries amount to nothing. Upon this hypothesis he bases the assumption that the Church “is a public society, a kingdom, a divine State,” and possesses “the power of public jurisprudence.” Elsewhere he calls this “external power to legislate;” that is, to pass laws binding the consciences of her subjects, to take means to insure those laws being put in exercise, to be herself the judge of the sense of her laws, to punish them that trespass against the laws, and to bring them into the right path by coercion.” He endeavors, by various modes of statement, to establish the proposition that the Church is “independent” of all civil Governments, until he reaches the point of positively asserting it; assigning as the reason that the “Church is the continuation of the authoritative presence of Jesus Christ in the world.” Turning away, only for a momeft, from the idea of a “universal Christendom ”—unlimited by the separate nationality of States—he draws a melancholy picture of the condition of the world, unless this independence of the Church shall be fully recognized. “Once grant,” says he, “that the Church is subordinate to the civil State, and there will ensue a complete upsetting of the scheme of salvation, an entire submersion of divine truth, a total overthrow—nay, an utter destruction—of the kingdom of Christ.” “She knows that no earthly power can bind her,” nor can she “swear fealty, or own allegiance to any other sovereign,” which propositions he proves by the Syllabus of Pius IX. Hence, he repeats, “The Church is a perfect society, and independent of the State;”” and emphasizes it by declaring ” that the State is in the Church, as a college is in the State.” She has “the right of way. She has the right to enter every kingdom in the world, to set up her tents, to propagate her doctrine, to make subjects, . . . to reign in every corner of the earth,”’ and “to use the weapons most suited to accomplish her object.” She “is bound to use the means most conducive to her spiritual end,” and “the illuminating spirit” that guides her ““shows her the advantage of sometimes making use of temporal means.” Besides fasting, abstinence, excommunication, and interdicts, “even more severe measures have occasionally been found to be very salutary.” She “is justified in using extrinsic coercion whenever it promises to be a help,” according to “the principle of the coercive power,” asserted by Pius IX in the twenty-fourth proposition of the Syllabus. Primarily these coercive measures are to be employed against “only the members of the Church;” but are subject to be employed at the discretion of the pope against all baptized persons. “Once baptized,” says he, then the Church has over them all the rights of a parent.” This includes baptized Protestants, who, by the decree of the Council of Trent, are considered as sheep gone astray, but still within the jurisdiction of the Church.

The Church, he insists, is subordinate to the State in nothing, but the State is “subordinate to and under the guidance of the Church in all matters which touch, even incidentally, upon the moral life of the State.” The State “is bound not to institute any law or sanction any custom which can in any way hinder the Church in gaining her supernatural end,” and “is bound to aid the Church by a material assistance whenever she deems such assistance necessary.” “At the present day there does not remain one truly Catholic State.” But this does not release them from the obligation of obedience to the Church, because the “greater portion of their subjects are baptized,” and “baptism enrolls a man among the children of the Church; and hence, in spite of their denying the claims of their true spiritual Master, they are, as Christian States, still bound by one obligation; namely, to refrain from establishing any law which is against the conscience of their Catholic subjects.” Therefore the Church must “be obeyed by her subjects, with or without the good-will of the civil power.” “The Church has a right to carry out her divine mission in every land, and to do so, if need be, in spite of the civil power.” ” The Church sends her ministers throughout the world,” ” independently of the favor or permission of the temporal powers,” and invests them with “absolute power.” When the pope assigns them a duty, “he gives them a right to carry out that duty in the teeth of every earthly power.” “For the civil power to endeavor to hinder the Church in the exercise of this right is a crime. It is to resist God.”” He claims for the Church the right to go into all the countries in the world, with or without their consent, and ” there to establish and unfold herself, to set up her machinery ” in whatsoever way she may deem expedient.“ “Hence,” says he, “the Church has a right to erect her hierarchy, to set up her tribunals, to hold her synods, to open schools, to found colleges and convents, and especially to be free and unfettered in her communications with the pope. She has a right to spread the faith, and needs not to sue for leave from any earthly power.” “And this right the Church can never lose. It can never become obsolete. No length of time can prescribe against it;” that is, no Government can exist long enough to acquire the right to mature a system of laws which the pope may not rightfully command to be resisted and set aside, when he shall decide that the interests of the Church require it to be done.

Before closing, he treats of the separation of Church and State, and justifies the condemnation of it by Pius IX in the Syllabus, and says that “after such a declaration of the supreme pastor, no true Catholic can hold that politics and religion ought to be utterly separate.” But not content with the authority of Pius IX upon this point, he adds that of the present pope, Leo XIII, whom he represents as having lifted up his voice “to teach the world that, while the Church and the civil Governments are orders distinct in their origin and in their nature, it is the will of heaven that religion lend its aid to the State, and that the State should support religion;” that is, the Church and the State should be united together, and each aid the other in maintaining its authority, so that, by their joint alliance, they should be able to render a Government of and by the people impossible. In order to accomplish this and the other objects pointed out by him, he represents that the Church “brooks many affronts, and suffers many wrongs, and makes herself all things to all men”—as the Jesuits did when they worshiped idols in China, and became Brahmins in India—so that she may bring all nations and peoples under her dominion, and the pope become the ruling power of the world, “independent of all civil Governments,” and “subject to no earthly ruler.”

Thus we have, in plain and authoritative language, a complete portrayal of the only form of government which the pope can approve. If he seems to be reconciled for the time being to any other form, it is merely because it is expedient to do so, so that by being “all things to all men,” in obedience to Jesuit teaching, he may thereby make himself surer of ultimate triumph. Every man who shall take the pains to scan the foregoing evidence will find in it ample proof of the fact—to say nothing about other independent Governments—that the papal system is more antagonistical to the civil institutions of the United States than to any other in the world. Whatsoever professions to the contrary may be put forth, it is a palpable truth, absolutely incontestable, that the fundamental principles of our Government are the subjects of constant and vindictive assault by the papal party—the followers of the pope—in and out of the United States. The framers of our Government secularized it by measures which resulted in separating Church and State, but the pope and his hierarchy, aided by the Jesuits, fling in our faces the accusation that, in doing so, they violated the divine law which it is their religious duty to restore. We have established a nationality of our own, recognized by all the nations of the earth, but they tell us that it possesses no authority to impose the least restriction, by any laws it can enact, upon the power of the pope or his army of ministers and employees within the borders of our own territory. We have guaranteed freedom of conscience, or diversity of religious belief, but they confront us with the charge of heresy on account of it, and openly avow their purpose to destroy this guarantee by employing the combined powers of Church and State to unify their own religion, to the exclusion of all others, by laws above and superior to our Constitution. We have secured freedom of speech and of the press, and have provided for civil marriages, and for the secular education of our children at the public expense; and they tell us that, on account of these and other equally important measures of public policy, we have become a “ godless” nation, living under ” godless” laws enacted for “godless” purposes, and that they have been divinely appointed to perform the holy duty of exterminating all these evils, in order to save us from the destruction inevitably awaiting us on account of them, One is required to give but a single moment to reflection to be assured that if the pope, by the aid of his hierarchy and the Jesuits, shall be permitted to achieve the results for which they are now so anxiously seeking, and acquire such dominion as they desire in the United States, our free institutions must come to an end. They can win success only by our defeat. Papal government can only prevail here when our present civil institutions shall be destroyed.