First published in 2015 for Bible Based Ministries
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IMPORTANT NOTICE:

The author has no objection whatsoever to anyone reproducing this book in printed form for free distribution, provided it is reproduced in full, including the cover, without being altered or edited in any way. His desire is for this book to be as widely distributed as possible. However, anyone wanting to print the book for sale, must obtain permission from the author.

ABOUT THE SOURCES REFERRED TO IN THIS BOOK:

In writing this book, factual information was compiled from a number of sources, which are referred to in this book for documentation purposes. However, reference to a particular source does not by any means necessarily imply agreement with the doctrinal position of the author, nor with every statement in the work referred to.

INTRODUCTION

This is a book about the influence of the Roman Catholic institution over Hollywood during its so-called “Golden Age”, then the waning of that influence, and the frequently open hostility towards Roman Catholicism, in the post-“Golden Age” period. The purpose of this book is to provide evidence of the way in which the Roman Catholic institution pursues its never-ending objective of conquering the world, in particular what could be called the “Protestant world”, by seeking to harness and make use of the most powerful entertainment medium the world has ever known: the movie industry.

This is a battlefield which almost no one recognises as such. The Papacy works through politics; through religion; through international finance; and many other channels to achieve its objective. But Hollywood? Moviegoers have no idea, as they sit munching their popcorn and viewing the films they love so much, that they are being deliberately indoctrinated, subtly, slowly, via the very movies they naively think they are watching solely for entertainment. And this indoctrination is virtually as old as Hollywood itself. Their beliefs, morals, worldviews, are all being shifted, changed, altered; and this is being done gradually, film by film, year by year, decade by decade, without them being aware of it. The morality and religious thought of the western world is nothing like it was prior to the advent of the movies. The harm that has been done, and is being done continuously, by the movie industry can never be fully calculated. But it is beyond all doubt that the movies have played one of the greatest roles of all in the destruction of the morals of the West, and the destruction of the Protestantism of the West as well.

This book provides evidence of how the world’s most powerful religio-political institution, falsely calling itself a “church”, has used Hollywood to promote its diabolical agenda.

During what is (wrongly so, from a moral perspective) known as the “Golden Age” of Hollywood, the American film industry was extremely pro-Roman Catholic, and indeed under Jesuit domination. Rome desired to use the immense influence of movies to promote Roman Catholicism among the masses. And it was very successful at it. It is correct to say, as one researcher did, that the Roman Catholic institution was “the most successful pressure group in the history of the movies”. ¹

But there was another sinister influence in Hollywood as well: Communism. And in the process of time this influence increased and began to displace the Roman Catholic influence in Hollywood, turning the giant movie industry into far more of a pro-Communist, and often vehemently anti-Roman Catholic force.

But it would be a mistake to assume that the mighty Roman Catholic institution just gave up! Throughout the centuries, Rome has advanced, retreated, advanced again. It suffers setbacks from time to time, but never for too long. It always bounces back. It nibbles away, unseen, at its enemies’ vitals, and step by step it works to regain any ground it lost. In Hollywood, the Jesuits deliberately changed tactics and changed sides, and began to support what they had once fought against, much to the consternation and confusion of those Roman Catholics who were of the anti-Communist generation of an earlier period in Roman Catholicism. It can be confusing to anyone trying to follow the subtle, diabolically cunning Jesuit tactics; but unless one grasps what was going on, one can never understand the massive shift that occurred in Hollywood, and also within the “Church” of Rome’s attitude to it.

The situation today is that there are two immensely powerful, competing forces vying for dominance over Hollywood: Communism, often dominated by Jewish Communists, presently ascendant, and Roman Catholicism, once the more powerful of the two in Hollywood but presently in a somewhat weaker position. How long this state of affairs will continue is impossible to say. But we can be certain the Vatican is doing all in its power to once again triumph in Hollywood.

It will become clear to the reader of this book that we do not support Roman Catholic censorship of the movies, even though for a long time this censorship made most of the movies more “moral” than they would otherwise have been. But let it be also clearly understood: just because we do not support Roman Catholic censorship of movies being forced upon everyone in society, this does not mean we support immoral movies! We do not condone any movies that portray sin in a favourable light. We merely refer to these movies by way of illustrating what has occurred in Hollywood through the decades.

There is no excuse for any true Christian to watch sinful movies. Apart from those immoral films which he saw before his conversion, the author did not view the films mentioned in this book. He simply conducted extensive research into them. There is a belief abroad in modem times which goes something like this: “How can you criticise what you have not seen?” But this is false. One does not have to go to a brothel to understand what goes on there, and likewise one does not have to actually view an immoral movie in order to know that it is so, for it is a relatively simple matter to obtain all the necessary information about it from those who made the movie, acted in it, etc. There is something fundamentally wrong with professing Christians becoming film reviewers, going to see every kind of immoral movie so that they can tell other professing Christians not to do so! “I have watched it carefully, and I am here to tell you that it is not a movie which Christians should be watching.” This is hypocritical in the extreme. If a film is immoral, and should be shunned by Christians, then it should be shunned by “Christian reviewers” as well. ² They do not have special grace to resist the temptations they claim to be protecting others from! They do not occupy some special plane above other men. The Bible is clear: “Enter not into the path of the wicked, and go not in the way of evil men. Avoid it, pass not by it, turn from it, and pass away” (Prov. 4:14,15).

Chapter one – The Jesuit use of the dramatic arts

To properly understand the Jesuit use of the dramatic arts, one must also understand the Jesuits themselves: who they are, and what their purpose is. Although this is a huge subject in itself, one of this author’s previous books is entitled, The Jesuits: the Secret Army of the Papacy , ³ which is a concise study of these very issues; and what follows at the beginning of this chapter is taken from that book, to provide the reader with some vital information about the Jesuits and their goals. This information is then followed by the study of their use of the dramatic arts.

The Origin of the Jesuits

The Jesuit Order originated with Ignatius de Loyola, born in 1491, a Spanish basque who became a fanatical Romanist after living a debauched life as a soldier, claiming to have had visions of God and of Mary. He eventually wrote The Spiritual Exercises, which was to become the Jesuits’ textbook.

He founded the so-called “Society of Jesus” in 1534, with a small band of friends. The Roman pope, Paul III, issued a bull approving (and thus officially “founding”) the Jesuits as a religious order of the Roman Catholic “Church”. But here a most important fact must be carefully noted, for it throws such light on the real nature of the Society: Loyola established the Society before it received papal approval! The little band of men who made up the Society at its inception in 1534 vowed to obey Loyola, as the general of the organisation, before they ever went to the pope! It was not Loyola’s original intention to submit his Society to the pope, but only to himself as its general. He had ambitions of his own. Only if he found it absolutely necessary did Loyola intend to seek papal approval for the Society.

Ever since its founding, then, the Society has been totally dedicated, first and foremost, not to the pope, but to the Jesuit General. The Jesuits are a law unto themselves. While outwardly acknowledging the authority of the pope of Rome, their real allegiance is to the Jesuit general. All orders come from the general; even the pope’s instructions are only passed on if the general sees fit. It is not surprising that the Jesuit general came to be known as the “black pope”. ⁴

Naturally enough, when Loyola approached Paul III, the latter had strong reservations. It was not difficult to discern that men swearing absolute obedience to their general would be independent of the Papacy and thus dangerous to it, even though they professed to be submissive to it. Loyola cunningly suggested that the Jesuits also take a vow of obedience to the pope, to go wherever he should send them; and Paul III agreed to this, and sanctioned the Society. ⁵ Yet, in practice, the Jesuits have never taken any notice of this vow. The pope is only obeyed when it suits them.

Their Purpose

What is the purpose of the Jesuit Order? Why does it exist?

It is quite simple: the Jesuits seek to convert the world to Roman Catholicism. ⁶ And in order to achieve this goal, they have not hesitated to use every means, both fair and foul – especially foul. They have not hesitated to lie, cheat, commit murder, or use revolution, if need be, to further their aims. At the very top of their priorities has always been the destruction of Protestantism. For the spiritual conflict must be discerned in all this: Satan’s ages-long war on the Church of the living God. For centuries, Rome has been the centre of Satan’s assault on the saints of God (Rev. 13:7; 17:1-6; 18:24; Dan. 7:25). Through the Inquisition and other means, the devil sought to wipe out the Church of Christ. Then, with the formation of the Jesuit Order in the sixteenth century, a new and deadly weapon was created to be used against biblical Christianity.

Their Indoctrination

The Spiritual Exercises, and the “Constitutions” of the Order, are used in the preparation of Jesuit recruits for their task.

The Spiritual Exercises work on the imagination of the candidate. Various biblical scenes are “relived” in front of him, beautiful ones alternating with frightening ones. His sighs, inhalings, breathing, and periods of silence are all noted down. After a number of weeks of this, he is ready for indoctrination. ⁷

Obedience is absolutely vital to the Jesuit Order. Every Jesuit must be in total obedience to his superior, obeying him without question. In the Constitutions of the Order, it is repeated some 500 times that the Jesuit must see in the general, not a fallible man, but Christ himself! This was said by a professor of Roman Catholic theology. ⁸ In the words of Ignatius: “We must see black as white, if the Church says so.”

The Jesuit probationer is required by the Constitutions to be as a corpse, able to be moved in any direction; striving to acquire perfect resignation and denial of his own will and judgment. ⁹ According to the Constitutions the Jesuit may even sin, if the superior commands it – for sin will not be sin in such a case! ¹⁰ In the “Society of Jesus”, there is a greater authority than the pope, and a greater authority (as far as the Jesuits are concerned) than God Himself – and that is the general. For what God has declared to be sin, the general can declare to be no sin. The Jesuits readily dispense with the laws of God, if it suits them. “Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!” (Isa. 5:20).

It is precisely this type of abominable doctrine that has enabled the Jesuits to commit murders, depose kings, destroy governments, without any fear of divine punishment. “The end justifies the means”, is a fundamental, albeit unwritten, rule of the Jesuit Order. ¹¹

Never has a more fanatical and powerful Society existed upon the earth.

The Jesuits wasted no time, after the pope had approved of the Order, in involving themselves in everything: the education of the young, hearing of confessions, foreign missions, preaching. They went about their work with fanatical zeal.

Through education, they aimed to control the future leaders of society. They particularly sought to gain control of the education of the children of political leaders and other influential people in the upper classes. Through their leniency in the confessional they slithered into the affections of the wealthy and powerful. Through foreign missions, they sought to convert the world to Roman Catholicism.

Through preaching, they championed papal authority and other Roman Catholic doctrines, thereby strengthening the Papacy at a time when it was reeling from the devastating effects of the Reformation. This was known as the Counter-Reformation. The Council of Trent, in the 1540s, was Rome’s answer to the Reformation – and it was dominated by the Jesuits.

And – there was their use of the dramatic arts.

Jesuit Use of Theatre in Europe to Promote Roman Catholicism

Almost from the inception of the Jesuit Order in the sixteenth century, Jesuits were deeply involved in the theatre; and then once it was invented centuries later, in the movie industry as well. They knew that they could use “entertainment” to influence minds and change society itself – and they did. In fact, “The Jesuit stage played an important part in the evolution of the theatre, owing especially to the great prominence given to stage management and production.” ¹² And by the mid-twentieth century it could be said, truthfully: “we meet obvious traces of Jesuit influence in our present-day culture…. many traces of Jesuitic influence also remain in the theatre”. ¹³ These traces must be brought to light.

As early as 1565 – that is, less than three decades after their founding – Jesuits were writing and producing plays to help their students with their diction, gestures, and carriage. ¹⁴ In the Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius Loyola, the founder of the Order, much use was made of drama, so as to impress upon the Jesuit the truths which Ignatius was seeking to convey to all his followers. He desired for the imagination to be as much under his control as all other faculties of the student Jesuit, and he knew that drama could be powerfully utilised for this purpose. ¹⁵

The Jesuits saw the theatre as having a very great purpose in their schemes: to promote Jesuit religious propaganda to the masses! For in sixteenth-century Europe the theatre had begun to break free, to some extent, from what it had been up until then: a tool of the Roman Catholic religion. Roman Catholic religious passion plays and similar-themed theatrical productions were all that the masses had known. But things were changing, especially as stage actors from England began to arrive in Roman Catholic Europe to perform the plays of Shakespeare, and as the crude performances of German strolling players exposed Roman Catholics to the idea that theatrical performances could be used for purposes other than the religion of Rome. In addition, Martin Luther had started to use theatre to promote Lutheranism, and a decidedly anti- Papist drama school was developing in Lutheran Germany. The stage was therefore being increasingly used for both secular and Lutheran purposes. These developments were very dangerous for Rome, which the newly-formed Jesuit Order vowed to fight with all its might. What was needed, they believed, was a “theatrical Counter-Reformation”. ¹⁶ They had to establish Roman Catholic stage drama which would counter the anti-Papist effects of the theatre. They believed what was needed was to give the people quality stage productions that would outshine anything produced by the Protestants or the profane. And so, “Prom the very beginning, the Jesuits sought to fascinate the public with brilliant settings, scenic effects and complicated technical apparatus, and by these means to entice them from the wandering troupes of actors and the Protestant school theatres”. ¹⁷

Most especially, they knew, such stage productions had to appeal to the higher, ruling classes: the king, the nobility, the leading families of each nation. Accordingly they lost no time in establishing what they needed. And indeed, their dramas were noted for their special effects and set designs, which, for that time, were cutting-edge and very intricate. They made much use of dance as well, with ballet masters going from one Jesuit school to another. It was a deliberate strategy to make their own theatre and ballet productions more extravagant than the secular ones, so as to influence people of rank. ¹⁸

And it worked! It worked spectacularly. “Everywhere, large audiences attended the Jesuits’ performances. In Vienna, the number of spectators amounted to as many as three thousand, while, in 1737 at Hildesheim, the city police had to be called in to keep back the public. The effect of the plays which were staged was sometimes remarkable. In Munich once, fourteen important members of the Bavarian court withdrew from public life in order to practice devotional exercises, so strongly were they impressed by the Jesuit play, Cenodoxus” ¹⁹ This was precisely what the Jesuits wanted; and they continued to want it right down into modem times, with the invention of film.

By the mid-seventeenth century, there were 300 Jesuit colleges in Europe, putting out quality dramas for the purpose of promoting Roman Catholicism! ²⁰

Jesuit Use of Theatre in Their Mission Work

The Jesuits were not content with making use of their theatre productions in Roman Catholic Europe. They were zealous, indeed fanatical missionaries, spanning out across the earth to work tirelessly for the great goal of converting the whole world to Roman Catholicism. And they swiftly realised the immense advantages of using plays to attract audiences and impress them with the teachings and practices of Romanism on the mission fields. The power of a visual presentation of Romanism to peoples who had no prior knowledge of it was truly great. Thus at the same time as they were establishing theatres throughout Europe, they were doing the same in such places as India, Japan, Brazil, Mexico, Peru, and Paraguay. The heads of Jesuit missions in these widely-divergent cultures kn ew that it was essential for them to become competent producers, dramatists and theatre managers, and for their pupils in the mission schools to be taught how to be good actors, so as to be used to promote Roman Catholicism via theatrical productions in their societies and cultures.

They were very smart, those Jesuit missionaries. They followed the methods which Roman Catholicism has always used, and which the Jesuits perfected to a greater degree than any others: they would graft their Romanism onto the traditions and cultures of the people they were seeking to Romanize. ²¹ If, for example, the people they were seeking to reach already had their own traditional religious plays, the Jesuits would simply “baptize” these, keeping the structure of the play but “Romanizing” it as far as possible. This has always been Rome’s way: it took the heathen festival of the birth of the sun god and “Romanized” it as “Christmas”; ²² it took the heathen beliefs in a goddess-mother and her child, baptismal regeneration, a purgatory and prayers for the dead, idols, relic-worship, and so much more, changed the names and slightly altered the ceremonies, and in this manner “Romanized” heathenism as a false form of “Christianity”, as far removed from true, biblical Christianity as it was possible to get. ²³

Hindu India, in particular, took to the Jesuit theatre productions with enthusiasm, because drama in India had long been a highly developed art form. Jesuit missionaries were able to report that their plays attracted the poetry-loving Indians more than anything else. In Goa, for example, a stage was set up in the front of the “church” building, and there the pupils of the Jesuits acted out scenes from the life of the Jesuit missionary to India and so-called “saint”, Francis Xavier.

Another country which took to the Jesuit theatre productions was Japan, and again for the same reason – that the dramatic arts were highly developed there, and had been for centuries. The Japanese dramas centred around their gods and heroes, and the Jesuits simply kept the traditional structures of these plays, but replaced the myths with biblical stories. In various Jesuit colleges in Japan, permanent theatrical schools were established.

Likewise in Mexico and Peru, the Aztecs and Incas had made use of much drama in their culture; and once again the Jesuits were able to make much use of drama to teach the doctrines of Romanism. And they were not even averse, in their plays, to portraying the European Roman Catholic conquerors in a poor light! This appealed greatly to the natives. The end always justifies the means, is the Jesuit principle.

Lowering Morals: Changing Tactics to Keep Audiences Coming

The Jesuits realised that there had to be a difference between the plays they produced in Europe and those they produced on their mission fields. In Asia and America, the natives were perfectly content to see the same plays over and over again, and for their content to be lacking in variety. They generally saw no need for improvements to be made. But in Europe, the Jesuits knew that the only way they could retain their influence over the people via their stage productions was to ensure that these constantly improved, and also began to appeal to the worldly tastes of the people.

Originally, they limited their stage productions to religious themes: events taken from the Bible or from Roman Catholic legends. Even when the play was about some historical event, it always contained an allusion to something in the Bible or in Roman Catholicism. And in presenting their version of morality, they would not, for example, mention anything to do with sexual matters, nor would women be permitted to act in the plays, nor would female characters be permitted even if played by male actors. Furthermore, Latin, the language of the Romish “Church”, was always used.

But then the Jesuits came to realise that unless they changed their tactics, they would lose their audiences. So they started to make changes: female characters began to make their appearance in the plays, although still portrayed by male actors; Latin was no longer solely used, with short plays in the national language being permitted; and even in their serious dramas they began to permit a touch of humour for the entertainment of the audience. It was soon found that comedies were far more popular with the people than the classic tragedies. With this in mind, a German Jesuit priest, Johann Baptista Adolph, began around 1700 to write many comedies for school theatres, which were so popular that the Munich Jesuit college in its report to the Jesuit headquarters in Rome stated that there is “no better means of winning over the Germans [to Romanism], of making friends of heretics [Protestants] and other enemies of the Church, and of filling the schools”, than those farcical productions. ²⁴

In France, also, tragedies began to lose ground to comedies, and the three most important Jesuit authors at the time – priests Poree, Le Jay and Ducerceau – concentrated on writing comedies, even though they referred to them as “dramas” or “fables”. And in time the kinds of comedies preferred by actors and people were (very naturally given the fallen nature of men) those with coarse jokes and extempores. How very modem-sounding!

The Jesuits had seen the need to introduce all these elements into their plays; and now, as wandering troupes of actors continued to lower the moral standards and grow in popularity, the priests of Loyola “began more and more frequently to introduce into their pieces secular matters and love tangles; finally, the stereotyped character of the nurse was taken over from the English drama to the Jesuit theatre, and here, as in Shakespeare, she plays unmistakably the part of a shameless matchmaker.” ²⁵ Jesuit leaders at times issued warnings to their underlings producing such plays to be very careful, because of their use of such things as inappropriate love scenes, vulgar jesting, etc. But the Jesuits on the ground well knew the power of them, and the bar was constantly being lowered.

When we examine the Jesuit involvement in Hollywood, it will become clear that the lessons learned centuries ago when producing the Jesuit theatrical plays were applied to the movie industry: the lowering of the perceived moral standards, the introduction of things perceived as borderline morality at the time, etc. Anything in order to maintain control over the industry and to keep the masses coming. This was all the Jesuits were interested in then, and it is all they are interested in today.

Jesuit Use of Other Dramatic Arts

Other dramatic arts attracted Jesuit interest as well, and were incorporated into their use of the theatre to exercise influence over the people.

Opera was one of these. As Jesuit stage productions began to use lyrics and choruses more and more, so the operatic treatment of the chorale was slowly developed, in the forefront of which were the Jesuits of Munich. It was not long before their theatrical dramas became regular oratorios.

In Wurzburg in Germany, in 1617, a Musical Comedy of the Liberation of Ignatius Loyola, Founder of the Society of Jesus, was produced. A few decades later, in Munich, they produced a religious musical drama entitled Philothea, or the Wonderful Love of God for the Soul of Man, Drawn from Holy Scriptures and Set to Delightful Melody. This opera was very popular.

Most of the composers of the Jesuit operas were directors of cathedral choirs, and music teachers at Jesuit schools, although sometimes the Jesuits made use of other musicians, including no less than Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. In 1767, when he was only eleven years old, Mozart was commissioned to compose a Latin opera, to be produced at the Jesuit college in Salzburg. It was called Apollo et Hyacinthus seu Hyacinthi Metamorphosis.

As competition from Italian opera, in particular, increased, putting great pressure on the Jesuits to equal, if not excel, the Italian productions, their stage effects and scenes became ever more elaborate, to hold the interest of the audience. The actors’ costumes were expensive and extravagant. The technical skill they used was truly astonishing for the time. The decorations on stage were extremely elaborate and authentic. Trap-doors were used on stage so as to make ghostly apparitions appear. “Ghosts” rose into the air, “gods” appeared in clouds, machines produced the noise of thunder and wind. The magic lantern was used to good effect to make it appear as if visions and dreams were actually taking shape on the stage. Huge crowd scenes were sometimes used too: battles, marches, processions, angel choirs – all were enacted on the stage, with sometimes up to a thousand extras acting their parts.

Ballet was another art used by the Jesuits. As dance became increasingly popular in the higher ranks of society in the seventeenth century, the Jesuits became increasingly interested in using it in their theatrical productions. For to them, in Roman Catholic countries, the education of the young had always been entrusted. Thus if they were to retain control over the young, they had to interest them in the art of dancing, once it began to become popular among the people; otherwise their influence over the young would wane. And so, dance was introduced into their stage plays, with the French Jesuit priest, Jouvancy, writing: “Place should certainly be found for dancing; it is a worthy entertainment for well-bred men, and a useful exercise for young people.” ²⁶ Ballet soon became a major part of the Jesuit plays, with the era’s most famous dancing masters overseeing the rehearsals and even participating in the Jesuit ballets. This all increased the stature and influence of the Jesuit Order, particularly because dance masters enjoyed a stature and popularity with the people that was the equivalent, in their day, of that enjoyed by movie actors and rock “stars” of today.

Conclusion

Although little realised today, the Jesuit theatre played an important part in the development of theatre as a whole. A number of the most famous dramatists in Europe were educated in Jesuit colleges, and first performed in Jesuit theatres. These were the “stars” of their day. Voltaire was just one who was tutored by a Jesuit who became his friend in later years, the priest Poree.

And this deep Jesuit influence in the theatre is felt to this day! “More often than a superficial examination will reveal, we meet obvious traces of Jesuit influence in our present-day culture… many traces of Jesuitic influence… remain in the theatre”. ²⁷

And thus, with their deep involvement in the dramatic arts almost from their inception, the Jesuits were well set for involving themselves in the twentieth century’s most popular and powerful dramatic art form: the movies.

Chapter two – The Jews create Hollywood

Hollywood Created by Jews from Eastern Europe

Before we can turn our attention to the massive involvement of the Roman Catholic institution in the Hollywood movie industry, and ultimately its stranglehold upon the movies that were made, we have to look at the very creation of Hollywood itself. And when we do so, it becomes immediately evident that Hollywood was the creation of Jews from eastern Europe. It was their industry: “the American film industry, which Will Hays, president of the original Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America, called ‘the quintessence of what we mean by “America,”’ was founded and for more than thirty years operated by Eastern European Jews who themselves seemed to be anything but the quintessence of America. The much-vaunted ‘studio system,’ which provided a prodigious supply of films during the movies’ heyday, was supervised by a second generation of Jews, many of whom also regarded themselves as marginal men trying to punch into the American mainstream. The storefront theaters of the late teens were transformed into the movie palaces of the twenties by Jewish exhibitors. And when sound movies commandeered the industry, Hollywood was invaded by a battalion of Jewish writers, mostly from the East. The most powerful talent agencies were run by Jews. Jewish lawyers transacted most of the industry’s business and Jewish doctors ministered to the industry’s sick. Above all, Jews produced the movies. ‘Of 85 names engaged in production,’ a 1936 study noted, ‘53 are Jews. And the Jewish advantage holds in prestige as well as numbers.’” ²⁸

When one looks at the major empire-builders of the great Hollywood studios, there is no denying it: the evidence is as plain as day. Universal Pictures was founded by Carl Laemmle, a German Jewish immigrant to America. Paramount Pictures was built by Adolph Zukor, a Hungarian Jewish immigrant. The Fox Film Corporation was the work of William Fox, also a Hungarian Jewish immigrant. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, the greatest of all the studios, was headed by Louis B. Mayer, a Russian Jewish immigrant. And Warner Brothers was the work of the brothers Harry, Sam, Albert and Jack Warner, sons of a Polish Jewish immigrant.

When these Jews arrived in America, virtually penniless, they turned their backs on their Eastern European roots, and embraced America wholeheartedly. They rejected their languages, their customs, and for the most part, their Jewish religion. They were Jews in ancestry only, and they wanted to be assimilated into America, as Americans. This was not easy, for at the close of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth centuries, to be a Jew from Eastern Europe was to be an undesirable addition to the American melting pot, in the eyes of many Americans. Jews simply were not wanted, and were made to feel unwelcome. No matter how they tried, they were unable to fully assimilate into mainstream America. But they found that there was one business they could easily enter, and excel in: moviemaking.

At that time, the movie industry was new, and also somewhat disreputable; and these two factors made it possible for Jews to make their mark in the industry, for there were very few barriers to them entering into it and rising up within it. “If the Jews were proscribed from entering the real corridors of gentility and status in America, the movies offered an ingenious option. Within the studios and on the screen, the Jews could simply create a new country – an empire of their own, so to speak – one where they would not only be admitted, but would govern as well. They would fabricate their empire in the image of America…. They would create its values and myths, its traditions and archetypes…. This was their America, and its invention may be their most enduring legacy.” ²⁹

Yes: using what became their vast power over the masses through their movies, these Jews sought to literally mould America into their image. As we shall see, they were restrained from doing so as much as they would have liked by the domination of their Hollywood by Roman Catholic censorship throughout its “Golden Age”; but even so they did their best to portray an America on the big screens of the world that was not, often, the real America, but rather an America they visualised.

In aiming to fashion this America of their own making, they worked hard to re-create American values, traditions, etc., in their image. And although, as we shall see, throughout Hollywood’s “Golden Age” it was the Roman Catholic image of America that predominated, the Hollywood Jews nevertheless did succeed – in uneasy alliance with American Romanism, and then with more freedom once Roman Catholic domination ceased – to move America along a particular path. Today, the values and traditions of America are far, far removed from that of their great-grandparents’ generation; and America is infinitely the worse for it. Morally, America has collapsed; and ideologically, it has swung to the extreme left. And this, to a massive extent, is the result of what Hollywood succeeded in doing: changing the very values, outlooks, ideologies, traditions and morality of the American people. And of the world.

In a very real sense, “they colonized the American imagination.” “Ultimately, American values came to be defined largely by the movies the Jews made. Ultimately, by creating their idealized America on the screen, the Jews reinvented the country in the image of their fiction.” ³⁰ For one thing is absolutely true: “The people who peered at the flickering shadows in the peep shows and nickelodeons at the beginning of the twentieth century didn’t realize that they were participants in an experiment that would revolutionize the way Americans spent their leisure time.” ³¹ And not just Americans, but the whole world. Who could have imagined that those silent, black and white, grainy early picture shows would become the dominant entertainment-idol of the world within a few decades? Perhaps the early Hollywood Jews could not see that far into the future, but they certainly discerned that they were onto something. Something big. Something bigger, perhaps, than anything that had gone before.

Those early Hollywood Jews, also, used their power over the lucrative Hollywood empire to establish themselves as a Jewish aristocracy, with palatial homes and all the trappings of American Capitalism. They always sought to have the best of everything. Their wealth was their way of forsaking their poor Eastern European Jewish roots and being accepted into high-class American Gentile society. They even embraced the Republican Party, viewed as the party of conservatives and Capitalists. And yet they were accused of being Communists. What, then, is the truth?

The truth, as we shall see, is that although that first generation of Hollywood Jews were more often than not Capitalists rather than Communists, they themselves were for the most part very immoral in their lives (despite having their own warped sense of “morality”), and the movies they made were used for the purpose of lowering the morals of America, which played into the hands of the Communist movement; and thus Hollywood did promote certain Communist goals even when it was under the control of the first-generation Jews, for although their political ideology was Capitalistic their morals were far from conservative or in accordance with Protestant America. And then also, as time went by the later generations of Hollywood Jews were, certainly, all too often outright Communists or Communist sympathisers, causing Hollywood to take a far more radicalised turn to the left. All this will become clear as we proceed.

Paramount Pictures

Adolph Zukor, who would build Paramount Pictures, was never interested in the Jewish religion, even as a boy being raised by an uncle who was a Judaic scholar, although he was fascinated by the story and the characters of the Old Testament Scriptures. When he came to America he deliberately did everything he could to show that he had no ties to the religion of Judaism at all. He wanted to fully assimilate into Gentile America, and because anything Jewish would mark him as different, he dropped it all.

When he got into the infant movie industry, Zukor’s desire was to make quality feature films, artistic films, because he believed this was his ticket to acceptability in higher-class, genteel America. Politically he was a Republican, and wanted to aim his films not at the working classes, but at the higher classes of American society. He knew that films were generally considered only as suitable entertainment for the working classes and he wanted to change that image of them. And to a large extent he succeeded, doing very well for himself in the process.

In 1910 he bought the rights to exhibit a film on the “Passion Play” in New York and New Jersey, even though he was told it was a very foolish business venture. He knew that a film depicting Christ might, at that time, anger the high authorities of the Roman Catholic “Church” in America, so he proceeded cautiously; but the film did very well financially. Zukor became a real power in the industry, and he enjoyed it. He was ruthless, and once he had his sights set on acquiring control of Paramount Pictures, it was only a matter of time before he did.

Paramount films in the 1920 s and 1930s were sophisticated. Zukor was so convinced of the importance of intellectual upliftment and the part that movies could play in this, that he even set up a school at Paramount for the purpose of teaching young would-be actors decorum, including literature, sociology and sobriety classes. Said a Paramount executive, Walter Wanger: “We were always trying to lift public taste a little bit. Zukor and Lasky were dedicated men who would produce pictures that they thought should be done, even though they weren’t going to be profitable.” ³² But let it not be thought that this meant Paramount movies were moral. “Paramount pictures… didn’t ennoble the audience; they whisked them away to a world of sheen and sex where people spoke in innuendo, acted with abandon, and doubted the rewards of virtue. Paramount’s was a universe of Marlene Dietrich’s smoky come-ons, of Chevalier’s eyebrows arched in the boulevardier’s worldliness, of Mae West’s double entendres sliding out the comer of her mouth, of Gary Cooper’s aestheticized handsomeness, and of the Marx Brothers’ leveling chaos.” ³³ It was, therefore, the purpose of Paramount to create “classy”, sophisticated films, but not moral ones.

Universal Pictures

Carl Laemmle, the founder of Universal Pictures, was a very different character. He opened his first theatre in 1906, and even at that very early period of movie history it was evident that many movies were morally offensive. The movie houses themselves were often viewed as dark places of iniquity – and not without reason. But Laemmle, wanting to change this unsavoury image, deliberately named his new theatre “The White Front” so that even its name would conjure up an image of respectability and good clean family entertainment. Laemmle became very successful financially, and by 1909 claimed, with some justification, that he was the largest film distributor in America.

Laemmle’s success was largely attributable to the fact that he recognised America’s expanding working class and booming immigrant population were on the lookout for cheap entertainment – and the movies were cheap. They were not well made, they were short, they were usually based on incidents from American life and history, but they were cheap. And for immigrants, the movies were a kind of introduction to American life, the life they were trying so hard to assimilate into. In the Jewish ghettoes of New York, the movies were extremely popular.

In 1909 Laemmle decided to enter into movie production himself, promising film exhibitors “the grandest American-made moving pictures you ever saw.” An advertisement declared: “My motto will be: The best films that man’s ingenuity can devise, and the best films man’s skill can execute.” ³⁴ Laemmle’s desire was to make films that would uplift the movie industry, and make it respectable.

By 1913 he was a power within the industry and a wealthy man, earning an estimated $100 000 a year and having a personal fortune of over $1 million. He formed another distribution company and named it Universal, because, he said, the company would be supplying “universal entertainment for the universe.” ³⁵

As studios increasingly gravitated from New York to Hollywood in California, and the studio bosses with them, Laemmle eventually bought a massive mansion in Beverly Hills, California.

He could be brutal too – he once sent a group of thugs to seize the studio of the member of a faction trying to claim control of Universal. But by 1915 Universal was under his control; and as Neal Gabler writes in his history of the Jews in Hollywood, “From this point on, the Jews would control the movies.” ³⁶

Universal films were at one time suggestive and pushed the boundaries, but later they were aimed more decidedly at rural America. Universal became best known for its westerns and horror films in the late 1920s and early 1930s.

The Fox Film Corporation

Turning now to the Fox Film Corporation, we find, once again, a very different type of Jewish character. William Fox was loud, ambitious, and got things done. Once he had his foot in the door of the movie industry, he went from strength to strength. He aimed to provide cheaper entertainment for the masses. And his formula worked: he became a millionaire in a short space of time.

But there was also more to it. Fox, like so many of the other Jews in the movie industry of that time, saw his rise in the industry as a way to climb the social ladder. Fie bought a large estate on Long Island, New York, among the rich Gentile gentry, renamed it Fox Hall, and lived an autocratic life there, lording it over his extended family and demanding absolute obedience from them all. Family members lived in fear of him. And yet, despite his best efforts to assimilate into upper- class American society, he was acutely aware of the fact that he was still a Jewish ghetto boy who made good, and who would never really be fully accepted into the high society he craved.

Fox believed in his own version of God, not in the Judaism of his father; he also believed in numerology, which was divination through numbers. His wife claimed she was psychic, and Fox himself claimed he could enter men’s minds and read their thoughts.

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

Next we turn to Louis B. Mayer. This was a man who wanted to do everything better, and to a greater extent, than anyone else. The studio he would ultimately come to control, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, had to be the biggest, the greatest, and the best.

He obtained a theatre in Haverhill, Massachusetts in 1907, renovated it, and began to show what he deemed good, clean, respectable, family- oriented pictures. He went from strength to strength, acquiring other theatres, becoming wealthy and well-respected in middle-class society. He saw films as a means to inculcate values, and he sought to become a kind of “father figure” in society, something which he sought after all his life.

He formed the Louis B. Mayer Film Company; and then later he and some others formed a company for financing feature film production. This company was first called Metro Pictures (the “Metro” part later becoming the first initial in MGM), and Mayer was president of its New England branch.

As he grew wealthier, Mayer joined a middle-class Conservative Jewish temple, and began to live somewhat more lavishly. He also moved now into movie production itself, not just movie distribution, and relocated – as all the movie Jews had begun doing since 1907 – to California in 1918. By the time Mayer arrived, over 80% of the world’s movies were being made in Los Angeles.

Here he began to hobnob with industrial, political and religious leaders. One of these was the powerful newspaper magnate, William Randolph Hearst – a Roman Catholic. Hearst admired and respected Mayer, and this meant much to the latter. They would talk about all kinds of things, and Hearst would even consult with Mayer about the running of his Hearst Corporation.

This relationship with a prominent Roman Catholic would not be the only one Mayer would cultivate.

At this stage he was not as powerful as other Jews in the industry, but that was soon to change. Marcus Loew, another Jew from New York who owned a long string of movie theatres, bought Metro Pictures, which Mayer had once been connected with, in 1919, and later bought Goldwyn Pictures, which had also been started by Jews. And after negotiations with Mayer, Loew bought Mayer’s studio, and Mayer became vice-president of Metro-Goldwyn. In 1926 it became Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, and Mayer suddenly found himself a major player in the film industry.

He believed in making what he considered were quality films with moral messages. He once told an MGM writer, “I worship good women, honorable men, and saintly mothers.” ³⁷ In this he was different from the other Hollywood Jews – but not too different. It was his own version of morality, after all, and although it was more conservative than the others, that is all that can really be said for it. Mayer believed in the institution of the family, in virtue, and in America. He was a Jew, but a proud American Jew. And he was seeking to fashion the America of his imagination.

He idealised his female “stars”, and at MGM they always had to be depicted so as to make them look as good as possible. The MGM actresses were always to be beautiful or sensual, clever, but also remote and cool: actresses such as Greta Garbo and Joan Crawford personified the MGM “look”. As for the male “stars”, they too were generally cool, sophisticated, well-dressed, as personified by Clark Gable. And yet at the same time, Mayer had a view of America that was more domestic, moral according to his own lights, and down to earth. In many MGM movies of this kind, motherhood was exalted, and children learned from their parents. Mayer, therefore, was a strange mixture: on the one hand wanting to use his films to influence the morality of America, and on the other hand promoting a fashionable, glamorous, idealised view of women in particular.

By the early 1930s, MGM was the greatest studio in Hollywood, thanks in large part to Mayer’s efforts.

Warner Brothers

Turning next to the Warner Brothers studio, the two brothers most crucial to it were Jack and Harry Warner, both of whom had volatile tempers and who hated each other to boot. Harry had been bom in Poland, Jack in America. Harry was conservative, moral according to his own lights, a family man. He was a religious Jew, and believed in racial and religious tolerance. Jack, on the other hand, was a more assimilated American than Harry, and rebelled against the Judaism of his father. He was crude, vulgar and loud, openly boasting about his sexual affairs. Unlike the other Hollywood Jews, he did not care a whit about being respectable and acceptable in polite society.

Another brother, Sam, was the one who convinced the Warners to go into the movie business as exhibitors. Harry was the leader of the brothers. They started their business in 1903, and rapidly began to get rich. They then moved into movie production. Harry based himself in New York, where another brother, Albert, would work with him, and Sam and Jack went to Los Angeles and San Francisco. In this way the Warner brothers were strategically positioned in the two main centres of film production. In time they forsook distribution and focused on production alone.

At first the Warners were very much the outsiders in Hollywood Jewish circles, but they did not care. They were not trying to ingratiate themselves with genteel society. When other studios were unsure of supporting the newly-invented sound movies, thinking the use of sound might be just a temporary fad, Warner Brothers pitched in. They saw sound as the wave of the future, and they were right. With the release of The Jazz Singer in 1927 – a movie with sound that revolutionised the industry – Warner Brothers moved up into the top ranks of studios.

Jack Warner, always a rebel against his father’s Judaism, shacked up with a Roman Catholic actress, Ann Page Alvarado, even before his own divorce, or hers, had been finalised. This disgusted Harry, and the rift between them widened.

Warner Brothers’ films deliberately put across a message of being films with a conscience, films in which the poor and weak were shown to be pitted against the rich and strong. Jack once told a reporter that films could and did play an all-important part in the cultural and educational development of the world. Surprisingly, this statement was in line with brother Harry’s own beliefs – and it was not often that Jack was found expressing what his older brother believed. Many of their films depicted both the contributions of Jews to society, and their victimization by society. Many of them, also, exposed prejudice in society in general. Others portrayed the weak and marginalised in a good light, taking on the might of the privileged, even when this meant that “heroes” engaged in antisocial behaviour. This raised the ire of many, who saw such films – rightly – as essentially promoting civil disobedience, the uprising of the lower classes. To this Harry replied: “The motion picture presents right and wrong, as the Bible does. By showing both right and wrong, we teach the right.” ³⁸

It sounded good, but it was not true, for in the words of the Hollywood Jews’ biographer, Neal Gabler, Warner Brothers movies took a more ambivalent attitude towards American values than any other Hollywood studio. “Out of this mix of energy, suspicion, gloom, iconoclasm, and liberalism came not only a distinctive kind of film, but also a distinctive vision of America – particularly urban America. It was an environment cruel and indifferent, one almost cosmologically adversarial, where a host of forces prevented one from easily attaining virtue.” ³⁹ In other words, Warner Brothers produced films which attempted to alter American society by portraying urban America as a dark, cruel place where the poor and marginalised needed to rise up and change things. This was incipient Gramscian Marxism; cultural Communism, the means whereby the Italian Communist, Gramsci, had said America would be communised. Change the culture, change the traditions, and you will change the country. America today is, tragically, living proof that Gramscian Communism worked.

Columbia Pictures

As for the founder of Columbia Pictures, Harry Cohn, he was a Jew at war with the world. People hated him, and he did not care. He was a spiteful, vengeful man and a bully, a man who loved power and who wielded it mercilessly. He greatly admired the Italian Fascist dictator, Benito Mussolini, made a documentary on his life, even visited him in Rome and decorated his own office like Mussolini’s, proudly displaying a photo of the dictator there. And he copied Mussolini in his own personal style. “Cohn epitomized the profane, vulgar, cruel, rapacious, philandering mogul, and Red Skelton spoke for many when he said, after thousands attended Cohn’s funeral, ‘Well, it only proves what they always say – give the public something they want to see, and they’ll come out for it.’” ⁴⁰

Cohn turned his back completely on his religious Jewish upbringing. He did his best to push the fact that he was Jewish right out of his life. He married a Roman Catholic and ignored all Jewish festivals and other aspects of Judaism. Whereas other Hollywood Jews got rid of their Judaism so as to be accepted into American Gentile society, Harry Cohn went further – he held it in contempt. He once said, when asked for a contribution towards a Jewish relief fund, “Relief for the Jews! How about relief from the Jews? All the trouble in this world is caused by Jews and Irishmen.” ⁴¹

He was also extremely immoral in his personal life, having many affairs with many women. He divorced his first wife because she could not have children and because she was not attractive enough, in his view, to be the wife of so great a man as he fancied himself to be. He married his new wife, a young, attractive actress and a Gentile, three days after he divorced his first wife. Within a year she bore him a son.

As for the films Columbia made in the 1930s and 1940s, in some ways they resembled those from Warner Brothers: they were so often about the poor against the ruthless rich, the individual against the corporation, and the traditional against the new. The Columbia films may not have been as class-conscious as Warner Brothers films were, and the heroes were more middle-class than lower-class, with ethnicity nowhere near as prominent; but even so there was a resemblance to Warner Brothers’ offerings.

The Religion (or Lack Thereof) of Hollywood’s Jews

Edgar Magnin was the rabbi to many of the Hollywood Jews. He was the rabbi in Los Angeles, not only by his own admission but by that of many others too. In 1914 he had been invited to become the associate rabbi of B’nai B’rith, which was Los Angeles’ first Jewish congregation. It was what was kn own as a Reform Jewish congregation. The controversial and liberal Magnin later became the chief rabbi there. He was truly “one of the boys”, mixing with the wealthy Jewish elite of Hollywood and never too interested in religious Judaism himself, despite being a rabbi. He overlooked their sins, and they loved him for it.

Magnin called for an Americanized Judaism, where Jews were fully assimilated as Americans; and this was a doctrine well received by the Hollywood Jews, for they had turned their backs on Orthodox Judaism. One after the other joined Magnin’s B’nai B’rith – Carl Laemmle, Harry and Jack Warner, Louis B. Mayer, William Fox, and literally dozens of film executives, directors and actors. But they joined, not because they wanted their Jewish religion, but rather the secularised “religion” preached by Magnin. Very few of them were religious. They attended Magnin’s ornate and lavish Wilshire Boulevard Temple on Jewish holy days, and they gave generously to Jewish welfare organisations and other Jewish causes; but that was all. Partly, they supported such groups with their money because it was just what Jews did; partly, because philanthropy was a status symbol, a sign of respectability; partly even, perhaps, because they felt a certain amount of guilt at having turned their backs on their Jewishness; but never did they do so because of any real religious feelings. The Hollywood Jews deliberately distanced themselves from the Jewish religion as far as possible.

And they were always cautious, even in their giving to Jewish causes. They did not want to be associated (at least at first) with any Jewish political causes. When Ben Hecht, a radical Jewish-American writer in Hollywood, tried to raise funds to support a Jewish group in Palestine which was aiming to use terrorism to drive the British out, he found no sympathisers among the Hollywood Jews. They did not want to do anything that would jeopardise their assimilationist efforts into American Gentile society. They wanted to be seen as Americans, not Jews.

But their opposition did not last. As Nazism grew in strength in Europe, the Jews in Hollywood softened in their stance, and began to show an interest in supporting the Jewish political cause in Palestine. In 1942 the younger-generation Jews in Hollywood, especially, were supportive of efforts to form a Hollywood organisation to combat growing anti-Semitism in the United States, in particular when they felt such anti-Semitism was directed at the movie industry.

One of the primary movers and shakers in this regard was Mendel Silverberg, a powerful Jewish lawyer in Hollywood with close connections to the Chandler family, who owned the Los Angeles Times, and to the Republican Party. He became closely associated with Hollywood’s elite Jews, although he himself was only nominally Jewish. He was very useful to the Hollywood Jews in combatting growing Nazi sympathies in Los Angeles in the early 1930s. They formed what was called the Community Committee, with Silverberg as its chairman. Its name was later changed to the Community Relations Council, and its purpose was to be the official liaison between Jews and Gentiles in Los Angeles. Silverberg also sat on various other Jewish committees.

Prior to World War Two, the Hollywood Jews saw no value in making films promoting Jews or Judaism. They wanted to assimilate into Gentile America, not stick out as Jews. Jewish actors and actresses even changed their names to make them sound more Gentile. But with the rise of Hitler and Nazism and the horrors of World War Two, the Hollywood Jews began to see the value of using their immense power and influence, via their film studios, to promote a positive image of Jews. A new Jewish organisation was created in 1948, called the Motion Picture Project, which enabled each major Jewish organisation to have some say over the way Hollywood would portray the Jews. It would be used to review scripts, influence producers, and inform the Jewish organisations of any films that would either benefit Jews, or harm them. Silverberg correctly saw that this was an attempt to censor the movie industry. The Hollywood Jews now felt the pressure, channelled through the Motion Picture Project, from such Jewish organisations as the American Jewish Committee, the American Jewish Congress, and the Anti-Defamation League.

As an alternative to Hollywood’s liberal rabbi, Edgar Magnin, there was Max Nussbaum, who came to Hollywood in the 1940s to lead the Jewish congregation at Temple Israel. This temple had been founded by important men in the movie business, essentially as an alternative to Magnin’s version of Judaism. For although Magnin was very popular, both with non-Jews and with many of the elite Hollywood Jews, not all liked him. One even called him “Cardinal Magnin” because of his closeness with Roman Catholics. ⁴² This alternative rabbi, Nussbaum, and his Temple Israel, was more pro-Jewish, committed to Jewish tradition and ritual. Nussbaum himself had escaped Hitler’s madness in Germany and made his way to the USA. He was a fiery and eloquent speaker. He attracted many, just as Magnin did, but for different reasons. And during and after World War Two he began to attract more Hollywood Jews than Magnin was doing.

The reason for this was that the second-generation Hollywood Jews, as a result of the war and Hitler’s Holocaust, were far more interested in their Judaism, and also in being involved in Jewish social activist causes. For although Nussbaum was religiously conservative, he was socially activist, supporting various causes including the establishment of the state of Israel.

The Surprising Influence of Romanism Over Some Hollywood Jews

There was another powerful, albeit at first surprising, influence over some of the influential Jews of Hollywood: Roman Catholicism. One writer recalled that when it came to religious matters, the Hollywood Jews were always “very tender with the Catholics.” ⁴³

Louis B. Mayer was closer to Roman Catholicism than Judaism. His daughter Edith said her father was “very Catholic prone. He loved the Catholics.” ⁴⁴ This was a true statement. Mayer was a close friend and admirer of New York’s powerful Roman Catholic cardinal, Francis Spellman. A large portrait of Spellman hung in Mayer’s library. According to Magnin, Mayer admired power and importance, which was the reason he admired Spellman and Romanism. According to his grandson, Danny Selznick, Mayer was attracted to Roman Catholicism because of its respectability, and also because Mayer, as head of MGM, identified with the pope of Rome. These may indeed have been some reasons for Mayer’s fascination with Romanism, but clearly there was more to it. Still, he was not above making use of his friendship with Spellman to get his own way when a movie was going to be banned by the Roman Catholic “Church”. He would call Spellman and seek his help.

He was an admirer of other prominent and conservative Roman Catholics as well, notably Senator Joseph McCarthy. Mayer fully supported McCarthy’s efforts to rid the U. S. government of Communists. At a Chamber of Commerce dinner in his honour in 1954, Mayer said, “The more McCarthy yells, the better I like him. He’s doing a job to get rid of the ‘termites’ eating away at our democracy…. I hope he drives all the bums back to Moscow. That’s the place for them.” He also said: “Why is it that there are so few Catholic converts to Communism? It is because they learned the love of God when they were children. Why don’t Jews and Protestants do the same thing?” ⁴⁵ Yes, Mayer esteemed Roman Catholicism very highly.

It was not just Mayer, however (although he was the closest of all Hollywood’s top Jews to Rome). Other Hollywood Jews were under Rome’s spell as well, to varying degrees. Harry Cohn, for example, was friends with the cardinal, Spellman, and whenever he was in New York he would visit Spellman. Cohn’s first wife had been a Roman Catholic, and his second wife was a convert to Roman Catholicism who was very devout; and Cohn allowed her to raise their children as Roman Catholics. There were rumours that Cohn himself would convert to Romanism, but he never did. Still, there were strong influences at work.

The Politics of the Hollywood Jews

Politically, because they wanted to be accepted into American society so much and because the Republican Party was seen as the party of the American elite, most of the Hollywood Jewish elite were Republicans. And they certainly were among the country’s elite by the mid-1950s, with 19 of the 25 highest salaries in the USA being paid to movie executives, and Louis B. Mayer, the highest-earning movie man, earning over $ 1 million, which was more than any other American was earning at that time. Mayer would always entertain important senators, congressmen, and other officials whenever they were in Los Angeles. This enabled him to rise within the ranks of the Republican Party, and when Californian Herbert Hoover became president in 1928, Mayer and his family were invited to the White House. It was even rumoured, some years later, that Mayer himself might run for president.

The Warner brothers were really the only major Democrats among the Hollywood Jews – and only for a brief period. Prior to 1932 they too had been Republicans, but in that year Jack and Harry Warner met with top Democrats in New York and were brought on board the campaign to get Franklin Roosevelt elected. It is likely the Democrats sought for the Warners’ support because it was well known that they were considered the “outsiders” in Hollywood. Harry was quoted by Jack as saying, “The country is in chaos. There is a revolution in the air, and we need a change.” ⁴⁶ In Hollywood Jack worked to get Roosevelt elected. When Roosevelt became president and Jack was invited to the White House at various times, Jack claimed he was simply the court jester of the White House because he was a humorous man; but in truth there was far more to it than that. Warner Brothers threw its weight behind Roosevelt and the president knew it.

Nevertheless, by 1936 the Warners were Republicans again, after Harry Warner saw Roosevelt as having turned his back on him in an hour of need. “It was the last time any of the first generation of Hollywood Jews would support a Democrat.” ⁴⁷

Conclusion

Thus, the first-generation Jewish creators of Hollywood were, for the most part, men who abandoned their traditional Judaism; who were Capitalists, not Communists; some of whom were attracted to, and influenced by, Roman Catholicism; and many of whom were immoral in their personal lives and produced immoral movies, lowering the morals of the world. And thus they played into the hands of international Communism’s assault on America and the entire western world. Furthermore, the next generation of Jewish Hollywood leaders leaned far to the left.

This then was the Jewish industry which the powerful American Roman Catholic institution sought to influence and control for its own ends.

Chapter three – Protestants, Roman Catholics and film censorship in the early years

Despite the fact that Jewish-Americans of Eastern European origin created the film studios and ran them, the actual control of the industry, of what movies would be made, etc., was in the hands of the Roman Catholic “Church” for decades. But why? Why was it that the movie industry came to be controlled by Roman Catholics? Why was it that “Catholic characters, spaces, and rituals have been stock features in popular films since the silent picture era”? ⁴⁸ How was it possible that in Protestant America, the Roman Catholic religion came to dominate the movie industry? The following explanation, written by Colleen McDannell, editor of the book Catholics in the Movies, is very accurate:

“An intensely visual religion with a well-defined ritual and authority system, Catholicism lends itself to the drama and pageantry – the iconography – of film. Moviegoers watch as Catholic visionaries interact with the supernatural, priests counsel their flocks, reformers fight for social justice, and bishops wield authoritarian power. As the religion of many immigrants [to the United States], Catholic characters represent outsider status as well as the ‘American way of life. ’ Rather than being marginal to American popular culture, Catholic people, places, and rituals are central. At the movies, Catholicism – rather than Protestantism – is the American religion.” ⁴⁹ Later she wrote: “in the world of the movies, religion is Catholic.” ⁵⁰

This is very true. But then also there is the more sinister reason: a deliberate purpose behind Roman Catholic control of the industry, the reason for which has been set out already in this book, and the evidence for which will be given in the pages to follow.

Striving to Break Down Early Protestant Opposition to the Movies

In the early years of the twentieth century, it was Protestants, even more than Roman Catholics, who influenced the content of movies. They sought to uphold moral values, desiring that such things as crime and punishment, class, ethnicity, family and romance, would be portrayed in a way that would do so. American Protestants of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were also for the most part still very aware of the dangers posed by Popery to Protestantism, and to America itself. They knew that the “Church” of Rome was bent on subjugating the United States to itself, and for this reason they were deeply suspicious of large-scale Roman Catholic immigration into the country. They rightly saw this as a Papal plan to eventually take control of America through sheer force of numbers. Protestant books of the period were strong in their condemnation of Popery and of its sinister plans. ⁵¹

And as a consequence of all this, early moviemakers portrayed the Protestant settlement house in a good light, as a place where the Irish Roman Catholic criminal could be converted or rehabilitated. Roman Catholicism itself was portrayed in a bad light, as a religion which played a part in the social problems of the day. Priests were depicted as men who did not condemn alcohol, etc. Roman Catholicism was portrayed as a religion of the Dark Ages, a time when freedom of religion and other freedoms had been cruelly suppressed. ⁵²

And in these things they were very right. Romanism was most definitely a religion opposed to religious and other freedoms, and it still is. This is part of its very nature. At that time in America the Protestantism of many was still very strong, and they well knew the dangers of Popery. America, after all, had been founded by people fleeing Papal persecution and tyranny in Europe. Unlike today, the early twentieth century was still a time when Protestants had a good knowledge of these things, and viewed Popery as abhorrent and contrary not only to the Bible, but to the very principles on which America had been established.

But all this was to change. For in the early twentieth century, which was the infancy of this new American phenomenon known as the movie industry, the very time when movies as a form of entertainment were coming into their own, the United States was experiencing a large-scale influx of immigrants from southern, central and eastern Europe. Large numbers of these immigrants, coming as they did from that part of the Old World, were Roman Catholics – and also, large numbers were Jews. These immigrants were poor, working-class folk struggling to make better lives for themselves in this new country, and they took to the movies because it was an inexpensive form of entertainment for them. Their English was usually very limited, but it did not matter because this was the silent movie era, where the story was conveyed to the audience via such things as facial expressions, body language, etc., and was generally fairly easy to follow. It did not take long for moviemakers to begin making films that would particularly appeal to those large Roman Catholic audiences. Despite the fact that almost all films released in the 1910s and 1920s have been lost because of nitrate decomposition or because of combustion of the cellulose film stock, it is possible to glean, from reviews of the time, newspaper advertisements, trade magazines and publicity images, “a tantalizing sense of a large number of motion pictures featuring Catholic characters and settings” (emphasis added). ⁵³

In addition to immigrant Roman Catholics, however, it did not take long for native-born Americans to start to flock to the movies, and it was estimated that by 1920 half of all Americans were attending the movies once a week. So from Rome’s point of view, it was a powerful new medium with which to reshape Protestant America, leading it inexorably Romeward. But how did this come about, especially considering the conservative nature of much of American Protestantism at that time, which saw real danger in the mesmerising power of the movies and frequently viewed the movie industry with deep suspicion? It came about by movie producers labouring to present moviegoing as a respectable entertainment. Their efforts towards this objective included making religious and “biblical” films. Such films helped to break down Protestant Americans’ objections to the movie industry. ⁵⁴

Thus Roman Catholic influence over the movie industry was already quite strong in the early years, during the infancy of film-making. And this influence just grew and grew in the following decades.

Protestants Call for Film Censorship

The movie industry began when what was known as the Progressive reform movement was at its height in the United States. These reformers fought against such injustices as child labour, poor urban living conditions, poverty, corruption in government, prostitution and drunkenness, etc. And they viewed the new movie industry as a real danger to American youth. They saw correctly that films were a more powerful means of communication – and ^{indoctrination} – than any other, and that impressionable youngsters would be powerfully and negatively influenced by what they saw at the movies. On the other hand, they also believed that precisely because there had never been such a powerful means of communication as movies before, they could exert a vast amount of good on people, especially children, if they could teach and reinforce values such as good citizenship, the importance of hard work, good morals, and the superiority of Anglo-Saxon ideals. In today’s world many might smile at the thought of that last one; but for Americans of western European and particularly British extraction in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Anglo-Saxon culture was far superior to any other. And certainly their world was one where the Anglo-Saxon culture and civilisation dominated. It is certainly true that movies have the potential to achieve a vast amount of good. There were many in those very early years of the twentieth century who believed, for example, that decent picture shows might replace the use of alcohol as recreation for the poor working classes.

It did not take long, however, for those who believed that movies could be a powerful force for good to be bitterly disappointed in their hope. It very soon became all too apparent that even way back then, during the infancy of the motion picture industry, the depravity of man was such that he much preferred films of a questionable moral character to those which contained moral themes.

And so it was that a formidable grouping of individuals and institutions began to array themselves against the evil influence of the movies in their very early years: Protestant ministers, social workers, Progressive reformers, police, politicians, women’s clubs, civic organisations. All stated that movies were exerting a baneful influence on young minds by glorifying criminals, romanticising illicit love affairs, etc. They stated that movies were altering traditional values. ⁵⁵ In all this they were certainly correct. And, because they saw that the motion picture as a form of entertainment was here to stay, they figured that there was only one solution: government censorship. This, then, is what they began to demand.

The concern was real; the desire to do something about the problem was admirable; but as we shall see, government censorship was not the solution then, and has never been the solution.

The 1915 U.S. Supreme Court Ruling on Censorship

Although in the infancy of the movie industry it was mainly Protestants who worked for reform, and then government censorship, the “Church” of Rome was not silent. For example, as early as 1907 the Michigan Catholic accused the movie industry of seeking to destroy the souls of children, and the Catholic Messenger in Worcester, Massachusetts, called movie houses “the devil’s lights” and “a chamber of horrors”. During the next few years this publication continued to criticise the industry, and, as one manager of a Worcester movie house put it, “If you played a movie that wasn’t fit to be seen, they [the Roman Catholic priests] would crucify you by saying ‘don’t go to see it.’” ⁵⁶

And various important Roman Catholic publications, such as the Boston Pilot newspaper and the Jesuit magazine America, as well as the Federation of Catholic Societies, at various times threw their weight behind federal censorship of the movies.

The first film censorship law ever created was in Chicago in November 1907. According to the law, exhibitors had to obtain a permit from the superintendent of police before showing a film; and permits would be denied to any film deemed to be immoral or obscene. The police lost no time in enforcing the new law, refusing to issue permits for two westerns. And when the film-makers went to court to try to get the law overturned, they lost. The Illinois Supreme Court ruled that the city had a right to ensure movies were decent and moral, because the low admission price to the movies meant that children and the lower classes could attend.

The next year, various New York religious leaders, including Roman Catholics, were at the head of increasing opposition to the effect of movies on children. They influenced New York’s mayor to close all movie houses in late December; but this time the court sided with the film-makers, and the movie houses were re-opened.

Then in 1909 a Progressive reformer named Charles Sprague Smith established the New York Board of Motion Picture Censorship, as demands for stricter censorship grew. The movie industry at the time was based in New York City, and agreed to submit films to this board for review, so as to hopefully prevent government censorship later. But the board was declared ineffective by the Pennsylvania legislature in 1911, which formed its own state censorship board, followed by Kansas and Ohio in 1913. And indeed, the New York board had been hugely controversial, for it was very liberal in deciding which movies were acceptable and which were not. The censors focused primarily on excessive violence in films, while paying little attention to sex scenes. They even passed films which dealt with such issues as birth control, prostitution, and nudity, if they deemed that such scenes were not “crass”, “crude”, or “commercial.”

In 1916 the board was renamed the National Board of Review of Motion Pictures (NBR), and by then various other municipal and state censorship boards had come into being. These boards sought to remove any depictions in the movies of changing moral standards. They sought to limit scenes in movies which showed crime, believing such scenes contributed to the increase in juvenile delinquency. They also sought to avoid any depictions of civil strife, government corruption and injustice, or sexual issues. ⁵⁷

But these various censorship boards were not created equal. They often differed on what was “immoral”, “obscene”, “illicit”, “indecent”, etc., etc. This meant that the moviemakers could never be certain which scenes might be condemned in one place, and which scenes might be condemned in another. In Pennsylvania, for example, the censorship board decided that a screen kiss could not last longer than a yard of film strip; but when it came to childbirth scenes, they even forbade a scene depicting a woman knitting clothes for her unborn child, on the following pathetic grounds: “Movies are patronized by thousands of children who believe that babies are brought by the stork, and it would be criminal to undeceive them”! ⁵⁸

The moviemakers, of course, held very different opinions to the ones espoused by censorship boards. Their defence was that movies should have the same constitutional protections of free speech which were given to other forms of communication. The Mutual Film Corporation therefore went to the U.S. Supreme Court about these matters, where it was argued that movies were “part of the press” and thus “increasingly important… in the spreading of knowledge and the molding of public opinion upon every kind of political, educational, religious, economic and social question.” ⁵⁹ The Supreme Court, however, disagreed, and stated: “We feel the argument is wrong or strained which extends the guarantees of free opinion and speech” to theatre, the circus, or the movies because “they may be used for evil.” And: “Besides, there are some things which should not have pictorial representation in public places and to all audiences.” The Court declared that movies were “a business pure and simple, originated and conducted for profit, like other spectacles, not to be regarded… as part of the press of the country, or as organs of public opinion.” ⁶⁰ As such, being commercial enterprises they could be regulated by the states or by the federal government.

Thus, according to this very important 1915 ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court, known as Mutual Film Corp. v. the Industrial Commission of Ohio, movies were a “business, pure and simple”, and therefore could indeed be regulated. It was deemed constitutional to have state and city censorship boards to regulate movies. “The industry now faced the possibility of a proliferation of censorship boards and death by a thousand cuts.” ⁶¹ And indeed in the aftermath of the ruling, state and municipal censor boards sprung up everywhere.

What can be said of this judgment? It was certainly incorrect of the court to declare that movies were simply a business, and not to be treated as other forms of communication; and in fact, the court contradicted itself by stating that films may be used for evil – a judgment on their morality (or lack thereof). That movies have been the cause of much moral evil, and have contributed immensely to the degrading of society and the overturning of morality, cannot possibly be disputed by any thinking person. The evidence is overwhelming. Freedom of expression and of speech are important, but should always have limitations set on them -relating to the physical lives and the properties of men. Not only the Word of God, but common human experience through the ages demonstrates that unrestrained “freedoms” pose a great danger to individuals and societies. The duty of the State is to ensure the safety of peoples’ lives, bodies and properties from being forcefully violated by others (Rom. 13:1-7).

But the State’s God-given power extends no further than this. And when it attempts to extend its power beyond this, into matters of morality or religion, it goes too far. The moral standards imposed on society will then be those of the men in power; and men in power are not usually godly men. Government officials are, after all, mere men like all others. They have no special wisdom above other men. They are not more qualified than other men to set the moral standards of society, merely by virtue of being elected by a portion of the populace.

Nor should any restriction be placed by the State on matters of religion, of man’s relationship to God (whether the true God or even false ones), because earthly governments only have to do with the maintenance of law and order so as to ensure the safety of the physical lives and wellbeing of men – not with spiritual matters. Spiritual matters are outside the orbit of earthly governments. On matters of religion, it would be well if governments took the attitude of Gallio, the deputy of Achaia, when the Jews accused Paul of worshipping God contrary to the law. Gallio replied: “If it were a matter of wrong or wicked lewdness, O ye Jews, reason would that I should bear with you: but if it be a question of words and names, and of your law [religious law], look ye to it; for I will be no judge of such matters” (Acts 18:14,15). If one religion incites its members to physically harm the members of another religion, acting against this is certainly the duty of the government; but that is all. If one religion, say, makes a movie that is deemed blasphemous by another religion, this is not a matter for the government to interfere in, for it is solely a religious matter.

Thus this court judgment was far from ideal, and far from sensible; indeed, it was even self-contradictory. It granted permission for direct government intervention, via censorship boards, in matters of morality and by extension in matters of religion; matters beyond the God- ordained powers of the government. And government intervention, indeed, interference, in such matters is always a very slippery slope and can even be a very dangerous thing, as history amply reveals.

Intolerance (1916): An Influential Early Silent Film Depicting Roman Catholicism

In 1916 the silent movie, Intolerance, was released, “which remains one of the most intriguing portraits of Catholics in cinema history.” ⁶²

It was the work of David Wark Griffith. Although he was a Freemason, with Ku Klux Klan sympathies, and although the film was not an entirely pro-Roman Catholic one, for Griffith depicted Roman Catholic religious intolerance as well, yet even so in his film he “was celebrating Catholic virtue and exposing Protestant pretense and hypocrisy.” ⁶³ It depicted (among many other themes) Roman Catholic persecution of Huguenots; but it also depicted what he considered the persecution of Roman Catholics, with Protestants depicted unfavourably, as oppressors and puritanical destroyers of such earthly pleasures as dancing and drinking.

The film followed certain stereotypes that would come out in one Hollywood film after another in the years to come: Roman Catholics as immigrants to America, struggling to be assimilated, and living in crime-infested ghettoes; Roman Catholic girls fighting against the strict sexual moral standards of their parents; etc. ⁶⁴

Furthermore, its theme of class warfare, with immoral employers exploiting decent workers, convinced Vladimir Lenin in Russia that Griffith was a Communist. Lenin invited Griffith to manage the Soviet film industry, and Soviet film-makers viewed Intolerance as a cinematic lesson in how to use film to promote revolution. The immoral, oppressive employers were depicted as Protestant hypocrites, and the innocent workers were Roman Catholics, so the film appealed to Communists and Papists alike. It foreshadowed the coming alliance, decades later, between Romanism and Communism for their mutual advancement. ⁶⁵

Joan the Woman (1916): Roman Catholics Furious with Cecil B. DeMille

When Hollywood religious-epic maker, Cecil B. DeMille, released his Joan the Woman in 1916, a film about Joan of Arc, Roman Catholics were furious. He made the film, as he himself admitted, as a “call to a modem crusade”, meaning World War I. It was designed to be a pro- Allies film. But because he depicted the priests of Rome as villains, cruel and vain, Roman Catholics were seething, and this anger caused DeMille to suggest to his distributors, “rather desperately”, that they circulate two versions – “In the strong Catholic communities, those scenes relating to the Catholic church might best be spared; while in Protestant portions of the country, it might be desirable to retain such scenes.” ⁶⁶ This certainly reveals two undeniable facts: that at that time there was a clear distinction between Protestants and Romanists, with many Protestants being very aware of the evils of Rome; and that, when it came to historical movies, the movie industry – even then – could usually not be trusted to depict history as it really happened, but rather so as to suit the sensibilities of the audiences. Bottom line: people who look to Hollywood for accurate historical portrayals of history are simply not going to find them.

And DeMille played fast and loose with historical fact in another way, too: he added a love interest for Joan in the story. As authors Les and Barbara Keyser state in their book, Hollywood and the Catholic Church, “DeMille’s creed, which became Hollywood’s gospel”, was that “history and the Bible could justify almost any debauchery and licentiousness. Moral purpose overwhelmed, DeMille and Hollywood thought, any need for restraint, since the end always justifies the means.” ⁶⁷

Rome’s Opposition to Two Films for World War One Soldiers

The American Social Hygiene Association developed two educational films, entitled Fit to Fight and End of the Road, aimed at the armed forces of the First World War and at young women living near military camps, respectively. The first was about venereal diseases. Protests against the film were strong, coming from both Protestants and Roman Catholics. Romish priest John J. Burke, of the Roman Catholic institution’s National War Council, attempted to prevent it from being released, but failed. He then called for titillating scenes in the film to be cut, and some of them (but not all) were eliminated or shortened. As for the second film, Burke was just as much opposed to it as the first, because of how it made illicit sex alluring. Some scenes were cut to satisfy him, but the war ended soon afterwards and the military had no further interest in the film anyway.

Fit to Fight was updated and renamed Fit to Win, and shown to the general public, along with End of the Road. A major trade journal, the Exhibitor’s Herald, was totally against the films. This was because it was owned by Martin Quigley, a Roman Catholic. We shall soon be paying much more attention to Quigley. Priest Burke, meanwhile, continued to oppose the films strongly. His National War Council called on Roman Catholic societies across the United States to come out fighting against the two films. In New York, where Burke had a lot of clout, he influenced Commissioner John F. Gilbert to come out with guns blazing against the films. And although a U.S. District Court judge allowed Fit to Win to be shown in New York at first despite Gilbert’s opposition, the U.S. Court of Appeals found in favour of Gilbert. This was a victory for the Roman Catholic National War Council, and it was followed by End of the Road being banned from being shown in Pennsylvania, and then the National Board of Review and the Public Flealth Service withdrawing approval of the film. “The [Catholic] War Council’s campaign against these films marked the [Roman Catholic] church’s first significant success in combating films it found objectionable…. the War Council… became the National Catholic Welfare Council [NCWC] in September 1919.” ⁶⁸ Rome’s ability to play a more powerful role in national affairs was now strengthened considerably.

Early Romish Attempts to Clean Up the Industry

The Romish bishops in America well knew the immense influence the movies were exerting over their own flocks, and knew that something had to be done. The NCWC Bulletin stated: “The influence of motion pictures upon the lives of our people is greater than the combined influence of all our churches, schools, and ethical organizations.” ⁶⁹ The result was that Roman Catholics turned on the Flollywood Jews. In Columbia, the official organ of the Roman Catholic Knights of Columbus, author Karl K. Kitchens wrote that the film industry was controlled by “foreign-bom Jews of the lowest sort”, men willing to “glorify crime and make heroes of seducers and heroines of prostitutes for a dollar.” Another writer, Pat Scanlan, the editor of the Brooklyn Tablet, called the Jewish film-makers “alien ex-buttonhole makers and pressers”. ⁷⁰ Such men were right about Jewish control of the industry and even about the immoral movies they made, but much of this attitude was driven more by the traditional and centuries-old Roman Catholic anti-Semitism than anything else.

Many Papists, priests included, called for state censorship of the movie industry. But there were also more liberal-minded Roman Catholics who opposed censorship legislation. In 1919 the Motion Picture Committee was formed, a Roman Catholic outfit under the leadership of Charles McMahon, who reported directly to priest John J. Burke. He was instructed to work with film producers to get them to remove indecent movies.

Will Hays and the Hays Office

Things went from bad to worse for film-makers. In March 1921 the major studios adopted their own code, kn own as the “Thirteen Points”, in an attempt to prove that they would do their own house-cleaning and improve the moral quality of films, which they hoped would cause the states to refrain from passing censorship legislation; but it failed. What is more, in that same year Hollywood was rocked by a series of scandals which served to confirm, to decent citizens, that this was a morally rotten industry, even in its infancy. “Famous directors turned up dead, matinee idols shot heroin (and each other), and doeeyed ingenues were rousted from sordid love nests. In the most lurid incident, the corpulent comedian Fatty Arbuckle was accused of the brutal rape and murder of a party girl named Virginia Rappe at a drunken weekend orgy. Arbuckle’s three trials solidified Hollywood’s reputation as a sun-drenched Sodom luring Midwest farm girls to a fate worse than waitressing.” ⁷¹ “Arbuckle’s popularity with children added to the notoriety of the case, and although he was acquitted at his third trial (the two previous ones ending in hung juries), many people continued to believe that Rappe’s ruptured bladder was caused not by periadenitis, as the defense claimed, but by the comedian’s great weight as he forced himself on her…. Despite the actor’s final acquittal, public outrage forced the industry to withdraw his films from exhibition.” ⁷²

The next scandal that year was the murder of director William Desmond Taylor, who, it was rumoured, also used drugs and was romantically connected to not one, but two actresses. And a year later actor Wallace Reid died of a drug overdose in a sanatorium. Hollywood was now, in the eyes of millions, nothing but a cesspool of iniquity, “the Sodom of the West”. ⁷³ The film-makers realised something had to be done to save Hollywood’s reputation or they would be out of business. And something was – at least to their satisfaction.

In March 1922 the movie industry itself created the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America (MPPDA), as well as another, alligned organisation, the Association of Motion Picture Producers (AMPP). These were formed ostensibly to establish and maintain “the highest possible moral and artistic standards of motion picture production.” In other words, they were meant to be self-regulating in-house bodies, designed to prevent outside (state) censorship from occurring. The thinking was that if the studios censored themselves, there would be no danger of state or municipal censorship.

The studio owners’ choice for the man at the helm of the MPPDA was William Harrison (Will) Hays, a lawyer who was postmaster-general in President Harding’s cabinet and the chairman of the Republican National Committee. Hays was a conservative Republican, a staunch Presbyterian who never smoked or drank, who was strongly against any State interference in business, and the Hollywood film-makers thought he would be ideal for the job because he was from outside the industry and would also oppose censorship. His office in New York City became known as the “Hays Office”. He set to work with a will, fighting against censorship legislation and federal regulation of the movie industry, but also cleaning up the industry’s image. “The old careless, helter skelter days are over,” he told the public. “The chieftains of the motion picture now realize their responsibilities as custodians of not only one of the greatest industries in the world but of possibly the most potent instrument in the world for moral influence and education, and certainly one of the most universal mediums of artistic expression.” ⁷⁴ In truth, the studio chieftains had not undergone a sudden mass conversion, they were no more moral than they had been before – they merely wanted to avoid state censorship at all costs as this would eat into their bottom line. Those Jewish studio chieftains were very wily when they chose Hays, for they knew that American morality was still very much defined by American Protestantism, and if they wanted to make millions out of American moviegoers they needed someone in charge of movie morality who would put the people at ease.

Even though various Roman Catholic men’s and women’s groups supported a censorship bill in Massachusetts, some prominent Roman Catholics came to Hays’ assistance in the anti-censorship campaign. One was Joseph P. Kennedy, father of future U.S. President John F. Kennedy, who offered his assistance, and another was William Randolph Hearst, whose newspaper, Boston American, offered a prize of $1000 to the winner of an essay competition on “Why Massachusetts should not have political censorship.” Meanwhile, the Romish hierarchy in America remained silent on the issue, knowing that its silence would be interpreted as an opposition to government censorship; and it was. And in a referendum in 1922, the voters in heavily Roman Catholic Massachusetts voted against the state censorship bill.

Hays had the powerful “Church” of Rome on his side; but very few Protestant churches supported him. They were far more opposed to films per se than Roman Catholics were, and were in fact Hays’ main opposition. Hays therefore sought out ever more Roman Catholic support and approval for his work, such as that of the International Federation of Catholic Alumnae (IFCA). This organisation was very much at the forefront of Roman Catholic involvement in Hollywood at this time, and most Hollywood producers were more than willing to make any cuts or changes it recommended if this would mean an IFCA approval for the film. And proposed cuts and changes were not limited to moral matters only, but included any negative depictions of Roman Catholicism. Hollywood was being edited by Roman Catholics, with the Protestant Will Hays playing along; and this angered Protestants. “Hollywood’s courting of Catholic interests made some Protestants wonder if their concerns were being overlooked. The Texas 100% American charged Hays with playing into the hands of the Catholic hierarchy, while the editor of the National Republic asked him to explain ‘why it is that when a Protestant minister… is shown on screen, nine times out of ten, he is portrayed as a sap or a sissy.’” ⁷⁵ These charges were true. The Churchman, a Protestant journal, said that Hays was a “seller of swill and an office boy” for Hollywood producers, men who were turning American society into a “brothel house.” ⁷⁶

Hays became very friendly with New York’s cardinal, Patrick Hayes, and thus Hayes supported Hays: the cardinal supported the MPPDA president whenever he was being criticised for his work by Protestants and the Protestant press. The cardinal went so far as to declare, in 1929, that Will Hays’ work enabled the movies “to stand out like a shining light of great potential goodness in America.” ⁷⁷ Well, Rome’s idea of “shining lights” and “goodness” has always differed widely from the biblical teaching. Hollywood was already, by this time, pushing the boundaries of morality as far as they could be pushed in that era, and Hays and the MPPD A were cleaning up certain aspects of certain films, but nothing more.

The White Sister (1923): a Staunchly Roman Catholic Film Worries Exhibitors

This was the most popular of many film versions of a 1909 book by Francis Marion Crawford. It was directed by Henry King, himself a Roman Catholic mystic. The story is about a woman who believes the man she was to marry has been killed in battle during the First World War, so she becomes a nun, only to find that he is still alive – and now she must choose. Before he began filming, King met the papal delegate to Washington, who arranged for the Vatican’s chief ceremonial director to show the film company an Italian nun’s traditional “wedding” to Christ (supposedly). And the company was permitted to film a ceremony that had never before been filmed, in which the nun-bride was “married” just before dawn.

As the film was so obviously pro-Roman Catholic, exhibitors were afraid there would be angry reaction from Protestant America. Many refused to show it. The film’s “star”, however (Lillian Gish), stated that the real reason for the exhibitors shying away from it was an economic one: “the big companies who owned the theaters said the public could get religion free on Sundays, so they’re not going to pay for it during the week.” ⁷⁸

When the film opened in New York, it was extremely popular and did very well. Nevertheless, even when it was distributed nationally its overt Romanism was a cause for concern, and theatre owners were instructed to actually let local Protestant ministers know what the film’s theme was and just how pro-Papist it was, hoping that these ministers would then urge their congregations to see it anyway, despite this.

Two Movie “White Lists” Issued by Two Papist Organisations

By 1923 the National Catholic Welfare Council’s Motion Picture Committee had begun issuing lists of approved movies, through the NCWC Bulletin. This was a so-called “white list”, i.e. it only dealt with films it could recommend; all others it ignored. It was believed that publicity given to a bad movie, even negative publicity, would encourage people to go and see it. This list was supervised by Charles McMahon, the chairman of the Motion Picture Committee of the NCWC.

But there was also another “white list” of recommended movies, this one issued by the Motion Picture Bureau of the International Federation of Catholic Alumnae (IFCA). This was headed by Rita McGoldrick, a devout Papist, and she and her staff of volunteer graduates from Roman Catholic schools and colleges were reviewing some 11000 films a year, far more than the NCWC was doing. ⁷⁹

The IFCA grew increasingly influential, as it dawned on studio bosses that by making what amounted at times to just a few changes to their films, they could earn the IFCA’s approval and thus make more money from their films. Both McGoldrick and McMahon opposed government censorship of films, believing the movie industry could be cleaned up by co-operating with the “Church” of Rome, and thus both were firm supporters of Hays and his work. Hays knew that he was backed by the two Romish organisations these two people represented.

The “Don’ts and Be Carefuls”: the First Movie Code

Hays, wanting to influence the movie studios and the content of the films they produced, created the Studio Relations Department (SRD), or Studio Relations Committee (SRC), in 1926. This sought to delete offensive material from films. It produced a code, the first ever for the motion picture industry, containing the most common requirements of censorship boards both at a municipal and state level. The working document of this code was known as the “Don’ts and Be Carefuls”, or the “Do’s and Don’ts.” The “Don’ts” consisted of such things as profanity, nudity, sex perversion, drug trafficking, and white slavery. These were all forbidden. It also urged that such themes as criminal behaviour, sexual relations, and violence be depicted in “good taste”; and it forbade “scenes of actual childbirth”. The “Be Carefuls” consisted of such things as crime methods, rape, and wedding-night scenes. But the studios all interpreted this code as they saw fit, so it was not very effective. Studio bosses argued that if movies were too “clean” no one would go to see them, and if they did not make racy movies, their competitors would. ⁸⁰

All this just proves that unregenerate men will always impose their own ideas of morality on such matters, which are arbitrary and subjective and should not therefore be binding on anyone other than those who voluntarily submit themselves to it. For example, members of the Roman Catholic religion could submit to these measures if this is what their religious leaders demanded, for they were Roman Catholics because they wanted to be and it is universally acknowledged that when a person joins any institution, he voluntarily places himself under the rules of that institution; but the concept of morality which these men had was being forced upon the entire public, so that the film industry was under the iron grip of those who had no right to speak for the entire country on such matters. The subjective nature of what was deemed morally offensive and what was not, was glaring. For example, under the “Don’ts” were such things as profanity, nudity and sexual perversion, and these are most definitely damaging to morals. But also under the “Don’ts” were such things as drug trafficking and white slavery – the mere depiction of which would not damage the morals of anyone, and thus prohibiting their depiction was simply foolish. In fact, people need to know when such things are going on. If a film depicted such things as being wrong and criminal this would have been a good thing.

All these things were preparatory for what was yet to come.

Chapter four – Jesuit regulation of the movie industry: The production code

“A Jewish-owned business selling Roman Catholic theology to Protestant America.” ⁸¹ This description of Hollywood’s “Golden Age” is very true. This is exactly what it was. The Jews owned the studios, but the “Church” of Rome dictated the morality of the movies, and Protestant-majority America rushed to cinemas to soak it all up. It was, when one stops to think about it, a truly extraordinary situation.

Jews were making most of the films, and various Roman Catholic reformers (and Protestants too) viewed Jews and their movies as attacking the morals of America. For example, a newspaper account at the time stated, “The Jews control the film industry and they are using their power to demoralise this Christian country. What they are doing today against the Irish they will do tomorrow against every other element in the American population with the exception of the ‘chosen people’ who must not be ridiculed in the movies or criticized in the press.” ⁸² There was truth in this. Jews did run the movie industry, and even if the major first-generation Jewish executives in Hollywood were not Communists themselves, they had become unknowing pawns in the hands of those who were out to pull down the morals of America. And the use of Hollywood to do this was part of the Communist agenda.

It was, in fact, a time when two powerful forces were vying for ever-greater influence over the American way of life; but Roman Catholicism was poised to trump Jewish-influenced Communism for decades.

In 1921 Henry Ford’s Dearborn Independent stated that the movies were “Jew-controlled, not in spots only, not 50 per cent merely, but entirely; with the natural consequence that now the world is in arms against the trivializing and demoralizing influences of that form of entertainment as presently managed…. As soon as the Jews gained control of the ‘movies’, we had a movie problem, the consequences of which are not yet visible. It is the genius of that race to create problems of a moral character in whatever business they achieve a majority.” Later it stated: “It is not that producers of Semitic origin have deliberately set out to be bad according to their own standards, but they know that their whole taste and temper are different from the prevailing standards of the American people…. Many of these producers don’t kn ow how filthy their stuff is – it is so natural to them.” ⁸³

By sheer weight of numbers due to the large-scale Roman Catholic mass migration to the United States, by the late 1920s urban areas were politically in the control of Roman Catholics. In 1928 A1 Smith, an Irish-American Papist, was even nominated as the Democratic presidential candidate. Rome’s plan was working: the United States was gradually becoming a Roman Catholic nation, via huge Roman Catholic immigration.

Many Protestant Americans saw the danger from both camps: Jewish Communism and Roman Catholicism. They began to speak out and oppose both. This caused William Brady, president of the National Association of the Motion Picture Industry, to say in 1921: “If these slanderers, Jew-baiters and Catholic haters are not silenced, we must fight to the finish with no quarter.” ⁸⁴

And because of this new-found political clout, American Papists were now able to strongly oppose whatever they considered a threat to their religion:

The Callahans and the Murphys (1927): a Storm Erupts Over the Portrayal of Irish Papists

In 1927, right at the tail end of the silent movie era, The Callahans and the Murphys was released by MGM. This movie, a comedy, dealt with the rowdy relationship between two Irish-American Roman Catholic families living in a New York City tenement – and a storm erupted over the fact that Irish Roman Catholics were portrayed as dirty, often drunk, rowdy, vulgar; and also because it portrayed Irish Romanists essentially as foreigners in America, implying in addition that they were not even racially white. Irish-American organisations in Los Angeles asked MGM to recall the film, but the studio would not do so, saying that it was a comedy and that the Irish-Americans, like everyone else, must learn to accept a certain amount of good-natured humour. “Unfortunately for MGM”, however, “Irish eyes weren’t smiling, much less laughing, by that point”. ⁸⁵ The protests spread across the country, with Irish-American organisations leading the way. Many theatres refused to show the movie. MGM tried to calm things down by pointing out that Irish-American actors had played in the film, and Irish-American groups had been consulted before it was released; but to no avail. And furthermore, films about the Irish made by other studios now also came under the spotlight. Things got so bad that a warning was issued to all studios, by an MPPDA official, that special care had to be taken with any movies dealing either with the Irish or the Roman Catholic religion.

MGM agreed to consider possible cuts to the film, and also asked Rita McGoldrick of the IFCA and priest John Kelly of the Catholic Theater Guild to suggest possible revisions to the movie. They suggested that all references to the Roman Catholic “Church” be cut out of the film. But Charles McMahon and priest Burke of the National Catholic Welfare Conference (NCWC) were disgusted with the film, and claimed that it could not be redeemed by any cuts. In a statement to America’s Roman Catholic press, the NCWC declared, “In its introduction of Catholic ‘atmosphere’ – the name of St. Patrick, the Crucifix, the Sign of the Cross – it [The Callahans and the Murphys ] is a hideous defamation of Catholic beliefs and practices.” ⁸⁶ State and local censorship boards became involved, withdrawing the film in some cases. Cuts were made. But even when Will Hays convinced Los Angeles Romish bishop, John Cantwell, to issue a statement that the changes meant the film was no longer anti-Catholic, the Irish-American and Papist press did not widely report on this. And the opposition continued unabated, the cuts that were made not changing Irish Papist anger at the film. The Gaelic American, a New York Irish newspaper, stated that the film was still, after all the cuts, “the most insulting characterization of the Irish ever put on the screen”, and actually warned MGM that unless the studio withdrew the movie people would take matters into their own hands. ⁸⁷

MGM decided to fight back, saying no more editing would be done to the film, and declaring that the attacks were unfounded. The Irish Roman Catholic press continued to condemn the film. Irish- American Papists and their priests protested vehemently countrywide, even at times throwing rotten fruit, lightbulbs, rocks, and even acid at the screen. Many protesters were arrested. And similar protests occurred at the screenings of other films perceived as being anti-Irish. Stampedes occurred in the movie houses. Some theatres were placed under police guard. Irish Roman Catholics were on the rampage, and yet could not see the irony and the hypocrisy of their actions: they were violently protesting against a film in which the Irish were depicted as violent brawlers! They were demonstrating, to the rest of America, that Irish Papists were precisely the kind of people as depicted in the film! As Life magazine put it so well in an exchange: “Mr. Callahan: ‘Did you protest against showing the movie that represents the Irish as disorderly?’ Mr. Murphy:‘Did we? We wrecked the place!”’ ⁸⁸

Next, the Irish-American press fumed that “traitorous” Irish-American judges issued what they deemed harsh sentences against the protesters who had been arrested. And the Gaelic American stated that when one protester refused to pay his fine, a Jewish judge had taken the “outrageous step” of ordering him to be sent to jail, handcuffed to a black prisoner – thereby (according to the paper) “express [ing] his opinion of the entire Irish race.” ⁸⁹

In fact, this barb about a Jewish judge mistreating an Irishman was part of a much wider attitude of Irish Romanists to Jews. The Irish- American press claimed the “Jewish Trust” was warring against Irish- Americans, and one paper, the Irish World and Independent Liberator, spoke of the “filthy hands” of Hollywood Jews being laid on Irish women. ⁹⁰ The opposition continued throughout that year of 1927. Romish priests condemned the film in their sermons, and in places Roman Catholics were told by their priests to boycott it. Theatres began to withdraw it in cities and towns across America. And ultimately, under huge pressure, MGM withdrew the film from circulation. ⁹¹

The Irish-American Roman Catholic critics rejoiced at their power to force a major Hollywood studio to cave in to their demands. Roman Catholicism had flexed its muscles, and was very pleased with its growing power. “The campaign against The Callahans and the Murphys taught Irish and Catholic organizations that united action could force Hollywood to bend. As a member of Hays’s staff prophetically remarked at the end of 1927: ‘I am inclined to think the withdrawal of The Callahans and the Murphys… has established a precedent which will rise up to plague us in the future.’” ⁹² As subsequent events proved, he was right.

King of Kings (1927): Introducing Jesuit Priest Daniel Lord to Hollywood

This silent movie was a depiction of the life of Christ, by Hollywood’s larger-than-life religious-epic creator, Cecil B. DeMille. DeMille, fearful of negative reaction over his depiction of Christ, asked Will Hays to assist him in finding religious consultants to advise on the film as it was being made; and he also invited possible religious critics to the set, where they held Bible readings and prayers. Hays recommended certain consultants, but DeMille chose advisors from the three major religious groups: Protestant, Roman Catholic and Jewish. Of the three, DeMille knew that his Roman Catholic choice would be the most important, for Roman Catholic reaction to the film was what concerned him the most – Rome’s muscle in Hollywood was being flexed and he knew it! So, to placate possible Papist protesters, he took no chances: on the recommendation of priest Burke of the NCWC, he employed a Jesuit priest, Daniel Lord, to be the technical advisor for the film. We shall hear much of Lord, for he was to become a very prominent and important figure in Hollywood. In a few short years’ time, he would be the author of the all-important Motion Picture Production Code, that would cast Rome’s shadow over Hollywood for decades to come.

DeMille, a very vain man, managed to convince Lord that his motive for making the movie was – as he told the cast and crew on the very first day on set – because he wanted to “do good and make people know and love Christ”. He told the Jesuit that he was willing to do anything to make the Roman Catholic “Church” happy with the film. He was even willing to cut the “Protestant” ending to the Lord’s Prayer when the film was shown in the USA and in Roman Catholic countries. He banned profanity on the set, and every morning, as he appeared on set, the musicians played “Onward, Christian Soldiers”, “with all the players standing with bowed heads in reverence”. ⁹³ He even asked Lord if Roman Catholics could pray for the film’s success. All these things convinced Lord that DeMille’s was “the only real Christian company producing films”. ⁹⁴ And DeMille was later to state in his autobiography that the sight of priest Lord saying mass at sunrise on the set every morning was one of his “brightest memories”, because it was “like a continued benediction on our work.” Well, that might be the reason he gave, but here is the real reason: it was “a good insurance policy against future attacks on the film.” ⁹⁵ DeMille was certainly not a “Christian” film-maker, as many Protestants foolishly assumed. He was in it for the money, plain and simple, and he knew that keeping the “Church” of Rome satisfied was the best way to make money.

In fact, it was believed by many that the real reason he loved to make biblical epics was because they enabled him to film scenes that would never make it into a film otherwise. This was certainly seen in King of Kings, when it came to the portrayal of Mary Magdalene. DeMille used the opportunity to film her “nude from the waist up except for large jewelled plates at her breasts and a loose robe over her shoulders”, giving a sensual kiss, with her leg being leered at by a man. ⁹⁶ All this was too much for Lord, although DeMille convinced him not to make an issue of Mary Magdalene’s costume, claiming it was necessary to the story. But on Lord’s advice, DeMille cut the kiss scene and the leg scene. He also revised a scene which gave the impression that Mary Magdalene was Judas Iscariot’s mistress. Lord, who had no problem with DeMille taking certain liberties with the factual history of the life of the Lord, drew the line here!

Hollywood producers in the decades ahead learned from DeMille that this was the way ahead: to get Roman Catholic advisors onto their sets. “Hiring Catholic technical advisors became roughly analogous to obtaining an imprimatur. It did not assure there would be no controversy, but it did smooth the way to the theater.” ⁹⁷

Films in which an actor portrays the Lord Jesus Christ are completely contrary to Holy Scripture, ⁹⁸ and thus Christians are not to support or endorse any film of the life of Christ in which He is shown. But a film could still be made of biblical or historical events if it is accurate and truthful. Hollywood, however, from its inception sold its soul to the devil, and simply could not be trusted to produce such a movie, because film-makers desperately tried not to offend anyone, religiously. In making a biblical film, it was inevitable that if it was going to be accurate, it would offend someone; but Hollywood, in seeking to offend no one, produced films that were inaccurate, leaving out major events or important aspects, preferring rather to attempt to keep all religious groups happy by producing movies that trod carefully between all of them. To offend no one, they had to please everyone; and to please everyone they had to sacrifice truth.

Daniel Lord, the Jesuit, rejoiced that his influence was so great on the set of King of Kings, and wanted Roman Catholic influence over Hollywood to continue and to grow. The last thing he wanted was for the (Protestant) Federal Council of Churches, represented by minister George Reid Andrews, the Protestant advisor on the set, to increase in influence over Hollywood productions. So Lord asked priest John Burke of the NCWC to appoint a committee to critique King of Kings. Lord believed that if the “Church” of Rome would endorse the movie, Roman Catholic influence over future Hollywood films would be greatly increased.

A committee was duly appointed, and all but one of the members endorsed the film. That one was Lord’s fellow-Jesuit priest, Joseph Husslein. He objected to the movie’s sensuous nature and the historical licence permitted in the making of it, saying, “It is the movies that must yield to the scriptures and not the scriptures to the movie”. ⁹⁹ This was of course a very correct statement; but he was still a Roman Catholic and a Jesuit priest, not a true Christian.

The result was that the NCWC did not endorse the film. It was however recommended by the IFCA. This lack of NCWC endorsement must have been a severe blow to DeMille, who believed he had bent over backwards to accommodate the Roman Catholic “Church”. But his troubles were far from over, for in addition, Jews objected to his film as well. Even though a rabbi had been a consultant on the film, the Jewish B’nai B’rith organisation, and various Jewish papers, demanded the withdrawal of the film on the grounds that it would prejudice Christians against Jews. Eventually it was agreed that certain scenes which Jews found objectionable would be eliminated, and a foreword would be added exculpating the Jews for the death of Christ. ¹⁰⁰

These concessions to the Jews, in turn, angered influential Roman Catholics! One of these was Rita McGoldrick of the IFCA. She engaged in an all-out battle to promote the film despite Jewish objections. If the Hays Office heard of a local Jewish protest against the film, McGoldrick was contacted, and she immediately wrote to Romish priests to get them to promote the film in their areas.

The Production Code: a Jesuit Creation

The first step towards regulation and control of the movie industry came in 1927, a result of growing calls for censorship: as was seen, the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America adopted the “Don’ts and Be Carefuls”, guidelines for handling such issues as religion, race, national origin, etc. ¹⁰¹ But as far as a small but growing number of Roman Catholic priests and “laymen” were concerned, it did not go far enough. They felt something more had to be done, and that more censorship, in Rome s favour, was needed. And now the Romish hierarchy in the United States and the leadership of some Romish “lay” organisations became involved, more than ever before, in film censorship, resulting in Roman Catholics actually becoming the regulators of the movie industry from 1930 onwards! This is how it happened:

Hollywood producers felt that the censorship boards were too strict; and so the trade organisation for movies, the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America (MPPDA), worked out how they could get around these censors. In 1930 the members of the MPPDA adopted what was called the Motion Picture Production Code (also known as the Hays Code). This Code set out the moral standards for movie plots, behaviours, and representations. It stated, “No picture shall be produced which will lower the moral standards of those who see it.”

There was heavy Roman Catholic involvement in the actual formulation of this Production Code. And here is the bombshell: the man who actually authored the Code was none other than the Jesuit priest, Daniel Lord, assisted by a staunch Irish-American Roman Catholic publisher of a film trade journal named Martin Quigley! ¹⁰² And who would enforce it? Yet another staunch Irish-American and Jesuit- trained Roman Catholic, Joseph I. Breen! Lord, Quigley, Breen: the three Papists who held Hollywood in their hands.

Let us see how this came about:

Martin Quigley was a devout Irish-American Papist, a graduate of Catholic University, and the owner and publisher of Exhibitors Herald, a movie industry trade journal. This later became the Motion Picture Herald. He wanted movies to promote Rome’s idea of good morals, not pull them down, but he opposed government censorship, believing it to be ineffective. He was also in a very compromised position himself, condemning immoral movies yet making his living by advertising those very movies in his trade journal! This often meant that he was viewed as a hypocrite – which, in fact, is what he was.

His view of censorship was that objectionable content in a film should be removed during the production stage, thereby removing the need for government censorship. In addition, he believed that movies should avoid social, political and economic subjects. They should be straightforward entertainment, not social commentaries. ¹⁰³

So what did he do? In 1929 he teamed up with a Jesuit priest, Fitz-George Dinneen, to come up with a new code of behaviour for the movie industry!

Dinneen differed with Quigley on the issue of government censorship, believing it was necessary. He viewed movies as destroying, in particular, the morals of the youth of America. Both he and Quigley were on the board of trustees of Loyola University, and one night in 1929 Dinneen declared at a trustees’ meeting, “I’m going to teach some people in town a lesson. I’ll stop these filthy pictures from coming into my parish.” He believed that the moviemakers were incapable of policing themselves, and in an anonymous editorial in the archdiocesan paper, which he probably wrote, it was stated that the moviemakers “were not artists [but] ex-pants pressers and ex-push cart merchants of the lower east side of New York”, and that few of them were “real Americans.” ¹⁰⁴ However, once he began meeting with Quigley to discuss how movies could be cleaned up, Dinneen listened to Quigley’s thoughts about the need for a self-regulating system of censorship rather than government censorship. They saw a need to replace the “Don’ts and Be Carefuls” with a better set of rules for the film industry, and they began to draw one up. It was to be a code of morality. They asked Roman Catholic “layman”, Joseph Breen (more about him further on), and another Jesuit priest named Wilfred Parsons, to give their input as well.

Dinneen arranged a meeting for Quigley with Romish cardinal, George W. Mundelein, to discuss this proposed Code. Mundelein was a long-time advocate of police censorship of movies, but Quigley reasoned that a new Code, written by Roman Catholics and supported by the Roman Catholic hierarchy, would remove any need for censorship, either by the police or by the government. He believed that the movie industry could be massively influenced by the Roman Catholic institution, consisting as it did of twenty million members in America at that time, most of whom were massed in the great urban centres (where most movies played). Quigley reasoned – correctly as it turned out – that the movie industry would be too afraid to oppose any united Roman Catholic action against immoral films. The industry had too much to lose by effective Roman Catholic opposition. ¹⁰⁵ Essentially Quigley was saying: money talks.

Mundelein agreed with Quigley, and when Dinneen suggested that yet another Jesuit priest, Daniel Lord (Dinneen’s friend and a former pupil of his), be brought in to write the Code (Lord had been suggested to Dinneen by Quigley), Mundelein supported this as well.

Lord was an intellectual, a professor of dramatics at St. Louis University, a gifted musician, popular speaker, prolific author, lover of movies, and the editor of Queen s Work, a publication for Roman Catholic youth. Thus he was well versed in the Jesuit techniques of using theatrical productions for Rome’s own purposes, analysed in an earlier chapter. He of course was the priest who had been hired in 1927 by Cecil B. DeMille as a technical advisor on the production of the movie King of Kings. He not only became lifelong friends with DeMille but he also caught the Hollywood bug. As a result of his work on King of Kings, he was considered to be the leading Papist expert on movies. Although he loved films, he hated immoral films. He wanted films to promote good in society, not evil. He was very opposed to drama and literature which realistically dealt with sexual and social issues, as well as evolution, birth control, abortion, secular education, and Communism. And so it was that when Quigley approached him with the task of writing the Production Code he was ecstatic, saying, “Here was a chance to tie the Ten Commandments in with the newest and most widespread form of entertainment.” ¹⁰⁶

The Motion Picture Production Code, which Lord wrote, making use of the notes prepared by Quigley, Breen, and the Jesuits Dinneen and Parsons, was far more comprehensive than the earlier “Don’ts and Be Carefuls” had been. It had a list of positive and negative injunctions, giving specific guidelines on what was morally acceptable and what was not.

We see, then, the hand of the Jesuits at work behind the scenes, establishing their sinister influence over this relatively new, but vast and powerful medium. The very Code that would regulate Hollywood movies for decades to come (from 1930 to 1968) was conceived in the mind of a devout Roman Catholic, and then drawn up by Daniel Lord, a priest of Rome and a Jesuit priest, no less, with input from two other Jesuit priests, Dinneen and Parsons.

The Roman Catholic control of Hollywood was deliberate. And it was Jesuit-inspired and Jesuit-controlled!

All these Roman Catholics wanted movies to emphasise that the “Church” (by which they meant the “Church” of Rome), the government and the family were vital to an orderly society, and should not be undermined in films. Films should reinforce religious teaching concerning morals. Lord stated that films were, above all else, “entertainment for the multitudes” and therefore had a “special Moral Responsibility”. And because films were so immensely popular with all classes of people, and so powerful and seductive a medium, he believed they could not be permitted the same freedom of expression granted to plays, books or newspapers. It was vital, therefore, that no film should lower the moral standards of the one watching. No movie should make the audience feel any sympathy for a criminal, adulterer, etc. Right and wrong should be clearly set out in a film, and never be doubtful. Society’s values should be upheld, not attacked in films. The sanctity of marriage must never be questioned or attacked. The judicial system must be portrayed as being just and fair. Police must be shown to be honest. Government must not be ridiculed. ¹⁰⁷

No sensible person can deny that when a society’s moral foundation is undermined, that society has to crumble; and the evidence of this is all around for anyone with eyes to see. The problem, however, was twofold. Firstly, as we have seen and as will yet be seen in this book, any kind of moral or religious censorship, imposed either by a government, or by one segment of society, or by a particular false religion, is never a good thing, in fact it is a very dangerous minefield for many reasons. An entire country is forced to bow to the “morality” of a particular group or power. And secondly, this particular Code was, from beginning to end, a Roman Catholic Code, a Jesuit Code, with its great purpose being to exert Roman Catholic and Jesuit control over Hollywood. As moral as some Roman Catholics can be, they are still Roman Catholics, and their morality is a Roman Catholic morality, which is not (despite some resemblances) a biblical morality. Furthermore, the commitment of these men to their “Church” meant that they would also seek to ensure that films painted Roman Catholicism in a very good light. It was therefore a very dangerous thing.

After Lord had written the Code in 1929, Martin Quigley, with the backing of the “Church” of Rome, took the draft to Will Hays, and began working to get the movie industry to adopt it. Hays himself was sold: “My eyes nearly popped out when I read it,” said this Presbyterian. “This was the very thing I had been looking for.” ¹⁰⁸ He liked it because it would give him more control over the Hollywood studios. So he too began to work hard to get studio bosses to accept it. He and Quigley, fully supported by Mundelein the cardinal, set out to win over Hollywood. And later, as we shall see, so did Joseph I. Breen, who became the Code’s enforcer.

It was no easy task. The producers were not impressed. Some of them argued that the only restriction needed was that of moviegoing audiences themselves, who would simply support films they liked and stay away from those they did not. Lord, of course, was totally against such an idea.

How, then, did it come about that ultimately these servants of Rome were successful? How did the Code come to be accepted by Hollywood’s producers?

Well, many in Hollywood did not actually believe that the Code meant exactly what it said; and in addition, the producers had insisted on a concession that if a studio felt the Hays Office was interpreting the Code too strictly, a “jury” of producers, rather than officials from the MPPDA, would have the final say on whether a cut should be made to a film. The producers, therefore, on the strength of this, accepted the Code. But this was certainly not the way Lord understood it! As far as he was concerned, Jason Joy, the man appointed to enforce the Code for Hays, was authorised to reject scripts, thereby preventing a film from being made; and he was also convinced that Joy would enforce his Code rigidly, with the producers agreeing fully. Lord and the producers were certainly not reading from the same script! The producers believed the Code was nothing but a general guideline; the Jesuit believed it had to be enforced strictly. ¹⁰⁹

Playing Down the Papist Origin of the Code

The Code was adopted by the MPPDA and the Association of Motion Picture Producers (AMPP) in March 1930. But the Production Code Authority (PCA) would not actually be created until a few years later. Sometimes this period is referred to as the “pre-Code” years, but this is incorrect: the Code was in fact enforced during this period, just not as strictly as it would be after Joseph I. Breen was appointed as the Hollywood censor and the Roman Catholic Legion of Decency was created, in 1933-4.

The Code was known as the Hays Code, although in truth it was the Quigley-Lord Code. Hays himself, devout Presbyterian though he was, was certainly somewhat underhanded in this whole matter. Knowing that the Code had been written by “a Catholic priest, and a Jesuit at that” ¹¹⁰ , he sought to keep this fact hidden. As Lord put it, “Mr. Hays rightly felt that it was most effective if the spontaneous nature of the Code was stressed, the fact that it grew out of the will of the industry.” ¹¹¹ There was nothing spontaneous about it, of course, and the very fact that Hays was so willing to accept a Jesuit work says much about him and his Protestantism. And although he did not want it to be widely known that the Code was a Jesuit production, Hays was nevertheless perfectly willing to claim the glory for it himself by being “willing to let the Code be called the Hays code,” as Lord himself remarked. The reasons for Hays’ reluctance to let the truth be kn own were well understood by the three most important Roman Catholics involved: Quigley, the Jesuit Lord, and Code enforcer Joseph Breen. Quigley told Breen, “The recollection of your colleague, W.H., also is not very correct about this development [i.e. the origins of the Code], but the purpose in this case, is, of course, obvious.” ¹¹²

The reason for keeping the true origin of the Code secret for a long time was because its creators did not want a Protestant backlash, if it became widely known that the movie industry’s morality was in the hands of Papists. Quigley told his colleagues that it would not be a good idea for a Roman Catholic publication, such as the Jesuit weekly, America, to be in the forefront of supporting the new Code. Rita McGoldrick of the IFCA was very enthusiastic about the Code, but the Jesuit, Wilfred Parsons, told her to play it down. He told Quigley, “She didn’t like it, but she always does what we ask of her, even though she doesn’t know why.” ¹¹³

Lord’s authorship of the Code was only publicly revealed, in fact, in May 1934, in America; and Variety magazine stated that Lord’s authorship was “kept more or less a secret even from the average member of the film trade by the Hays organization during the [four] years the Code has been in effect.” Martin Quigley himself played down the Roman Catholic involvement in the Code’s creation, not wanting to “increase the fears and apprehensions of non-Catholics and strengthen the opposition to the Code operation.” He made it clear, to Lord himself, that “It is most undesirable that the Code and the Legion of Decency should be confused, [to imply] that the idea of the Code did not originate in the industry but was, seemingly, imposed on the industry by a Jesuit priest who came to New York and made the company heads take it”. ¹¹⁴ He stated that the Code “was formulated after intensive study by members of the industry and, according to Will H. Hays, by church leaders, leaders in the field of education, representatives of women’s clubs, educators, psychologists, dramatists and other students of our moral, social and family problems.” ¹¹⁵ Not by any means a true statement, but he was, after all, a Roman Catholic, influenced by Jesuits, with a Jesuit’s attitude to lies and deceit if it serves the “cause”. He even omitted mentioning, in his own journal, that he had played a significant role in devising the Code.

Lord attempted to play down his own role (and thus that of the “Church” he represented) in the creation of the Code. Years later, in 1946, he stated, “The Code was not to be an expression of the Catholic point of view. It was to present principles on which all decent men would agree. Its basis was the Ten Commandments, which we felt was a standard of morality throughout the civilized world.” Yes, he said, the Code just “happens to have been written by a Catholic priest,” but “the Motion Picture Production Code is not the product of the Catholic Church.” As one author remarked, “In so saying, Father Lord broke what, in the Catholic Decalogue, is the Seventh Commandment.” ¹¹⁶ Indeed he did; but a Jesuit priest has never been shy to lie if it will advance the cause of Rome by hiding Rome’s true intentions or involvement in something.

Roman Catholic Reverence for the Code

At first the Code was not well received by many Roman Catholics, with some Romish publications openly opposed to it. And what these publications said about it naturally filtered down to the general Roman Catholic public. This was very problematic, for the studios would eventually cotton on to the fact that there was no need for them to abide by the Code if the public did not support it. The devout Roman Catholics who had created it knew that something had to be done, and fast. They earnestly believed that the Code was primarily promoting not just any morality, but Roman Catholic morality. And so they went to work. On her radio show Rita McGoldrick praised the Code, while being at pains to hide its Roman Catholic origin, as she had been instructed to do by Parsons the Jesuit. Joseph Breen contacted most of the editors of Roman Catholic newspapers in 1930 to obtain their backing for the Code, and convinced over half of those he contacted to support it. Parsons, meanwhile, worked hard at getting the readers of America magazine to give it their support. Things did not go smoothly, however. Quigley distrusted Hays and told Mundelein, the cardinal, to avoid the Hays Office “as he would poison”, but Parsons wanted Mundelein to publicly endorse the Code. And Quigley was also angry to learn that Lord had accepted a $500 honorarium from Hays for his work on the Code. This caused Parsons to withdraw an article on the Code which Lord had written for America. But eventually Mundelein endorsed it, followed by the New York cardinal, Hayes. The cardinals’ endorsements of the Production Code were then published in America , ¹¹⁷ the Jesuit magazine.

In time, the Code came to be revered by many devout Papists. “Conceived in faith and invested with a sacred aura, the Code would be likened to another text, the Bible, and metaphors of print-based religiosity would waft around it like incense: the commandments, the tablets, the gospel… ‘The more I thought about it, the more it seemed to me to be an inspired document,’ Breen recalled years later, italicizing his reverence.” ¹¹⁸ To the Roman Catholics who sought to control Hollywood, the Code practically was Scripture, given by God through His servants Quigley and Lord to keep Hollywood clean and to promote the “one true Church”. Breen believed the Code was “a moral treatise” whose “rules and regulations” stemmed from “the ancient moral law, which had been accepted by mankind almost since the dawn of creation.” Thomas Doherty, Breen’s biographer, declared: “To Breen, the Code was less a collaboration between Martin Quigley and Father Lord than a tablet handed down from Mount Sinai.” ¹¹⁹

Enforcing the Code a Constant Struggle

After the Code was adopted, Hays appointed Jason Joy and the Studio Relations Department (SRD) to enforce Lord’s creation. Joy served as censor till 1932, followed by Dr James Wingate until 1934. Producers voluntarily submitted scripts to these censors, who tried to get films to conform to the Code. At first the Roman Catholics behind the Code were quite satisfied. At the end of the first year of the Code’s adoption, Martin Quigley felt able to write, triumphantly, that “it has been enormously successful.” And Rita McGoldrick stated, “These are the days when the most fastidious person may have a wide variety of splendid films to select from.” Furthermore, “Everything Catholic on the screen has been, and is being, protected one hundred percent.” As for Lord, he wrote to Mundelein that if there was no Code, “conditions in the motion pictures this year [the first year of the Code’s adoption] would have been beyond description.” ¹²⁰

But despite such gloating, it was an uphill struggle for them and things were not going as well as they would have liked. The Great Depression had started, and moviemakers, desperate to woo back a dwindling movie audience, made films that were increasingly sensationalistic. Gangster films became extremely popular at this time, as gangsters were portrayed as above the law, with lots of money, fast cars and beautiful women, and yet they were men who did not work for their money and thumbed their noses at the authorities. Even the fact that at the end of these films the gangsters were either killed or arrested did not make them any less appealing to moviegoers struggling in the Depression era. Over fifty gangster movies had been made by the end of 1931. And of course such films were very popular with boys, which enabled the studios to rake in even more money. Yet the notorious gangster, A1 Capone himself, during a press conference before going to prison, said that all gangster films should be thrown away. “They’re doing nothing but harm to the younger element,” he said. “[They] are making a lot of kids want to be tough guys, and they don’t serve any useful purpose.” ¹²¹

But because the gangsters were punished in the end, and thus the lesson was put across that crime did not pay, Joy felt this rash of gangster movies did not in fact promote crime, but rather the opposite. He did not want to be seen as narrow-minded, but constructive as far as possible in his censorship; and so these movies were passed by him. But his approach was anathema to censorship boards, and he had an ongoing struggle to convince them that he was right. As one author put it, “With the chair of the Studio Relations Committee going around the country lobbying for crime films, Code supporters began to wonder if the fox had been appointed to protect the henhouse.” ¹²²

Little Caesar (1930): Just a Nod to the Roman Catholic Religion

This, one of the most famous gangster films of all time, like other gangster films of the period pitted Roman Catholic immigrants against native-born Protestant Americans, the former being depicted as free- spirited, anti-Prohibition, etc., and the latter as puritanical spoilsports. In this film the gangster hero is a lapsed Roman Catholic, a tough immoral killer and a closet sodomite. Many railed against the film because of its apparent glorification of crime and criminals, but the lead actor, Edward G. Robinson, often stated that this was not the case, and that the film taught the Christian lesson that “he who lives by the sword shall die by it, or, the wages of sin is death.” ¹²³ Doubtless this was the angle used to attempt to mollify offended Romanists and others, but more discerning people could see the real truth: that gangster movies, first and foremost, were entertainment for people in the Depression era, not moral lessons. One cannot watch an entire film in which the hero lives the high life by means of his criminal deeds, and then expect the audience to go home with the message that “crime doesn’t pay” merely because the hero “dies like a rat” at the end. Any supposed “morality” in such films was inserted merely to pacify religious critics.

Public Enemy (1931): Depicting Irish Papist Gangsterism

This film, another gangster movie, revolves around an Irish-American immigrant family where two sons are gangsters. “Hollywood’s Irish are all shantytown papists, full of blarney and bluster.” ¹²⁴ The movie is permeated throughout with the Roman Catholicism of the brothers, for in those times to be Irish was to be Papist, and everything in their world was permeated by their “Church”. But even so, the movie was certainly not a pro-Papist morality film. It was a gangster film, plain and simple, in which the gangsters happened to be Papists (as so many were). In an attempt to mollify critics, the producers added a title card in which they stated: “It is the intention of the authors of The Public Enemy to honestly depict an environment that exists today in a certain strata of American life, rather than glorify the hoodlum or criminal.” But again, this disclaimer was nothing more than a sop to the critics and to the new Production Code administrators. The film, like all gangster films of the time, was all about violence and vice to thrill the audience. The producers’ advertising copy, as has been correctly pointed out, revealed their real intentions far better, for there they said: “It is real, real, devastatingly real. A grim depiction of the modem menace! Come prepared to see the worst of women and the cruelest of men – as they really are!” ¹²⁵ When one truly wants to get across the message that crime is evil and does not pay, one does not make a movie which focuses on the criminals’ lives with relish and in graphic detail. Plainly, some film-makers were ignoring the Code, or at most paying only scant attention to it. Jason Joy was not doing a good job of enforcing it.

Scarface (1932): Depicting Italian Papist Gangsterism

The film’s main character, Italian immigrant Antonio Camonte, was perhaps the most disturbing of all the gangsters portrayed in movies of that era, for he was based on real-life gangster A1 Capone. And just as with Public Enemy, the producers of Scarface tried to mollify critics with a prefatory title card, in which they stated that the movie was an “indictment of gang rule in America and of the callous indifference of the government to this constantly increasing menace to our safety and liberty.” But, as with Public Enemy, this disclaimer was simply designed as a sop to the critics and the Production Code administrators.

Director Howard Hawkes made certain that there was always a religious context to the crimes of Camonte, by including the all- pervasive symbol of the cross. It is, quite literally, almost everywhere in the film. It is seen at every depicted killing. Also, Camonte’s mother is depicted in the film as an Old World Papist, superstitious, devout, trying to protect her daughter from going the same way as her evil son.

Italian Roman Catholics were not impressed. They felt the film besmirched their religion and their ethnicity. Calls were increasingly being heard for something to be done about such movies.

“Fallen Woman” Films Follow the Gangster Films

When, finally, a clampdown by Hays occurred, the studios turned to making movies with frank sexual themes and seductive actresses, such as Mae West, Marlene Dietrich, Greta Garbo and Joan Crawford. Sex, they knew, always sells. There was a rash of “fallen woman” films. In a movie called Possessed, Joan Crawford was the mistress of a politician. Jason Joy challenged MGM producer Irving Thalberg over this film, but Thalberg claimed that there was no nudity in it, the subject was handled “in good taste” (how often these words have been used to justify sin!), and the Code was therefore not violated. Joy told Hays that it would be very difficult to force Thalberg to make any changes because in all likelihood a jury would rule in Thalberg’s favour. ¹²⁶

Joy was increasingly struggling to enforce the Code, as one “fallen woman” film followed another, each pushing the boundaries as far as they dared. Thus, despite the supposedly good influence of the Hays Office over Hollywood via the Production Code, things were going from bad to worse. “Even Irving Thalberg, whose studio had started the cycle with Possessed, feared that the industry was suffering from a surfeit of sex and crime pictures. He suggested as an antidote that each major studio should make ten important movies each year without any sex or crime angles, but no one, including Thalberg himself, volunteered to take the lead.” ¹²⁷

Jason Joy left the Hays Office in 1932 to work as a story consultant for Fox studios, and was replaced by James Wingate. When Wingate saw the Mae West films, She Done Him Wrong and I’m No Angel, full of one-liners containing sexual innuendo, he found nothing much offensive in them and told Hays so. They were passed by Wingate, amidst a storm of criticism from censorship boards countrywide.

Making Indecent Films of Indecent Books

It was precisely at this time of the Roman Catholic campaign against movies it deemed unsuitable, that Rome was also coming out with guns blazing against obscene and dangerous literature, calling on Papists to avoid it; and Daniel Lord was involved in this campaign as well. So was another Jesuit priest, Francis X. Talbot, who called for federal censorship of indecent novels, and who would later become an important player in the Legion of Decency. Hollywood, of course, wanted to make films of the very books that were being condemned as indecent: books by authors such as Sinclair Lewis, William Faulkner, James Joyce, Theodore Dreiser, Eugene O’Neill, and Ernest Hemingway. Talbot called some of these authors “crawling vermin” ¹²⁸ – and he was right.

Paramount Studios purchased the screen rights to Hemingway’s novel A Farewell to Arms. The Hays Office pointed out that the book contained profanity, illicit love, illegitimate birth, and a not very flattering picture of Italy during the war. This unflattering picture of Italy offended the Roman Catholics in America, for Italy was a very Papist country. Paramount, consequently, sought to remove Hemingway’s anti-Italian sentiments, toned down the illicit affair, and inserted some morality. Jesuit priest Dinneen, however, was greatly angered by the immorality in it.

RKO studios bought the screen rights to Sinclair Lewis’ novel Ann Vickers, a book containing such themes as illicit affairs and abortion. The script was submitted to the SRD for approval, and Joseph Breen, whom Hays had hired, said that he had not read anything quite so vulgarly offensive in years, and that it would not do. James Wingate agreed, and informed RKO. The studio was livid, but eventually agreed to make some cuts, which satisfied Wingate, and the film was released, angering Roman Catholics and others. Meanwhile Hays wrote to all the film studios, saying illicit relationships in movies were never justified, and demanded that films abide by the Code.

The Hays Office and the studios were colliding.

Enter Joseph I. Breen.

Chapter five – Joseph I. Breen and the Code

Joseph I. Breen and the Jesuits

Significantly, as we have seen, the top five key figures in the development of the Code were Roman Catholics with connections to the archdiocese of Chicago: ¹²⁹ Martin Quigley; the Jesuits Daniel Lord and Fitz-George Dinneen; George Mundelein, the cardinal; and a Roman Catholic “layman” named Joseph I. Breen. We must now turn our attention to Breen, for he was very, very important in the history of Rome’s involvement in Hollywood.

In 1933 Breen was appointed to ensure that the Code was applied to Hollywood scripts. He was a staunch Irish-American Roman Catholic. ¹³⁰ Trained as a journalist, politically conservative, a deeply committed Papist and ardent admirer of the Jesuits, whose brother Francis became a Jesuit priest and served on the influential Jesuit weekly, America (for which Joseph himself wrote a series of articles on the threat of Communism), he was strongly opposed to the public discussion of things like divorce, birth control, and abortion – especially in movies, because he believed that average moviegoers were in the 16-26 age- group, and that most of them were “nit-wits, dolts and imbeciles.” ¹³¹ He was educated at St. Joseph’s College, Philadelphia, a Jesuit university, and maintained strong ties to it ever afterwards. “According to [the university’s] official historian, ‘a militant Catholicism, often typical of the Jesuits, was evident during the college’s earlier decades, when Catholics found themselves a somewhat spumed minority in an overwhelmingly Protestant nation.’” ¹³²

Even Roman Catholics of that time knew of the immense power and influence of the Jesuits (though not always of their evils), as shown by Breen’s biographer when he wrote: “The Jesuits, or ‘Jebbies’ to their familiars, were the shock troops of the Catholic clergy, an exclusive fraternity within an exclusive fraternity, priests with a special devotion to higher education, the Virgin Mary, and the propagation of the faith. As an honorific, the initials S.J. (Society of Jesus) were harder to earn and, among Catholics, more revered than a Ph.D.” ¹³³ And Joe Breen was a man who was: “Nursed on the Baltimore Catechism, shaped by parochial schools, and guided to maturity by the Jesuits”. ¹³⁴ Before taking up the job to which he would dedicate his life, that of Hollywood censor, Breen received excellent preparation. Not only was he Jesuit-educated and well-connected to the Jesuit Order via his brother, but he also formed close connections and at times friendships with various Jesuits and other prominent Papists – priests, politicians, businessmen. Even those who were not Jesuits themselves were usually Jesuit-educated and had close Jesuit connections. In particular, he was mentored by the Jesuit priest Wilfred Parsons, whom we have met before, the editor of the influential Jesuit magazine, America, and a Romish monsignor named W.D. O’Brien, editor of the Roman Catholic monthly Extension Magazine. Breen wrote for both magazines throughout the 1920s.

This man, who was to play such an immense part in controlling Hollywood during its “Golden Age”, remained under the Jesuits’ spell for the rest of his life. Hollywood during that time, it can therefore be safely said, was to a huge extent under the control of the Jesuits via their man, Joseph Breen.

His biographer wrote of him: “Joe Breen, the consummate insider, backstage operator, and go-to guy. For twenty years, from 1934 until 1954, he reigned over the Production Code Administration, the agency charged with censoring the Hollywood screen, an in-house surgical procedure officially deemed ‘self-regulation.’ Though little known outside the ranks of studio system players, this bureaucratic functionary was one of the most powerful men in Hollywood. His job – really, his vocation – was to monitor the moral temperature of American cinema.” ¹³⁵ Yes, it was – and to see to it that Hollywood reflected Roman Catholic morality. In 1936 Liberty magazine wrote that Breen “probably has more influence in standardizing world thinking than Mussolini, Hitler or Stalin. And, if we should accept the valuation of this man’s own business, possibly more than the Pope.” ¹³⁶ Such was the immense power of Hollywood that this statement was all too true – except that Breen, being a faithful servant of the pope of Rome, carried out Rome’s wishes. He had even formed a friendship with the future pope of Rome, Pius XI, when the latter was still a monsignor and the papal attache in Warsaw and Breen was a foreign correspondent there.

How Breen’s Career Got Started

How did Breen’s career as “Hollywood’s censor” get started?

In 1925 he was appointed as publicity director for the 28th International Eucharistic Congress, a worldwide gathering of Roman Catholics to be held in Chicago in 1926. This was the first such event held in the United States, and in a very Roman Catholic city. The reason for this was that the previous year, some 50 000 members of the Ku Klux Klan had marched through Washington, DC, and Romish cardinal, George Mundelein, believed that a Eucharistic Congress on a vast scale would present a bold face to anti-Roman Catholic organisations.

Joe Breen was in his element and this event launched his life’s work. The Congress, the Romish Brooklyn Tablet gushed, was: “The most impressive religious spectacle the world has witnessed, perhaps since the Savior was put to death on Calvary.” Even the secular press was full of praise, with the Chicago Tribune describing it as “the most colossal prayer meeting and song service in the authentic annals of Christendom.” It was a public relations dream-come-true for the Roman Catholic institution in America. It was, in a very real sense, the coming of age of American Roman Catholicism. And Breen was at the centre of it. His career was made.

Coverage of the Congress was given to International Newsreel and the Fox Film Corporation; and Fox not only paid for a feature-length documentary of the Congress but also donated exclusive copyright and all profits from the film to the Roman Catholic institution! This was because, whereas almost all Hollywood studios were run by Jews at this time, Fox was now run by Winifred “Winnie” Sheehan, an Irish-American Papist. Only one other major studio was run by another Irish-American Papist, and that was FBO, under Joseph P. Kennedy. Of course, this generous action on Fox’s part was not without an eye to the long-term investment of a partnership between Fox and the Papacy, but naturally Sheehan was also serving his “Church”.

And it was Martin Quigley who brokered the deal between Fox and the “Church”. He and Breen worked together to bring the project to fruition. These two devout Papists viewed it as a missionary project to spread Roman Catholicism to the ends of the earth. The film (called Eucharistic Congress for short) was described as “the screen’s greatest man-made spectacle.” The film did very well in Roman Catholic cities, with standing-room-only crowds in theatres, but not well in the Protestant heartland of the country – a fact which Breen attributed to the “anti-Catholic bigotry in certain parts of this country”. ¹³⁷ The truth is, America at that time was still far more Protestant than Roman Catholic.

But this film did something else. It showed the moviemakers in Hollywood that there was money to be made by pandering to Roman Catholics – a lot of money. In the words of Variety magazine, the Fox-Papist collaboration on this film “certainly tied up the picture business for all time with the churches. ” ¹³⁸ The “Church” of Rome was to dominate Hollywood for a very long time to come.

Breen: Rome’s Man for the Times

By the end of 1932, the calls for government regulation of Hollywood were becoming much louder, from both religious and educational institutions. Then in 1933, the Payne Fund financed a series of twelve studies on the effect the movies had on children. These studies were then condensed into a book by Henry James Forman, entitled Our Movie-Made Children, which pulled no punches: movies, it said, were having a terrible effect on the morals of the young. Will Hays called a meeting of the board of directors of the MPPDA and told them that unless the Code was adhered to, government regulation of the industry would become inevitable. The result was that the directors signed an agreement which re-affirmed the Code. ¹³⁹

Will Hays attempted to act tougher via the Studio Relations Committee. The Jesuit Daniel Lord was invited by Hays to assist James Wingate in 1933, but Lord said no. He was utterly disillusioned with Hollywood, convinced that movies were actually worse now under the Code than they had been prior to its adoption, and he maintained that this was primarily Wingate’s fault. He wanted nothing more to do with the Hays Office.

Things were not going well for the Roman Catholic creators of the Code. They needed someone to take a very firm stand and clean up Hollywood’s mess. Wingate was not that man and Hays could not be trusted. Hays came under heavy criticism from America s priest Gerard Donnelly. Jesuit priest Parsons and Martin Quigley now became inclined towards the idea of government censorship as the only, albeit very flawed, solution to Hollywood’s slide.

Lord was asked by his friend Cecil B. DeMille to act as consultant on the latter’s latest religious epic, The Sign of the Cross, and he agreed. As we have seen, DeMille was known for hiding behind his religious epics to introduce sex into his films, and this film was no exception. It supposedly made Roman Catholics into the heroes – at least, that was what DeMille himself always claimed (he was claiming that the first-century Christians were in fact Roman Catholics, which of course they were not). But this was not true and DeMille played up the debauchery of the Romans. For him, depicting their sensual pleasures was far more important than what was happening to the “Catholic” martyrs. As always, he simply used certain historical facts with a religious slant to sell his film, which was more devoted to pagan debauchery than Roman Catholic doctrine. Exciting the viewer’s lust was more important to him than any “Christian” theme. The pagan women were scantily clad, the “Catholics” were modestly attired, the emphasis was always on the pleasures of the flesh. Even lesbianism was implied in one scene.

The actual Roman Catholicism in the film was very wishy-washy and ambiguous, with the emphasis being more on romantic love between a “Catholic” woman and a pagan man than on even proper conversion to the “Catholic” faith. Lord complained that the pagan orgies and banquets in the film made sin seem fascinating, and the “Christians’” virtuous behaviour dull by comparison. Wingate initially had some complaints, but DeMille managed to satisfy him by making some cuts. Lord himself did not preview the film, and when it was released he was shocked, with its scenes of seduction, sensuous dancing, and implied homosexuality and lesbianism . ¹⁴⁰ Lord suggested cuts. The Roman Catholic press blasted the film, especially the dance scene, and Joseph Schrembs, bishop of Cleveland, denounced it in a sermon. DeMille appeared taken aback by all the negative criticism, and wrote to Roman Catholic critics in an attempt to defend his movie, but essentially to no avail. Readers of Romish papers were urged to boycott the film.

Roman Catholic pressure on Hollywood mounted, and Will Hays met with DeMille to see what could be done. But DeMille was adamant: he was not going to change anything in the film. Ironically, then, a film which its maker purported to be about “Catholic” heroes and martyrs actually played an important part in the formation of the Roman Catholic Legion of Decency, aimed at seeing to it that films did not portray Romanism unfavourably! ¹⁴¹

The Papist criticism of Hollywood increased tremendously in 1933. Priests and people felt that the time had come to act decisively. The Papist press issued calls for something to be done. The Papist creators of the Code and their allies knew that this was the moment of truth: the Code they had come up with needed to be properly enforced, and this was their opportunity to do so.

In Joseph Breen they found the man they needed.

Breen was first brought to Hollywood in 1931 by Will Hays, president of the MPPDA, who wanted “a well-connected and media-savvy Roman Catholic layman” as his assistant. ¹⁴² His duty, as “assistant to the president” (of the MPPDA), was to maintain friendly relations with the Roman Catholics who were always up in arms over something or other emanating from Hollywood, and to smooth their ruffled feathers. As a fellow-Papist who understood his people, Breen was ideally placed for the job. But it was a two-way street: Breen reported to Hays on the Papist mood, but simultaneously Breen was approached by Papists to put pressure on Hays. Breen cleverly worked things so well that he became the indispensable middle man. His own position was thus a very secure one. And always, first and foremost, he was a Roman Catholic. His biographer wrote: “The MPPDA only provided his day job; the Church of Rome held his immortal soul. He would render unto Hays due service, but his true mission was to convert Hollywood.” ¹⁴³ This was the reason why he had taken the job, the purpose to which he devoted pretty much the rest of his days. He wanted a Roman Catholic Hollywood, and he lived and breathed to achieve that objective.

Breen was the man who really had the power. For it was Breen, not Hays, who literally read through and commented on every single movie script of that era. He became known as the “Hitler of Hollywood”. He believed that films should promote high morals (Papist morals, that is).

Breen was ambitious. Hays had given him a job, but he wanted more. He wanted to be in charge of it all. Not even a year after getting the job, he wrote a long letter to Hays, saying the industry needed “the best man in America” to control publicity, and ended by saying, “Don’t you see what an opportunity such a job offers?” Although he did not go so far as to state that he believed he himself was the perfect candidate, he did hint that the right man might already be working in a department in Hays’ office. And it was not that long afterwards when Hays appointed him as head of public relations for the West Coast. ¹⁴⁴

When Breen began to assist James Wingate with the reviewing of scripts and films, it was learned that Universal was going to make a movie of a novel called The Seed, and it was believed that this film would promote contraception, which in all forms was anathema to Roman Catholics. Breen put pressure on Universal to re-write the script, and he was able to write triumphantly to the cardinal Mundelein that the studio had accepted “our Catholic viewpoint against the sneers of the opposition.” ¹⁴⁵

It soon became clear to Will Hays that Breen was a far better man than Wingate for Wingate’s job. And just as importantly as Breen’s toughness was his devout Romanism. Breen, however, distrusted Hays and believed he was afraid of taking a stand and preferred to compromise. He also spoke his mind about what he thought of Hollywood’s movers and shakers (most of whom were Jews): “most are a foul bunch,” he wrote to Jesuit priest Fitz-George Dinneen, “crazed with sex, dirty-minded and ignorant in all matters having to do with sound morals. I don’t suppose five percent have a shred of religion.” ¹⁴⁶

In early 1934 Breen was formally appointed as the head of the Studio Relations Committee, the body tasked with enforcing screen morality, to represent Will Hays and the MPPDA on matters pertaining to the Production Code. In this way the Studio Relations Committee was being re-created as a new agency under the MPPDA, not the AMPP. A few months later he took control of the Production Code Administration (PCA), which replaced the Studio Relations Committee. The PCA was popularly referred to as the “Hays Office”, but in truth it was Breen who became the real power within it, and he ruled it with a very firm hand, having the final say over the contents of literally hundreds of movies every year. Breen’s work was to approve – or disapprove – of scripts and films. He made it clear that he saw his job as carrying out some “real Catholic action”, “to lessen, at least, the flow of filth”. ¹⁴⁷

Once Breen came into this position, “Roman Catholics exerted a virtual veto power over the visible universe of Hollywood’s Golden Age – and the man wielding the gavel was no lackadaisical Midnight- Mass-at-Christmas Catholic but a self-described soldier in ‘the Church Militant.’” ¹⁴⁸

The New York Times put it like this: “[Breen] finds himself not advising but actually writing portions of the script. There is a sizable and embarrassing list of successful films for which he has written whole sequences: there is at least one in which he outlined the entire treatment.” ¹⁴⁹

Some would argue that Breen, as head of the PCA, was not a censor in the strict sense; for the State did not enforce his censoring of freedom of expression. He was in fact employed by a group of private companies. As one producer, Arthur Homblow, Jr., put it, “It is a mistake to think of the Production Code Administration as a form of censorship, a sort of policeman patrolling a beat. We are responsible members of a responsible profession, and the Code is the articulate enunciation of the ethical standard we have set up for ourselves.” ¹⁵⁰ He compared the Code with the doctors’ Hippocratic Oath. However, Breen was a censor for all practical purposes, and there is no getting around it.

Breen’s Interpretation and Enforcement of the Code

Breen himself left no doubt of what he sought to do in Hollywood by enforcing the Code. He told Jesuit Dinneen in 1934 that his purpose was to establish “an overall authority which would function on a platform of Catholic understanding and interpretation of moral values.” ¹⁵¹ Clear enough!

Breen went to his task with a will, fighting with film producers and enforcing the Code. He maintained that every movie had to have “sufficient good” in it to compensate for any evil it contained, and that every movie had to have a good moral character in it, making it clear to the bad guys in the movie that they were wrong. He lost no time in waging war against such things as prostitution, narcotics, sex and rough language that were common in many movies already, even in those days. If scripts did not live up to the standard, deletions and changes had to be made. Movie themes were not to be depressing. Middle- class social standards were not to be disparaged. The top-billed “star” in the movies was expected to respect all lawful authorities and to speak out for good morals. Divorce was expected to be portrayed as sinful. Adultery was to be portrayed as sinful and shown to be punished. Marriage was to be upheld as sacred. Heterosexual monogamy alone was to be portrayed as normal, with all other sexual behaviour to be removed from the movies. The naked human body was not to be shown, and nor was a clothed human body to be shown in a revealing or sexually provocative way. Kissing on-screen was permitted, but passionate, prolonged or lustful kissing was not. Although they were so obviously immoral as not even to be mentioned in the Code, Breen made it clear that sadism, homosexuality, incest, etc., were not permitted to be even hinted at in films.

Of course, clever Hollywood directors could always find ways around many of the restrictions – not by actually showing sex scenes, but certainly by hinting at them, by their use of lighting, fading out the pictures, etc. Audiences simply had to read the signs, looking for the hinted messages of what was being suggested behind what was actually shown.

Anything which he deemed to be “subversive of the fundamental law of the land” was forbidden. Any Communistic propaganda was banned. Insurrections against priests, pastors, police or politicians were strictly forbidden. Although individual policemen might be shown to be corrupt, the police force as a whole had to be always shown as honest, a force for good. Such things as drinking, jazz music, and married women going out to work were to be portrayed in a bad light. Inter-racial romance was not permitted. Clothing was to be modest. Swimming or sleeping naked was forbidden. Even married couples could not be shown to be sharing a double bed.

Women were to be portrayed as virtuous, and treated in a way bordering on reverence – influenced no doubt by Breen’s Popish veneration of Mary as much as by his respect for women. Indeed, in many films of the “Breen period”, “the backlit halos and divine close- ups of the female face in Hollywood’s frame bespeak a kind of religious adoration…. The reverence flowed… from the Victorian regard for the idealized female that Breen enforced under the Code. Roughing up women, even a slang term for a young girl, was intolerable under the Breen Office in its prime.” In addition, the Code forbade: “Pointed profanity (this includes the words, God, Lord, Jesus, Christ – unless used reverently – Hell, S.O.B., damn, Gawd), or every other profane or vulgar expression however used.” ¹⁵²

And yet hypocritically, “the man who fumigated screen dialogue was known to be foul-mouthed in his own conversation.” J.P. McEvoy, a screenwriter and friend of Breen’s, once wrote, “I can’t give you a verbatim report of one of Joe’s sulphurous speeches explaining how he won’t stand for sulphurous speeches.” And Variety magazine declared that Breen’s language “would make a Billingsgate fishmonger blush”, but then added, “It may sound paradoxical, but Hollywood is turning out cleaner pictures because of Joe Breen’s profanity.” For Breen would curse and swear at the movie moguls to get his way – and get it he did. One who kn ew him well said of him, “He figured… that when you got a script with coarse episodes in it, the best way to discuss the coarseness of the script was by using coarse language.” ₁₅₃ A physically big man, he was also known to threaten other men with bodily injury at times; and his profanity and tough guy image gave him the reputation of being a “man’s man” who would take no nonsense.

“Bathroom humour” (also known as “toilet humour”) of any kind was forbidden – in fact, bathrooms themselves were not to be seen at all. And no reference was ever to be made to the “call of nature” in any form. Anything considered vulgar was forbidden – even runny noses. ¹⁵⁴ This was often taken to ridiculous extremes. The Breen Office “blushed at the most innocuous exposures. A cameo appearance and product placement by Elsie the Borden milk cow in RKO’s Little Men (1940) confirmed that breast oversight was not restricted to homo sapiens…. ‘At no time should there be any shots of actual milking, and there cannot be any showing of the udders of the cow; they should be suggested rather than shown’ [said Breen].” ¹⁵⁵

Today people would laugh at such restrictions. Certainly many of them (such as the “no bathrooms” and “no runny noses” rules) were utterly ridiculous, while others (such as the prohibition on inter-racial romance) were just wrong. But as can be seen from the above, there were other things forbidden by the Code which every true Christian would of course agree were sinful (even though, as we have seen, knowing that something is sinful and should not therefore be viewed is not the same thing as supporting media censorship by a religious or political body, which is never a good thing). Even Rome gets some aspects of morality right, and no Christian would deny that movies which attack morality, and lower moral standards, are harmful. However, that is not the issue here: what is at issue is that this Code was drawn up by a Jesuit priest, and then enforced by another faithful Roman Catholic. Papists were now the regulators of the movie industry. They were now the ones who decided what movies people could see. It was a triumph for the Roman Catholic institution in its bid to control every aspect of the movie industry for its own purposes.

And far more sinister than Roman Catholic regulation of movie morals, was Roman Catholic regulation of how Roman Catholicism itself was portrayed in movies. This is what the Production Code had to say about religion in the movies: “No film or episode may throw ridicule on any religious faith. Ministers of religion in their characters as ministers of religion should not be used as comic characters or as villains. Ceremonies of any definite religion should be carefully and respectfully handled.” ¹⁵⁶ And Breen saw to it that priests, nuns, and Romish rituals and objects were portrayed in such a way that they did not offend Romanists. They also had to be accurately portrayed. For example, when Romish director, Alfred Hitchcock, made the movie / Confess in 1953, he had to ensure that it not only met the Production Code’s standards, but also that it met the rubrics set out for priests administering the Romish “sacrament of penance.” To make sure of this, Breen and a Romish priest/advisor checked the script. ¹⁵⁷ The same kind of strict control was exercised over the making of The Song of Bernadette in 1943, even though it was a pro-Papist film. Lines in the script which merely appeared to be critical of the Roman Catholic “Church” were recommended for deletion; the priest’s contempt for Bernadette was toned down; and priests and nuns were on the set often and contributed advice on the proper method of carrying out Romish rituals, in obedience to Breen who had recommended to Henry King, the film’s Roman Catholic director, that he “secure the services of a very competent Catholic priest, who will serve as a technical advisor on this picture. We think it is enormously important that you have a very competent priest read the script thoroughly in order to check much of the dialogue and action.” A Romish priest named John J. Devlin, the executive secretary of the Legion of Decency, was the priest who was watchdog over many movies coming out of Hollywood in those years. ¹⁵⁸

Although the Production Code prohibited movies from portraying any religious leader as a villain or in a comic manner, the fact is that Breen paid more attention to Roman Catholic matters than to Protestant ones. This was not surprising, given that Breen was a Papist, but it definitely shows up the impossibility of a member of one religion treating all religions equally or fairly. Naturally one will pay particular attention to one’s own religion, and Breen did just that. ¹⁵⁹ The Production Code was in Rome’s hands, and Rome was going to milk it for all it was worth.

A real contradiction in the Code was the way in which it dealt with black Americans. On the one hand, the Code stated categorically: “Miscegenation (sexual relationship between the white and black races) is forbidden” in movies; yet on the other hand, it stated: “The history, institutions, prominent people and citizenry of other nations shall be represented fairly.” Blacks, like all others, were to be treated fairly in movies, as long as no miscegenation was allowed.

The miscegenation clause had been added to the Code’s third draft in 1930 with an eye to the bottom line: if films were to make money in the American South, there could be no miscegenation shown. Both Quigley and Lord were dead against this clause in the Code, however. But there it was and there it stayed, for many years. Only after World War Two was it seriously challenged.

Breen’s censorship meant that movies based on popular novels often ended up bearing almost no resemblance to the novel at all. The situation, then, was that immoral novels were not censored, but immoral movies of those novels were. To many this may sound like a good thing, a kind of halfway victory for better morals: “Well, the novel might be filled with sex and crime, but at least the movie isn’t.” But in truth it is not a good thing at all. This “halfway” censorship would mean many would think the book is as “clean” as the movie, and would thus read the book after seeing the movie, thereby defeating the “halfway” censorship in the first place; but on the other hand, if full censorship is applied, to books as well as movies, such censorship is entirely up to the whims and fancies of whoever is doing the censoring – and inevitably this leads to censorship of Christian materials and can even lead to persecution of Christians in the long run. The censorship of immoral books or movies simply cannot be entrusted to unregenerate men. It is up to individuals to simply refuse to read immoral books or watch immoral movies. This is the correct kind of censorship. If a book or movie is bad, it should just be shunned. It is not the place of a government to tell us what can or cannot be considered “moral”, and also, when such power is placed in the hands of one religion, this is a very dangerous thing. A Nanny State turns its citizens into babies needing to be spoon-fed by the supposedly “all-wise” authorities, and a “Nanny Religion” means, in effect, that all the country’s citizens are under that religion’s power.

Breen’s Staunch Anti-Protestantism

Breen, with his Jesuit university education, was a militant Papist who described those who viewed Romanism as a religio-political system seeking the destruction of Americanism as “stupid and ill-informed”. ¹⁶⁰ Of course, this was his “official” position; but being the well-educated son of the Jesuits that he was, he must have known that this was precisely what the Papacy was plotting to do – and heartily approved of it. Passionate about America and the American way of life he may well have been, but he wanted a Papist America all the same. As he himself said in 1922 when he worked for the National Catholic Welfare Conference: “We stand for the preservation of the faith among our Catholic foreign bom who come here among us. We stand for loyalty and devotion to America, its government, its institutions, its ideals.” ¹⁶¹ In truth, the Jesuits have never stood for the government, institutions, and ideals of America, and as they indoctrinated their servant Joe Breen, he would have been well versed in the Jesuit tactic of saying one thing but meaning another. Perhaps he, personally, would stand for America – but only as long as America could be slowly transformed into a Roman Catholic nation. As his biographer put it: “He assailed the Ku Klux Klan, Bolshevism, the British Empire, and any other menace, foreign or domestic, to the Catholic Church.” ¹⁶²

He was strongly anti-Protestant. When he edited the official monthly magazine of the NCWC from May 1923 to March 1924, he would deride any “anti-Catholic bigot who has the misfortune to be at the same time brainless”, as he put it. Hating America’s Prohibition era, he referred to Protestant teetotalling women and ministers as a “horde of female fanatics” and “Protestant ‘gentlemen of the cloth’” who “seem to be ever-ready to poke their noses into the other fellow’s business”. ¹⁶³ Yet he failed to see the irony of the fact that, although condemning Protestants for forcing their morality on everyone else via Prohibition, as Hollywood’s censor he himself was always ready to poke his nose into “the other fellow’s business” and insist on forcing his own Papist morality on Hollywood!

Breen’s Hatred of the Hollywood Jews

As we have seen, in its very early years the Code was almost ignored by the film studios. From Los Angeles in 1932 Joseph Breen complained that “nobody out here cares… for the Code or any of its provisions.” Writing to Wilfrid Parsons, Breen said that Hays may have thought “these lousy Jews out here would abide by the Code’s provisions but if he did he should be censured for his lack of proper knowledge of the breed.” He added that the Code would fail in Hollywood because the Jews, who controlled the studios, were “dirty lice” and “the scum of the earth.” Moreover, he said that the whole American nation was being “debauched by the Jews” and the movies they made. ¹⁶⁴

Breen believed it was his purpose in life to force the immoral Jewish film-makers to make moral films in accordance with the Roman Catholic religion, via pressure at the box office. Martin Quigley took a somewhat different approach: he too believed in box office pressure to force Hollywood to clean up its act, but instead of blaming the Jewish owners, producers and writers solely, he also blamed the “Church” of Rome itself for not keeping up the pressure on Hollywood to force the studios to stick to the Code.

Breen hated Jews and this comes out clearly in his words. In this he was no different from a great many Roman Catholics of his time, for Rome has hated the Jews for centuries, and in a few short years Hitler, a Roman Catholic himself, would embark on a diabolical plot to eradicate Jews en masse, and would receive immense support from Romanists in Germany and other parts of the world. The Roman pope, Pius XII, would give tacit support to Hitler in his treatment of the Jews (recent Roman Catholic attempts to whitewash him notwithstanding). ¹⁶⁵ Breen, like his papal master, viewed Jews as untrustworthy and greedy. In 1932 he wrote to Martin Quigley, “The fact is that these … Jews are a dirty, filthy lot. Their only standard is the standard of the box- office. To attempt to talk ethical value to them is time worse than wasted.” ¹⁶⁶ To priest Parsons Breen wrote: “These Jews seem to think of nothing but money making and sexual indulgence. People whose daily morals would not be tolerated in the toilet of a pest house hold the good jobs out here and wax fat on it. The vilest kind of sin is a common indulgence hereabouts and the men and women who engage in this sort of business are the men and women who decide what the film fare of the nation is to be. You can’t escape it. They, and they alone, make the decision. Ninety-five per cent of these folks are Jews of an Eastern European lineage. They are, probably, the scum of the scum of the earth.” ¹⁶⁷

Moreover, he held it was ludicrous to believe that “these dirty lice would entertain, even for an instant, any such procedure as that suggested by a Code of Ethics”. He also turned his guns on Wall Street bankers, who watched as America was “debauched by the Jews. Some bankers may – some of the Jew Ba nk ers. But you can’t make me believe that our American bankers, as a general thing, have fallen so low that they will permit their money to be used to paganize this nation.” ¹⁶⁸

Breen called on Roman Catholics “to get after the Jews in this business”. He called a Warner Brothers district manager “a kike Jew of the very lowest type.”

The irony was that Breen, while bitterly complaining about what the Jews were seeking to do to America, was serving the interests of a monolithic religious power (Roman Catholicism) that was seeking to destroy America – the very thing he accused the Jews of seeking to do!

It is beyond dispute that in the United States of America, Jews, though a tiny percentage of the population at the time, had risen to prominence in all kinds of fields: politics, entertainment, sports, arts, science, business – and especially in Hollywood! “The names of William Fox, Louis Mayer, Adolph Zukor, Marcus Loew, Samuel Goldwyn, the Warner brothers, Carl Laemmle, etc., are so permanently identified with the movie industry that the Jewish trademark on the movies is virtually indelible,” declared the Kansas City Jewish Chronicle in 1934. “The Jewish angle is not being dragged into the movie issue; it exists, whether you like it or not.” ¹⁶⁹

And this total dominance of Hollywood by Jews was of deep concern to Roman Catholic – and Protestant – America. In Columbia, the official magazine of the Romish Knights of Columbus, Karl K. Kitchen wrote in 1922: “Pants pressers, delicatessen dealers, furriers, and penny showmen started in the picture business when it was in infancy and they are now the type of ‘magnates’ who preside over its destinies today. If the Jews who shaped its policies were cultured gentlemen of taste and refinement there would be no occasion to find fault with them. But the men who control the motion picture industry are foreign bom Jews of the lowest type.” ¹⁷⁰ The Catholic Standard and Times called Hollywood a “school of vice” and said the men in charge of the studios were “by race and conviction, alien to the ideals of Christendom.” In the Ecclesiastical Review in 1934, Romish bishop John J. Cantwell of Los Angeles gave his name to a piece in which was found the following: “Jewish executives are the responsible men in ninety per cent of all the Hollywood studios. If these Jewish executives had any desire to keep the screen free from offensiveness, they could do so. It is not too much to expect that Hollywood should clean house, and that the great race which was the first custodian of the Ten Commandments should be conscious of its religious traditions.” It turned out that Joseph I. Breen had actually ghostwritten Cantwell’s piece! ¹⁷¹

Breen was right, of course: if the Jewish studio owners wanted to clean up Hollywood, they could have done so. But they did not want to. They were using Hollywood to lower western morality. But these were not Jews who loved their religion and believed in the Ten Commandments. These were men who were Jews, not by religion but by descent, and who were opposed to morality, Christianity, and even common decency, serving (often without knowing it) the Marxist cause. And they could be just as foul-mouthed as Breen. “Whether in Yiddish or English, the Jewish moguls matched the Catholic censor in linguistic crudeness. In moments of anger, the foul-mouthed Harry Cohn [a Jew], head of Columbia Pictures, did not refer to Frank Capra [an Italian], his ace director, as a vertically impaired gentleman of Sicilian heritage…. According to Pete Harrison, Joseph M. Schenck – Loews Theater tycoon, founder of Twentieth Century Pictures, and Russian-born Jew – spat out an expression at the Roman Catholic Church ‘so foul that it cannot be printed’ when the prominent Catholic lawyer Joseph Scott and the financier Dr. A.H. Giannini met with the Association of Motion Picture Producers in 1933 to warn about the storm brewing among the Catholics…. the Hollywood moguls were not delicate flowers cringing before a clerical Gestapo.” ¹⁷²

It was war: war between two powerful sides, both fighting for dominance over the dream factory called Hollywood. And no quarter was given.

Such anti-Jewish sentiments were not unique to Breen at that time. Prior to World War Two, when Hitler’s elimination of millions of Jews shocked the world and changed its attitude towards them, people all over the western world had little liking for the Jewish people. And this attitude towards them was very much encouraged by the fact that so many Jews were committed Communists and were using their wealth to advance the international Communist cause. Hollywood became a major weapon in the Communist arsenal. In addition, the Papal institution itself had been rabidly anti-Jewish for centuries, had persecuted Jews, and stirred up its millions of members to hate Jews. Breen, faithful Papist that he was, was merely spouting the anti-Jewish hatred so prevalent within his “Church” at the time – ironically, his accusations often based on truth about what Jewish Communists were doing. After World War Two, when the Roman Catholic Adolf Hitler was defeated and with his defeat the plans of the Papacy to use Nazism to advance Romanism across the world, and also with the dawn of the ecumenical and interfaith movements, Rome started to sing a different tune and to smile upon and speak well of the Jews; but it was, and is, all a front. It is a change of tactics, that is all. Rome still hates the Jews.

Breen, however, despite his strong dislike of the Jewish moguls controlling Hollywood, was, at other times, far milder in his statements about Jews than in the quotations given above, even at times speaking admiringly of them and praising them. This seems to be a contradiction, and indeed it may be that, like most people, Breen was sometimes in favour of what at other times he was against. People frequently change in their attitudes, sometimes swinging back and forth, depending on all kinds of factors. They can at one time admire something in a person of a different race, and even wish that person well, whereas at another time they may speak disparagingly of every member of that race. One frequently sees this in the attitude of whites to blacks, and vice versa. But more than just a contradiction within himself, one can also perceive, in his attitude to Jews, the dichotomy of so many American Roman Catholics. On the one hand, being Americans, they are raised from childhood in the American ideals of equality, “one nation under God”, the “melting pot” concept, where all men deserve the opportunity to find their place in the sun and should be treated with respect. On the other hand, they are raised from childhood in the doctrines of the Roman Catholic religion, an autocratic, top-down hierarchical system which allows no dissent, and which makes it abundantly plain that Roman Catholics are above all others, and that Romanism must be advanced by all faithful Papists throughout the world. Romanism has never sat easily alongside Americanism. ¹⁷³ In fact, Romanism is decidedly anti-American and always has been – must be, by its very nature. It seeks to conquer America, but the difficulty it has always faced is that Americans are raised with ideals far removed from that of Roman Catholicism. This is why, far more so than, say, in Europe, so many American Roman Catholics end up either leaving their religion outright, or at least seriously questioning, and even rebelling against, many of its teachings.

Joseph Breen was a rabid Romanist, but he was also an American. And this fact well explains his sometimes contradictory statements about Jews. Sometimes his Americanism overcame his Romanism. And sometimes not. Especially when he was fighting daily with immoral Jewish moguls in Hollywood.

Breen’s Later Apparent About-Face Regarding the Jews

Then, too, there was something else which actually made him far less anti-Jewish as the decade of the 1930s ended and World War Two began, and eventually led to an about-turn on his part: Nazism. Although his “Church” was enthusiastically backing Hitler, Mussolini and Franco, Breen, as an American, was extremely anti-Nazi. Most American Roman Catholics were blissfully unaware of the Vatican’s pro-Nazi stance, or of what it hoped to gain from a Nazi victory in Europe. There most certainly were pro-Nazi Roman Catholics in America, and they did their best to swing American Roman Catholics to Hitler’s side; but it was an uphill struggle. American Papists, raised in the ideals of Americanism, could see nothing good in Hitler. And nor could Breen. And, because he was anti-Nazi, his sympathies towards the Jews, suffering such terrible atrocities at the hands of the Nazis, increased.

Breen joined with many other Hollywood top dogs, including Irish Papist actors, screenwriters, directors and producers, Jewish producers, and agnostics, in seeking to promote anti-Nazism through the movies. Considering the dominance of Jews in Hollywood, it is not surprising that Hollywood was so anti-Nazi at this time. An organisation called the Hollywood Anti-Nazi League for the Defense of American Democracy was at the forefront of this campaign. But this organisation was in fact a Popular Front for international Communism: an alliance of liberals, leftists and Communists, guided from Moscow. Unfortunately, Communism advanced on a wave of anti-Nazism. And many who hated Nazism did not realise that they were being used, as pawns, to advance an ideology just as evil as Nazism.

Breen was anti-Nazi, but he was also fervently anti-Communist, as most Roman Catholics were at this time. It was only after World War Two, and after the Vatican had realised that with the defeat of Nazism, Communism would become the dominant ideology of the age, and after the anti-Communist pope of Rome, Pius XII, was succeeded by the pro-Communist John XXIII – it was only after all these things that the Vatican would do a complete about-face and begin to promote Communism worldwide. ¹⁷⁴ Breen, therefore, was cautious about how far he could support this Popular Front because of its Communist ties. Nevertheless, he continued to lend his name to it, doubtless because he thought that as it was an alliance of forces against Nazism, and Nazism was the more immediate evil, it was worth supporting.

And then, when certain Roman Catholic ecclesiastics in America sought to oppose anti-Semitism in pamphlets (even though their “Church” was actively encouraging Hitler), these appeared to have a profound effect on Breen. One was written by the Code’s author, the Jesuit Daniel Lord, in 1938, entitled Why Are Jews Persecuted? and another was written by a priest named Joseph N. Moody and entitled Dare We Hate Jews? Breen saw to it that 25000 copies of Moody’s pamphlet were distributed, and he distributed over a thousand of them himself. ¹⁷⁵

It would thus appear that Breen had a change of heart at this time towards the Jews. He was no longer the rabid Jew-hater of a few years previously. And when a leaflet was distributed in Los Angeles in 1938 calling on Gentiles to boycott the movies because “Hollywood is the Sodom and Gomorrha where International Jewry controls Vice – Dope – Gambling, where young Gentile girls are raped by Jewish producers, directors, casting directors who go unpunished”, and where “The Jewish Hollywood Anti-Nazi League controls Communism in the motion picture industry”, Joseph Breen sent a letter to Box Office, a trade weekly, in which he wrote: “I have myself received copies of this vicious and salacious leaflet…. The whole business is so revolting, and so thoroughly un-American, that I want to be the first, if possible, to lodge my protest against it.” ¹⁷⁶

Yes, Breen appeared to have had a huge change of heart with regards to the Jews. If so, it is not that his Americanism triumphed over his Romanism, but rather that he had found his Americanism and his Romanism could gel on this matter. Previously he had thought that as a good Papist he had to be anti-Jewish; now, thanks to the writings of priests Lord and Moody, he felt that this did not have to be the case. And yet, ironically, the very “Church” which he loved so much was, at that very time, throwing its massive weight behind Nazism and seeking to annihilate the Jews.

Doubtless he still disliked the “filthy Jews” who controlled the studios, but Breen was no longer against Jews in general.

Besides, before the pro-Nazi pope of Rome, Pius XII, came on the scene, his predecessor, Pius XI, had made such statements as, “it is not possible for Christians to take part in anti-Semitism.” Such statements, from the man he fervently believed to be the Vicar of Christ on earth, would doubtless have made a profound impression on Breen. In 1939 he gave his support to an organisation called the Committee of Catholics to Fight Anti-Semitism. So did Daniel Lord and Martin J. Quigley. The latter asked Breen to sign a pamphlet setting out the Romish “Church”s” supposed opposition to racism, and to get prominent Roman Catholics in Hollywood to sign it too. Breen also issued a statement, which was reprinted in the organ of the Hollywood Anti-Nazi League, which said: “It is my judgment that there is nothing more important for us Catholics to do at the present moment [July 1939] than to use our energies in stemming the tide of racial bigotry and hostility.” ¹⁷⁷

Besides, Breen was well aware that the Nazis were persecuting not just Jews, but Roman Catholics as well. One may wonder how, if Hitler was Papist himself and being supported by Rome, the Nazis could persecute Papists. But this just shows the complex nature of Roman Catholic politics. Roman Catholics who were anti-Nazi were expendable, as far as Rome was concerned. Those Romanists who suffered at the hands of the Nazis were invariably those who hated Nazism. The average Roman Catholic in America simply had no idea that his “Church” was sacrificing fellow-Roman Catholics so as to advance Nazism, which Rome viewed as necessary to advance Romanism itself!

On November 18, 1938, Breen and many other prominent Hollywood personnel – actors and actresses, directors, etc. – signed a telegram to President Roosevelt, which read as follows:

“The Nazi outrages against Jews and Catholics have shocked the world. Coming on the heels of the Munich pact, they prove that the capitulation to Hitler means barbarism and terror…. We in Hollywood urge you to use your presidential authority to express further the horror and indignation of the American people.”

For Breen, Nazism was about more than the persecution of Jews. He was convinced that it was also about the persecution of Roman Catholics, and that was of even greater concern to this devout Romanist.

Chapter six – The Roman Catholic legion of decency

The Legion Comes into Being

By 1933 it was obvious to Lord, Quigley and Breen that the Code was not succeeding in achieving their purposes. People were angry at the immorality of the movies – and not just Roman Catholics. They felt that Hays had failed to keep his promise to prevent dirt in the pictures. Clearly, the Code was not being enforced as the Jesuits, other Papists and even non-Papists wanted it to be. Something had to be done.

Breen persuaded Romish bishop John Cantwell to put pressure on bankers (other than Jewish bankers) to in turn put pressure on the film industry to clean up their films. 1933 was a difficult year for Hollywood financially, and also because of Hitler’s rise in Germany, which made the Hollywood Jews uneasy about their position in American society. This meant that they were more open to changing their ways than they would otherwise have been. Cantwell warned that America’s Romish bishops might release a joint pastoral letter condemning Hollywood. Hollywood listened. Most of the studio heads said they would stick to the Code, with Paramount going so far as to appoint a Roman Catholic as a studio censor, and MGM asking Cantwell to recommend someone whom they could take on in a similar capacity. But men such as Breen and Quigley suspected that, as usual, the Jewish studio bosses made all the right noises at all the right times, but would soon revert back to their old ways. They felt that more needed to be done to keep the studios in line.

As we have seen,in 1933 abookwaspublished entitled Our Movie-Made Children, by Henry James Forman, summarising publications written by respected academics, in which films were blamed for corrupting the youth of America. This of course was (and still is) very true, as anyone with eyes in his head can see. And the book’s publication was fortuitous for the Roman Catholics Lord, Quigley and Breen. Quigley realised that Hollywood was, as a result, now more open than ever to pressure, and so he campaigned for more Roman Catholic involvement in the control and censorship of the industry. The pope of Rome’s new representative in the USA, the Romish monsignor Amleto Giovanni Cicognani, met with Quigley and Breen and, in a speech in which he included a draft statement prepared by Quigley, called for Roman Catholics to take a strong stand against immoral movies. “Catholics are called by God, the Pope, the Bishops, and the priests,” he said, “to a united and vigorous campaign for the purification of the cinema, which has become a deadly menace to morals.” ¹⁷⁸ It was a declaration of war. America’s Popish bishops had been rallied to the cause, and they could not ignore it. And this is how, in that same year of 1933, the powerful Roman Catholic Legion of Decency was founded as well, by both bishops and Romish “laymen”, as we shall see.

Breen continued to meet with influential Papists to drum up support as the bishops’ annual meeting drew closer. As ghostwriter for a report Cantwell was to “write” on the movies for Ecclesiastical Review, Breen got Cantwell to end the report by recommending that the bishops form a committee to study the issue of movies. This, as Breen remarked, was “to keep the Jews worried”, for such a committee would “keep suspended over the heads of the producers the sword which is now threatening to decapitate them.” ¹⁷⁹

At the conclave of bishops in Washington in that year Cantwell gave a speech, saying that the movies, which had always been vulgar, were now also being used to educate people in a “sinister and insidious” philosophy of life. They attacked marriage and the family as being outdated, they condoned such sins as divorce, sexual sins, and even inter-racial marriages (which he held was race suicide). They thereby lowered public and private morals.

Biblically, there is no sin in inter-racial marriages, but this was a commonly-held view of those times. Cantwell was however right about the lowering of moral standards via films. He called for strong action.

When the report was published, many bishops professed to be shocked at just how immoral the movies were, and a committee was formed to study the matter. Its head, the archbishop of Cincinnati, John T. McNicholas, had Cantwell’s report printed and distributed to “Church” leaders across America. The Roman Catholic co-chairman of the National Conference of Christians and Jews, Carleton Hayes, felt that Cantwell was endorsing anti-Semitism in his report. Cantwell denied this, correctly stating that the plain fact of the matter was that Jews ran Hollywood. Another result of the Cantwell report was that Romish journals took up the cause, strongly criticising the film industry. And Romish cardinal, William O’Connell of Boston, branded movies “the scandal of the world”. Clearly, Roman Catholic opposition to Hollywood was now in high gear.

And all this came in the wake of a growing realisation among America’s Romanists that they were now a force to be reckoned with on the national stage. This was articulated by a priest in New York, Owen McGrath, who said that in the past, because it was a minority religion in America, the “Church” of Rome had not spoken up while Protestantism and paganism had taken America down a slippery slope to the present state of immorality, allowing immoral movies to corrupt children. But things had changed, and the “Church” of Rome was now much more powerful in America; and therefore, McGrath declared, “In the name of God let us see the battle to its glorious triumph.” A similar sentiment was voiced by a bishop named John Noll, who said, “We must lay aside our inferiority complex and decide that we can do this job.” He believed it could be done because one in five Americans was now Roman Catholic, and in most large cities east of the Mississippi River this proportion rose to one in two or one in three. ¹⁸⁰

An Episcopal Committee on Motion Pictures (ECMP) was appointed by the bishops, in order to “clean and disinfect” the industry; and Cantwell and two other bishops were requested to co-ordinate a “Catholic Legion of Decency”. With Quigley guiding them, these men decided that this Legion would create a pressure group, boycott offensive movies, and support self-regulation and conformity with the Production Code. ¹⁸¹ In other words, the Legion would be at the forefront of nothing less than a national Roman Catholic assault on the film industry. And this was no idle threat: as pointed out above, one fifth of the American population was Roman Catholic by religion, and most of these were massed in the great cities, with Chicago and Boston being essentially 50% Roman Catholic, and very large Romish populations in various other influential cities, among them New York, Philadelphia, Detroit and Pittsburgh. The power of Rome in the United States was immense, through its own publications or those it controlled (such as Catholic World, America, Sign, Thought, Catholic Digest, Commonweal), through the pulpits in thousands of Roman Catholic “churches” throughout the country, through radio (such as the national programme, The Catholic Hour), etc. A national Roman Catholic news bureau in Washington provided newspapers with a Romish take on the news. It was very evident to the Jewish studio bosses that a Papist boycott of the movies would seriously hurt the film industry financially. And this was the Depression era. The studios could not afford that kind of financial pain.

The Legion of Decency sought to ensure that Roman Catholics promised not to watch immoral movies. It had no legal power to make changes to movies, but as it spread like wildfire across America it became extremely powerful, rating every film, publishing “black lists” of objectionable films and “white lists” of the ones it considered acceptable. Almost every Romish diocese saw the formation of Legion campaigns. Lists of forbidden movies were supplied to the people by their priests. Movie houses which showed objectionable films were boycotted.

Romish archbishop, McNicholas, wrote a Legion pledge for Romanists to sign; ¹⁸² and once a year during Sunday mass, Roman Catholics across the United States were obliged by their bishops to stand and recite it in unison: “I unite with all who protest against them [vile films] as a grave menace to you [Christ], to home life, to country and religion. I condemn absolutely those debauching motion pictures which, with other degrading agencies, are corrupting public morals and promoting a sex mania in our land. Considering these evils, I hereby promise to remain away from all motion pictures except those which do not offend decency and Christian morality.” Printed pledges were distributed at Romish gatherings and even outside movie theatres. Although totally accurate figures are not available, a report by the U.S. bishops suggested there could have been over five million pledgers by 1934, while another estimate from that year gave the figure as eleven million. ₁₈₃ According to Variety magazine, “fully half of the U.S. Catholic population of 20,000,000 can be counted upon as enlisted crusaders.” ¹⁸⁴ No wonder the movie bosses were scared. They saw the future, and the future meant dwindling profits.

The bishops never actually came out directly and said so, but it was commonly believed, by the people in the pews who signed the pledges, that it was a mortal sin to watch an immoral movie, and the bishops were certainly not going to correct that assumption for it played right into their hands.

As for the priests themselves, the bishops warned them to stay away from the movies (for many of them flocked to watch them), thereby setting a good example to their flocks. In addition, a letter was prepared by Breen, Quigley and Cantwell and passed on to the country’s bishops, who were to send it to the theatre managers in their dioceses to persuade them to do something about immoral movies by contacting the studios about them. And furthermore, the Episcopal Committee also sent a questionnaire to every parish in the United States, requesting the names of the banks which were used by local theatres, whether there were any mortgages against theatre properties, and who held these. Clearly, this was a massive, no-holds-barred Roman Catholic campaign against the film industry.

The 1934 Roman Catholic Boycott: How Irish Romanism Came to Dominate Hollywood

In his first two months at the helm, Breen rejected six movies. The producers accepted his judgment with regards to four of them, but appealed his decision with two of them, and Breen was over-ruled by the Producers Appeal Board. When he rejected the 1934 film, Bottoms Up, the three-man producer trio (all Jewish) of the Producers Appeal Board over-ruled him, but the movie’s producer himself decided to voluntarily delete the scene Breen had found unacceptable, realising that he would have to constantly deal with Breen in the future.

The other film Breen rejected but the producers upheld was the 1933 film, Queen Christina, starring Greta Garbo. Breen demanded that the bedroom scenes be cut, and said that sexual immorality was portrayed in the film as attractive and beautiful, which violated the Code. The AMPP producers’ jury, however, over-ruled him, and he fumed at the lack of real authority he possessed to prevent such films from being shown. He could only suggest, but no more. As he put it: “Our machinery calls for the right of appeal to a jury made up of three producers, brothers-in-arms to the guy whose picture I may reject. This jury, you may be certain, is not likely to concur in any decision of rejection.” ¹⁸⁵

It was a battle between the Roman Catholic censor and the Jewish movie producers, and both sides were determined to win. Breen well knew that if he was ever to have real power over what could be depicted in movies, things had to change. The regulators had to have the real power, not the producers.

The vast and powerful machinery of the American Roman Catholic “Church” was set in motion, to teach the Hollywood producers a lesson where it would hurt most – in their pockets. Cardinals issued warnings to their flocks not to go and watch immoral movies; at least one said they should not go to any movies at all. The Legion pledge was recited by millions of Papists. It was a nationwide Papist boycott that had producers shaking in their boots. The opposition was so intense that Hollywood would ever afterwards remember it as “the crisis of 34” or “the storm of 34.” According to Billboard magazine at the time, “One of the amazing features of the boycott campaign is the amount of publicity given the move by daily papers throughout the country. It is doubtful any similar move ever received the unanimous cooperation of the press as this boycott.” ¹⁸⁶ This shows the immense power Popery exerted over the media at the time.

Roman Catholic blacklists of objectionable movies began to appear, even though at first the bishops were divided over their effectiveness. Some felt that they should just issue whitelists of good films, and ignore the bad, while others felt a far stronger approach was needed, with blacklists being issued as well. A move towards a single, national blacklist was started. In 1934 Daniel Lord wrote a pamphlet entitled The Motion Pictures Betray America, in which he accused Hollywood of “the most terrible betrayal of public trust in the history of our country”, and stated: “It is no longer a matter of single scenes being bad, of occasional ‘hells’ and ‘damns’, or girls in scanty costumes,” but rather “a whole philosophy of evil…depicted with an explicitness that [has] excited the curiosity of children and the emulation of morons nd criminals.” ¹⁸⁷ Lord, after seeing the film She Done Him Wrong, told Hays that he had written the Code precisely to prevent a film like this from being screened. He demanded that Roman Catholic youth boycott the film. ¹⁸⁸

What was the point of whitelists, he reasoned, since good films were so few and far between that all such films could be listed “on the back of a postage stamp and have room left over for the Declaration of Independence.” ¹⁸⁹ Lord’s campaign made waves: letters of protest against immoral films poured into Hollywood from individual Roman Catholics, from chapters of the Knights of Columbus, and from various “Church” organisations. But even so, Lord’s campaign shocked Quigley, Breen and Cantwell. They felt he was going about it the wrong way and was doing more harm than good.

The top Popish players in the campaign against Hollywood were thus clearly divided as to how best to proceed. The Episcopal Committee, influenced by Quigley, supported a whitelist and did not support the IFCA’s reviews of films, believing that that women’s organisation was too lenient and that anyway it was too close to the Hays Office. Both Lord and Quigley had issues with the IFCA’s work. But Ford parted with Quigley over whether to issue only a whitelist (as Quigley desired), or a blacklist as well (as desired by Ford).

Then on May 23, 1934, the Romish cardinal Dennis Dougherty took a strong stand against Hollywood. On this day he issued a call for all the Roman Catholics in Philadelphia to boycott all movie houses, and this call was read out at all masses. He branded films as the “greatest menace to faith and morals in America today”, and then he went even further: he declared that the boycott was “a positive command, binding all in conscience under pain of sin.” This galvanised Roman Catholics into action. Millions began to stay away from the movies. The media now sat up and took note of the Fegion of Decency as well, giving it reams of publicity.

In fact, the massive boycott certainly became an ecumenical boycott to a large extent. At a time when Protestants did not co-operate with Roman Catholics and by and large viewed Rome (correctly) as a false religion, this Romish campaign against the movies was enthusiastically supported by many Protestants and Jews. This is because Protestants and Jews could also see the great immorality of Hollywood. The Christian Century made it clear that the Roman Catholic system was providing the leadership in the crusade against Hollywood, but that Protestants and Jews had responded to that leadership and to a large extent joined forces with Rome.

Not all Protestant ministers were favourable to this Romish campaign, however. As an example: in Jacksonville, Florida, printed sermons favouring the Legion were ripped up by two ministers when a member of the Ku Klux Klan said the campaign against the movies was a Popish propaganda plot. ¹⁹⁰ He was not wrong.

It is one thing when, as citizens of a country, people all work together for the common good. It is quite another thing when professing Christians join forces with other religions to do so. The Christian is not to fight in social causes with those of false religions, as such. This is a tactic Rome has used ever since, with devastating effectiveness, to break down barriers and get Protestants to view Romanism as “just another Christian church”: one simply has to think of the modem anti-abortion campaign. Rome uses an evil like abortion to rally non- Romanists to its side, and thus a major step towards acceptance of Rome as Christian is taken. ¹⁹¹ Likewise with what happened all those decades ago, in 1934.

Breen, naturally, was ecstatic and sure of victory, saying, “We have them on the run”, although admitting they still had a long way to go. ¹⁹² Nevertheless, by June of that year it was clear that the Romish boycott in the big predominantly Romish American cities was hurting the movie producers, and hurting them badly.

Will Hays, watching the boycott bite deep into the film industry, saw this as an opportune time to increase the authority of the Hays Office by alligning it with the “Church” of Rome. Thus in May 1934 he met with Quigley for this purpose and said that Hollywood’s leaders were willing for Joe Breen to be placed in charge of the Studio Relations Committee. John McNicholas, the archbishop of Cincinnati, was going to invite Hays to a meeting of the Episcopal Committee, but Jesuit priest Dinneen said to him, “[Hays] is a foxy boy and will promise anything to stop the campaign…. My advice is to stall him off until after the meeting…. You will have them on their knees in another sixty days.” ¹⁹³ So Quigley and Breen were invited to represent Hollywood instead. Dinneen’s suggestions of a national boycott of Hollywood and a national blacklist were rejected by the committee, who listened to Quigley when he presented Hays’ plan, which was to strengthen the effectiveness of the Code. The result was (as shown earlier) that the MPPDA board of directors unanimously passed a resolution to replace the Studio Relations Committee with a new enforcement agency, the Production Code Administration (PCA), headed by Breen, for that very purpose – the strengthening of the Code’s effectiveness. According to this, all the major studios (which were members of the MPPDA) and any producers using the MPPDA’s distribution facilities (i.e. independent studios) would first have to get a movie approved by the Production Code Administration, obtaining its certificate of approval, or face a large fine and forfeit financing and bookings for their movies. Furthermore, the Producers Appeal Board was scrapped, so that it was now impossible for the producers to take care of one another and overrule Breen’s decisions. From now on, a PCA decision could only be appealed to the MPPDA board of directors.

Breen, the Irish Papist, was acceptable to both the Romish hierarchy and to the moviemakers because he kn ew the movie business. He was now virtually all-powerful, the supreme inspector general of American cinema, as his biographer called him. He became known by various unofficial titles: the Hitler of Hollywood, the Mussolini of American films, the dictator of movie morals. Hollywood could hardly operate without him, and it knew it. As Harry Warner told his own studio, “If Joe Breen tells you to change a picture, you do what he tells you. If any one fails to do this – and this goes for my brother – he’s fired .” ¹⁹⁴ Non-Papists sent Breen letters calling him an “agent for the Pope” and a “spy for the Papists ”. ¹⁹⁵ They were right, for he was certainly there to do Rome’s work.

How true the words of Will Hays when he said, “At last we had a police department, or at least a civilian defense force .” ¹⁹⁶

It was given to Breen and Quigley to get the Romish bishops, at a bishop’s conference to be held a few days later, to accept this and to lift the boycott. Hays actually told the two men, “the Catholic authorities can have anything they want” – such was the power of Rome within the United States to economically cripple the movie industry. Breen, again, was ecstatic, saying, “The stage is set for a magnificent piece of worthwhile Catholic action and achievement.” ¹⁹⁷ He well knew what he hoped to achieve – nothing less than making use of the powerful medium of film to influence America for Roman Catholicism. “If we could provide some means for Catholic story tellers to tell – and write – stories based upon Catholic philosophy,” he stated in 1934, “is it unreasonable to expect that here, again, we shall see the influence of the movies showing itself upon audiences?” ¹⁹⁸

The victory was Rome’s, and Jewish Hollywood was now under Irish Roman Catholic domination. As one has correctly written, “In cloth and in mufti, the coreligionists approved a censorship regime that ceded dominion of Hollywood cinema to Irish-Catholic theology for the next twenty years.” ¹⁹⁹

By the end of 1934, after a massive publicity campaign, it was believed that between seven and nine million Roman Catholics had taken the Legion of Decency’s pledge. One priest accurately said that the Legion was “Catholic Action’s big opportunity.” American Roman Catholicism knew now that it was extremely powerful. In the Popish paper, Our Sunday Visitor, one writer declared triumphantly, “The Catholic church could put anything through it wished, and could crush anything.” This was not far off the mark. In Port Huron, Michigan, students in a Roman Catholic school were enlisted, and forced the local commissioner of police to close a film which the Romish press had condemned, and in Chicago some 70 000 students marched through the streets, holding up banners which said: “An admission to an indecent film is an admission to hell”; “Films we must see, but clean they must be.” ²⁰⁰

As Breen’s authority began to be felt and films began to be edited and altered in accordance with his demands, he came in for increasing criticism from some quarters, especially from those who wanted more sex, not less, in movies. According to the New York Times, moviegoers in large numbers actually hissed and booed whenever the Production Code seal appeared at the start of each film. Many people believed, and rightly as we have seen, that the Roman Catholic “Church” was now essentially in charge of Hollywood. Newspaper editorials spoke out against the Legion of Decency. But even so, as pointed out by the chairman of the Scripps-Howard newspaper chain, Roy Howard, “most newspapers are frightened to death of church sentiment and especially of Catholic church sentiment”. And in support of his statement, the Hays Office discovered, when it surveyed 172 editorials concerning the Legion in early July 1934, only twenty disapproved of what the “Church” was doing. ²⁰¹

Communism Creeps into Hollywood

In 1934 Maurice Rapf, son of an MGM executive, Harry Rapf, a Jew, toured the Soviet Union while still in his teens. This of course was just a few years before the outbreak of World War Two, and Hitler’s Nazism and anti-Semitism was of increasing concern to Jews, even American Jews. The young Rapf was deeply impressed by how anti- Nazi the Soviets appeared to be, and how apparently tolerant of Jews. So impressed, in fact, that he returned to Hollywood a pro-Communist radical.

His father sent him to people he knew in Hollywood in the hope that they would get him to change his mind. Harry Warner said to him, “I don’t want to talk to no [expletive deleted] Communist. Don’t forget you’re a Jew. Jewish Communists are going to bring down the wrath of the world on the rest of the Jews.” ²⁰² This was the same Harry Warner who for a time supported the liberal closet Communist, Franklin Roosevelt. Harry’s brother Albert said to Rapf, “Don’t come into my office and start spouting any of that.” And Louis B. Mayer told him, “Everybody thinks that Jews are Communists,” and that Rapf owed it to the Jews to have nothing to do with Communist radicalism. Why this reaction?

The top Jewish elite of tinsel town knew what being suspected of Red sympathies would do to them, their careers, and even Jews in America generally. They knew what Nazism was about, they knew also that Communism was anti-Nazi and tolerant of Jews, but they lived in America and desired to be accepted with the cream of upper-class American Gentile society, and they certainly did not want to rock the boat by being seen to be supportive of Communism in any way. This could best be expressed in the words of another Hollywood Jew, David Selznick, who despite reading Communist literature himself advised Rapf: “Be a radical. Think anything you [expletive deleted] please. But don’t wear it on your sleeve. Don’t go around talking about it all the time because it’s going to get in the way of your career. If you want to be a moviemaker, that’s all you can do.” ²⁰³

Still, the Communistic radicalisation of Hollywood had begun, and it would gather momentum in the years ahead. Hollywood’s Jewish executives were – at times perhaps for pragmatic reasons – against Communism; but Hollywood’s Jewish writers were not. These writers – playwrights, novelists, journalists – had mostly come from the eastern United States (in particular, New York) to Hollywood, and many of them were Socialists or Communists. In the words of one of them, Milton Spring: “My father read the Forward [the Jewish Socialist newspaper]. He was a member of a union. And my grandfather was a member of a union. The Jews in New York were Socialists. They were old-country Socialists… and unions and left-wing thinking of that simple sort that was so Jewish in those days was translated to their children.” ²⁰⁴

Those were difficult times, the Depression and post-Depression years, and that worldwide economic collapse played into the Communists’ hands. They used it to get people to reject Capitalism and embrace Marxism. And those young Jewish writers began to write plays for the New York stage in which they railed against the real and perceived injustices of the American Capitalist system. And of course, the growing threat of Nazism played right into the Communists’ hands as well. As Nazi anti-Semitism grew in Europe and found many sympathisers in America, Jews became increasingly frightened. And thus the very real danger of one radical “ism” pushed many Jews into the arms of another radical “ism.”

When, therefore, those Jewish writers moved to Hollywood, they took their radicalised. Red ideology with them, and transferred it into their writing for movies. It was estimated that at this time, “probably 70 percent of the writers, directors, actors, and so on were liberally inclined”. ²⁰⁵

The Legion of Decency’s Power

At this time (1934/35) there was often a lot of animosity and rivalry between the different Roman Catholic players involved in movie censorship, usually caused by the fact that some supported the movie list issued in Chicago, and others the list issued in New York. Films approved by Joe Breen were often condemned by the Legion of Decency, priests disagreed over which films should be condemned and which should not, Martin Quigley and Jesuit priest Parsons were accused of being propagandists for Hollywood who were adversely affecting the Legion’s work, Jesuit priest Dinneen referred to Quigley and Parsons as traitors who were sowing division within the Romish camp, the friendship between Dinneen and Lord almost ended, and Lord and Quigley – the co-authors of the Code – were fiercely opposed to each other. This enmity between the two caused Quigley to tell a friend at one point, “I hope… to keep as far away from the clergy as possible, except on Sunday mornings.” ²⁰⁶

With two lists circulating, Roman Catholics were under the impression that they were free to decide for themselves which films to see and which to avoid, which was utterly unacceptable to the hierarchy. Clearly something had to be done to save the Legion campaign.

In 1935 the Romish bishops again assembled in Washington, D.C., and again they discussed movies and the movie industry. Romish archbishop John McNicholas, chairman of the ECMP, told the assembly that the Roman Catholic “Church” had successfully improved the content of Hollywood movies during the past year, and that in his judgment the Production Code Administration had been a success. He also called for Legion of Decency activities to be centralised in New York, and to issue a single Roman Catholic film viewing guide for all Roman Catholics in order to put a stop to all the arguing and fighting between the supporters of the different viewing guide lists, and between the supporters of the various approaches to classifying movies. McNicholas was supported in this by the bishop, John Cantwell. New York, they believed, should be the location because, although movies were made in Hollywood for the most part, they were usually first played in New York. The bishops agreed. The National Legion of Decency would be established in New York, under the guidance of Romish cardinal, Patrick Hayes.

Hayes appointed priest Joseph Daly as the Legion’s executive secretary. Daly was also a professor of psychology. Martin Quigley moved his publishing concerns to New York so that he could give guidance to the Legion. It was administratively under the direction of priest Edward Robert Moore.

As for who would be charged with actually determining a movie’s moral values, this was given to the IFCA, the Roman Catholic women’s organisation. The IFCA had been carrying out this work for years already, ever since 1922 when it had created a Motion Picture Bureau and followed the practice of praising good films and ignoring bad ones in its published film reviews. The head of the Motion Picture Bureau of the IFCA was Mary Looram. She was made its head in 1930 and held that position for over thirty years. But there were over a hundred women acting as film reviewers. The East Coast group was under the direction of Jesuit priest Francis X. Talbot, and the West Coast group was under priest John Devlin.

At first the IFCA women were sidelined once the Legion came into being, under the control of priests, because the IFCA was considered to be a puppet of the Hays Office by some; and because it followed the policy of praising good films but ignoring bad ones, this was seen as permitting Hollywood to continue producing bad ones. But after the IFCA agreed to issue a “condemned” category of movies as well, the bishops’ conclave agreed to make this women’s organisation the Legion’s official reviewing body.

Yet again, we see the i mm ense grip the Jesuits held over the entire censorship business in the United States, assisted by other priests, bishops, archbishops, cardinals, and many ordinary but staunch Roman Catholics. It was a Roman Catholic stranglehold on the film industry, and it would last for decades.

The Legion created a rating system for the classification of films. There were four categories: A1 (Unobjectionable for general patronage); A2 (Unobjectionable for adults); B (Objectionable in part); and C (Condemned). Roman Catholics were forbidden to see “C” films, which were the worst kind and held by the Legion to be dangerously immoral.

Even though these Legion ratings were not part of ecclesiastical law as such, to ignore them was viewed in a very serious light by the religious leaders of the “Church” of Rome. Certainly most Roman Catholics believed that if they went to watch a film rated “C”, they would be committing a mortal sin, and the bishops were perfectly content to let them think so.

With regards to films rated as “B”, the waters were a lot muddier for the average Roman Catholic. Most priests tended to take the position that such films were hardly any better than “C” films, but still, for the average Romanist trying to figure it all out, it was not easy. In addition, what about the reviewers themselves? They had to watch indecent movies in order to decide on how each one should be rated; were they not committing sin by so doing? To this dilemma, Cantwell responded that no, they were not – for they were women of “virtue and judgment”. Hardly a satisfactory answer! But typical of how Roman Catholic leaders have always slithered out of such moral issues. It again just goes to show how subjective all such attempts at censorship and regulation are, when the Bible is not the standard.

Over at the Breen Office, the man was highly regarded by the “Church” hierarchy, overall, for his work in cleaning up Hollywood. Films, the bishops believed, were now far better than they had ever been. And because of Breen’s efforts at the PCA, the Legion of Decency was able to endorse the vast majority of PCA-approved films. Thus the working relationship between the PCA and the Legion was greatly improved.

The Legion became so powerful that film studios would even attempt to send their films to the Legion’s reviewers before they were released, so as to learn what the Legion considered to be objectionable in them! They knew the Legion’s power, and would delete entire scenes, change dialogue, and make all kinds of other alterations to their films just to achieve the Legion’s approval. Thus, although the Legion had no authority from the government to enforce any changes, it effectively censored films anyway merely by threatening to condemn a film of which it did not approve. ²⁰⁷ It had become the moral guardian, not only of American Roman Catholics, but of all American moviegoers. ²⁰⁸ Such was the power of Popery in Hollywood during this time! The Papal institution in America literally controlled the film industry.

Amazingly, even many of the Jewish studio bosses and other Jews in Hollywood accepted the work of the Legion and co-operated with it. Reason: they wanted profits, and profits would only be made if people went to see the films; and the vast Roman Catholic moviegoing audiences would not attend if the films were objectionable to them. It was all about money. “The mere threat that the more than twenty million Catholics would join in unison against a single film made the Hollywood executives quake with fear.” ²⁰⁹ What frightened Hollywood producers more than anything was the Legion’s “C” rating for a film – meaning the film was condemned and thus forbidden viewing for all Roman Catholics. This meant huge financial losses for the industry bosses, as Roman Catholics in their droves would stay away from the film. Producers would therefore bend over backwards to avoid a “C” rating. To do this, they had to enter into negotiations with the Legion, and if they agreed to remove anything in their films that the Legion found offensive, it would then re-classify the film, thereby allowing Roman Catholics to attend. ²¹⁰

In the second place, the Jews preferred a situation where the film industry itself was acting as watchdog over the films being made, than the one that existed in England, which was regulated by the government. Jewish artists and intellectuals did not like the Code because to them it stifled “creativity” and suchlike nonsense, but on the ground many Jews supported the Legion of Decency. In fact, the Council of Jewish Women and the Sisterhood of Temple Emmanuel in Denver, Colorado, actually signed up a thousand pledgers! There was, yet again as so often in Hollywood history, a working alliance between Roman Catholics and Jews. Jewish middle-class women fought for decent movies just like Roman Catholics did, and supported Roman Catholic efforts because they saw them as working for a co mm on goal. At this time both Romanists and Jews were still viewed, overall, as religious foreigners in the United States, and this collaboration in regulating Hollywood was an attempt to promote themselves as full citizens and part of the mainstream. ²¹¹

The Legion’s power did not go unnoticed by many Protestants. There were Protestants who supported the Legion’s work simply because they hated the immorality of Hollywood; but there were others who realised the danger. They saw that Hollywood was now not only promoting immorality, but being controlled by the “Church” of Rome. They rightly viewed this as gravely dangerous to the United States. ²¹²

But by this time, Protestantism in America had already changed much. It was not what it had been at the turn of the century. Liberalism had engulfed much of it. Many Protestant churches were in disarray, floundering doctrinally and full of uncertainty morally. Romanism, on the other hand, was flourishing. There were Roman Catholic schools, hospitals and orphanages, and the parish priests were exerting an evergrowing influence over their people. Irish Roman Catholic immigrants were no longer simply the underdogs of society, but were rising up the social structure. “Irish American Catholics, especially middle- class women and priests, claimed the moral high ground vacated by Protestants. In doing so, they hoped to demonstrate their superiority over other urban dwellers that included African Americans, Jews, socialists, as well as fellow Catholic Italians and Poles whose devotional life felt alien to the Irish. By claiming to be the final arbiters and enforcers of morality in filmmaking, Irish American Catholics assumed a powerful place in defining how Americans would see themselves.” ²¹³

Thus the era of Irish Roman Catholic domination of Hollywood had begun in earnest, not of control of the studios themselves (for these were mainly in Jewish hands), but of the kinds of films that the Jews would be allowed to make. It would in time be replaced by Italian Roman Catholic dominance, but for now, Hollywood was dominated by Irish Papists. And Roman Catholics would control the movie industry’s “morals” well into the 1960s. Furthermore, Jesuitism was always present, lurking quietly in the background, pulling the strings.

Thus: “For more than three decades, from 1934 to the late 1960s, the Catholic church, through its Legion of Decency, had the power… to control the content of Hollywood films. The Catholic church’s Legion of Decency could, and did, dictate to Hollywood producers the amount of sex and violence that was allowable on the screen. The producers meekly removed any scene that offended the church.” ²¹⁴ That was power!

As the Legion was not a government censorship body and had no legal power, its Papist supporters loved to point out that it only classified movies, grading them on moral values; it did not censor them. But this was an outright lie. Of course the Legion had the right to rate films for Roman Catholic audiences, and to call on Roman Catholics to stay away from films, as it often did. This is not censorship, it is a segment of society staying away from a film because it believes it to be offensive; and this is fine. And the Popish press, and priests behind their pulpits, also had the right to condemn a particular film as being unsuitable for Papists to attend; and this too was something that was often done. But when the Legion “demanded that offending films be altered to Catholic tastes before the Legion would bless them”, and furthermore “demanded that Hollywood not exhibit any print of the film anywhere in the world other than that approved by the Catholic Legion of Decency”, ²¹⁵ this was censorship.

Many Protestants were outraged at the Legion’s power to censor movies for everyone, non-Romanists as well as Romanists, for the Legion’s classification system meant that the entire public was affected by the changes studios made to movies in order to please the Legion. As the Nation put it, “What the non-Catholic moviegoers are entitled to decide is whether they wish to have their films censored in advance by the Catholic church.” ²¹⁶ This was precisely what was happening. The Roman Catholic “Church” was controlling who saw what emanating from Hollywood. It was extremely powerful, and “even the Legion’s supporters would admit that it was the most powerful pressure group in the film business, relying on the studios’ dread of a nationwide Catholic boycott of objectionable films.” ²¹⁷ As Geoff Shurlock of the PCA put it, Hollywood was so afraid of “the Catholics… that there was no room left to be scared of anyone else.” And the Literary Digest stated: “What scared the movie makers as they had never been scared before was that the Catholic Church, like the American film, is universal [and] the Catholic bishops can make shots which will be heard around the world.” ²¹⁸ Here is the plain fact of the matter: “A third of all movie seats in the early 1940s were located in the forty-nine cities with populations greater than 200,000, and most of these were heavily Catholic.” ²¹⁹ No wonder the Hollywood Jews were scared of the power of the Legion!

The Censorship Process

But how exactly was the censoring done? Well, usually the Legion would first threaten to condemn a film privately, not publicly. Officially, scripts were first reviewed by the Production Code Administration; the Legion did not officially review scripts. If the PCA felt the film could pass, it issued its seal of approval. But before the film was duplicated and distributed, the Legion would review the final print, and demand a change in the film if it saw fit. If there was anything offensive to the Legion, it would inform the producing studio, which would then make the necessary changes in accordance with Legion (and thus Roman Catholic) wishes. If the changes were acceptable to the Legion, the film would be re-classified so that Roman Catholics could attend. And the Legion’s power was immense: “Here the Legion moved away from its role of moral judge to that of censors: Legion priests negotiated with studios to eliminate certain scenes, reshoot or cut others, change dialogue, or add a prologue or epilogue to a film to make it acceptable to the Catholic church. This action turned the Legion into a national board of censorship.” ²²⁰

If a film was condemned by the Legion and yet was still shown by any theatre, that theatre would be boycotted by Roman Catholic organisations such as the powerful Knights of Columbus. The purpose, of course, was to cause the film to bomb at the box office.

In 1936 the Legion issued its first New York list of films. No films received a “C” (Condemned) rating, and Martin Quigley was angry with priest Daly of the Legion for being too liberal and kind to the movie industry. Quigley was trying to take full control of the Legion. He told McNichols, the archbishop, that he believed Daly was undermining the Legion, and Daly was fired. This sent the message that the Romish hierarchy was in disagreement over the Legion, so the cardinal, Hayes, swiftly appointed a young priest as the new Legion director. His name was John J. McClafferty, and he had been the assistant director of the Division of Catholic Action at the Catholic Charities of New York. He was recommended to McNicholas because he was willing to take advice. He easily came under the influence of Martin Quigley – which was entirely to Quigley’s liking. ²²¹ He also worked well with Breen and the movie producers, and played a large part during the following years in making the Legion so influential within Hollywood. ²²²

The 1936 Papal Encyclical Endorses the Legion of Decency

In this year the pope, Pius XI, issued Vigilanti Cura, a papal encyclical on the movies, which strongly endorsed the Legion of Decency, calling it a “holy crusade”, and called on Roman Catholics in other countries to establish similar organisations. He said that it did not seem practical to have a single movie list for the whole world, and he also gave the bishops the authority to apply stricter ratings than the Legion.

It is believed that Martin Quigley played a major part in the issuing of this encyclical. ²²³

The Working Relationship Between Breen’s PCA and the Legion of Decency

The Legion of Decency was really a confederation of local organisations, and each local Legion director, who was in most cases a priest, was responsible for the work of the Legion in his diocese. Naturally, then, the Legion’s work was very strong in some dioceses, and weak in others. It all depended on how committed to the Legion each bishop and priest was. “A majority of the bishops,” in fact, “paid very little attention to the Legion and gave nothing more than lip service to its activities. Churches gave members the Legion pledge once a year in early December, and posted the Legion’s classifications.” ²²⁴ That was pretty much all they did, many of them. But in Los Angeles, priest John Devlin, who was the guide of the West Coast group of the IFCA. was very committed to the Legion. Not only that, but he worked very closely with Joseph Breen of the PCA, and with Hollywood studio bosses themselves. Knowing the power of the Legion to cripple them financially, studio bosses readily sent their scripts to Devlin prior to beginning production on a film. Even Breen himself would often forward a script to Devlin for advice.

Thus Breen’s Production Code Administration, which was the movie industry’s official censorship board, and the Legion of Decency, had an extremely close working relationship. This is not surprising, given the Roman Catholic influence over the PCA from its very inception. The two worked in tandem to keep any movies that they deemed to be a danger to the “Church” of Rome, or immoral, from being seen by audiences. At times, in fact, they were virtually one and the same, constantly in contact with each other. “For twenty years, from 1934 until the retirement of PCA director Joseph I. Breen, the PCA and the Legion were linked so closely that it is next to impossible to separate them.” ²²⁵ When the PCA received a movie script for review, it would send it to the Legion and request an “unofficial” opinion. The Legion would then return the script with its “opinion”, which was often a warning that the film needed to be changed if the Legion was to be kept happy.

The two organisations did not always agree over what was immoral, but this did not alter the close collaboration between them. At times the Legion acted independently of the PCA and even took Breen to task if it believed he had passed something that in the Legion’s opinion should not have been passed. But for the most part “there were only occasional differences of opinion between” the two organisations. ²²⁶ Overall, the hierarchy of Rome in the United States, the Jesuits, and the Legion of Decency were very satisfied with Breen. His friends at the Jesuit publication America declared, “The greatness of Joseph I. Breen’s performance lies in this: not only has he wiped the slate clean of obscenities, but also – and the Legion believes this to be far more important – he has scotched the teaching of moral heresy. If the Catholic press, like Time, were picking the man of the year, it would doubtless hasten to name Joseph I. Breen, the enforcing agent of the Code.” ²²⁷

A Jewish Business Selling Papist Theology to Protestant America

Thus Hollywood was in the hands of the “Church” of Rome. “Catholic control over Hollywood was complete: a Catholic censor, Joe Breen, rode roughshod over Hollywood and, in New York, the Catholic Legion quietly approved his moral judgments.” ²²⁸ And the films produced during this era reflected Rome’s absolute dominance of the industry, with Papist directors, Papist actors, and Papist film plots everywhere. Furthermore: “If Catholics on screen were close to legion, Catholics behind the screen were nearly almighty. One of the more curious phenomena in the history of American popular culture, the dominion of the minority religion [Romanism] over the mass medium was achieved by a web of Catholic faithful, ordained and lay, whose long tentacles and precision coordination might confirm the darkest Protestant suspicions about Romanish intrigue: Daniel A. Lord, coauthor of the Production Code, a Jesuit priest; Martin J. Quigley, creator and defender of the Code, a graduate of Catholic University; and Joseph I. Breen, Jesuit- educated from boyhood, Jesuit-related by blood (his brother Francis was a Jesuit priest), and Jesuit-fixated by inclination”. ²²⁹

Another quote which sums up what happened in Hollywood in the second half of the 1930s: “Priests were to become major heroic figures in crime films; shoulder to shoulder with FBI men, revenue agents, and other agents of morality, they became part of a phalanx for truth, justice, and the American way. Super-padre would be bom around the time Superman came crashing down from Krypton, and for years a few Latin mumblings and a breviary could quiet the most savage beast and transform the most hardened heart. Every priest became an amalgam of Father Flanagan and Father Coughlin, of Bing Cosby and Pat O’Brien; the new armament was moral, the new weapons rosary beads, chapels, and poor boxes.” ²³⁰

It was not a situation that pleased many Protestants, or indeed many other Americans, and in 1937 Breen said in a letter to Lord, “I am constantly being charged with being ‘an agent of the Pope,’ ‘a spy for the Papists,’etc.” He called such people “anti-Catholic bigots.” In 1940 the Protestant Digest declared: “The minority control of the most vital amusement source of the nation is one of the most astounding things in the history of the United States.” The secular press’ New Republic complained that Breen, “a Catholic of Irish descent, is the one-man censor of the movies”, and declared that “the Catholic machinery” had “stampeded the Protestants” and “captured the movies.” ²³¹

Indeed it had. And from 1934 until about 1953, no major Hollywood studio was prepared to stand up to Rome. Its grip on Hollywood was total.

Truly, Hollywood was “a Jewish-owned business selling Roman Catholic theology to Protestant America”! ²³²

Chapter seven – The ‘Golden Age’ 1930s and 1940s: Rome triumphant in Hollywood

The Portrayal of Irish Papist Immigrant Life in Movies of This Era

The so-called “Golden Age” of Hollywood was the 1930s and first half of the 1940s. During this time, Roman Catholic characters in films were frequently made out to be immigrants from the “old country” (Europe and specifically, Papist Ireland), as opposed to Protestant Americans who were generally born in America. Movies were made in which Irish Papists lived in what was called the “old neighbourhood” (Roman Catholic ghettoes in large American cities) where everyday life was dominated by the “Church”: priests, schools, and songs were all decidedly Papist. ²³³

To a large extent this was very true: at that time the USA was a “Protestant” country, where Roman Catholics were often viewed as outsiders; foreigners. And many of them literally were, for they were recent immigrants. Irish Roman Catholics tended to be poorer than native-born Protestant Americans, and because they were immigrant communities they behaved like immigrant communities the world over: they tended to live in the same neighbourhood, and to stick together closely. And this way of life was played up in the movies of the time. American cities prior to World War Two were racially-mixed places: there were various immigrant groups from Europe, there were black Americans, white Americans, Asians, etc. This racial mix was a tense one, and inevitably gangs were formed along racial lines. And Hollywood, in the silent movie era and then in the “Golden Age”, cast the Irish and later the Italian Roman Catholics in the roles of criminal lords, with the Roman Catholic religion itself often being associated with violence. ²³⁴

Why was this, if Hollywood was so Roman Catholic, and Irish Romanists were already making movies by 1924? One reason was because this was the reality of that era. But another major reason was because movies, at the end of the day, are still about making money for the moviemakers, and the fact was that at that time, huge numbers of moviegoers lived in the Roman Catholic ghettoes of American cities. By 1930, 20% of the entire population of the United States was Papist; and where were they concentrated? In cities. Specifically, the cities of the eastern U.S. Throughout the twentieth century, in fact, over half of the citizens of Boston and Chicago were Roman Catholics. ²³⁵ Very naturally, then, Papist moviemakers catered for this large moviegoing audience. Even the Jewish studio owners and moviemakers realised the lucrative importance of doing so. Jews and Papists were the ones who ran the vaudeville houses, which in time became the nickelodeons (small converted storefront theatres which charged a nickel for admission) and then the movie theatres. Thus the movies of that time were produced by Jewish and Papist immigrants and their children, and they were produced for predominantly Papist immigrants and their children; and such movies would be ones in which those Papist audiences saw some relationship between their everyday lives and what they viewed at the movies. Hence the emphasis on Irish Roman Catholicism, and the connection between that and the criminal underworld of the large American cities. These themes appealed to the Roman Catholic audiences precisely because these were the very realities that dominated their lives as struggling immigrant communities: their “Church” and the criminal underworld of their ghettoes, and the close relationship between the two.

The Irish in America, during Hollywood’s “Golden Age”, dominated the screen portrayals of American Romanism. “The Irish were Hollywood’s Catholics par excellence, full of whiskey and faith, and prone to fighting, politics, and vocations.” ²³⁶ At the time, and for a long time afterwards, American Romanism was in large measure Irish- American Romanism. Even when, at a later period, they no longer exercised such great dominion over American Romanism, they were still perceived to exercise it, in the popular mind. To many Americans, and even to many people outside America with any knowledge of American Romanism, “Irish” and “Roman Catholic” are virtually synonymous – because for such a long time this was undoubtedly true.

And Hollywood capitalised on this, with so many movies portraying Irish Romanists over the decades: to name just a few, The Lad from Ireland (1910), Rory O’More (1911), The Gypsies of Old Ireland (1917), Cecilia of the Pink Roses (1918), Knights of the Eucharist (1922), Little Old New York (1923), The Lights of Old Broadway (1925), In Old Chicago (1938), right up to The Song of Bernadette in 1943, Going My Way in 1944 and others that followed (and which will be examined below in due course).

George Bernard Shaw Exposes Papist Control of Hollywood

In 1936 the famous Irish playwright, George Bernard Shaw – a man unfriendly to any religion – exposed the Papist control of Hollywood. And it shook Protestant Americans. Shaw’s play, St. Joan, was to become a Hollywood movie, but an organisation he called “Azione Cattolica” (Catholic Action) intervened to prevent it. He slammed the work of the Hays Office as “meddling by amateur busybodies who do not care that the work of censorship requires any qualification beyond Catholic baptism.” He also said that “very few inhabitants of the United States, Catholic or Protestant, lay or secular, have the least suspicion that an irresponsible Catholic society has assumed public control of their artistic recreations.”

These accusations were indignantly denied by Hays himself, of course. Later, in an interview, Shaw said that before the furore over St. Joan erupted, “not one American in 50,000 had the faintest suspicion that the film art for which his country is famous was, in effect, under a Catholic censorship, which was bound as such to operate as a doctrinal censorship as well as a common-decency censorship.” ²³⁷

And Meanwhile, Communist Influence in Hollywood was Growing…

In Europe, Jews had supported Communism from its very earliest days. And in America, for a long time already, Jewish intellectuals had formed a very large minority within the Communist Party of the United States of America (CPUSA). From 1935 onwards their numbers and influence within the Party grew even greater, for the CPUSA joined with other leftist organisations in what was called the Popular Front, and it actively wooed Jews into membership. It was estimated, by a top Communist, that during the 1930s and 1940s something like 50% of the CPUSA membership was Jewish, and of the Party leaders a large minority were Jews – a minority that at times became a majority. ²³⁸

And Jews were just as influential over the CPUSA’s Hollywood branch. A fairly reliable estimate would be that there the membership was well over half, perhaps as much as two-thirds of the Party.

Why was it that so many Jews were attracted to Communism? It was a liking for the assimilationist policies of Communism, the idea of a classless society, which appealed to Jews who had been underdogs in so many societies for so many centuries. They wanted to destroy what they perceived as the “Christian” society which had rejected them for so long, persecuted them, and still kept them down. And then too, as Nazism rose in strength and threatened Jews throughout Europe, Communism was seen as the only force powerful enough to squash Hitler.

And this Jewish-dominated CPUSA realised the massive potential of Hollywood as a vehicle for promoting Communism. With this in mind, two of its members, V.J. Jerome and Stanley Lawrence, were sent to Hollywood to work for this very goal. Jerome was the chairman of the CPUSA’s Cultural Commission. He eloquently sought to persuade Hollywood writers of their unique value to the Communist movement. His words were like music to the ears of these writers – many of whom were Jewish. Hollywood writers were portrayed as industrial workers, just like the other industrial workers the Communists were stirring up. And it worked: “by the time Jerome departed for the East after nine months of agitating in Hollywood, the Party had a firm hold in the film community; estimates ranged as high as three hundred members during the decade from 1936 to 1946 – nearly half of them writers.” ²³⁹ A Jewish screenwriter, John Howard Lawson, was now in charge of the Hollywood branch of the Communist Party. Hollywood was being Communised – primarily by Jewish Communists.

In Hollywood in 1936, various radical activists wanting to use Marxism to oppose Nazism formed the Hollywood League Against Nazism, which was renamed the Hollywood Anti-Nazi League. This organisation gave every indication of being a Communist front, working hard to promote leftwing causes, especially condemning the German Nazis, but also supporting the leftwing closet Communist, Franklin D. Roosevelt. It published Hollywood Now every two weeks, and sponsored two weekly radio programmes.

The Threat of Nazism to the Hollywood Jewish Elite

As Hitler’s power increased and his hatred of Jews became more and more evident, the Jewish elite in Hollywood found themselves in a spot. These first-generation Hollywood Jews – the big-name studio bosses who had built Hollywood – had tried their whole lives long to turn their backs on their Jewish roots, culture, and religion. But now Hitler was threatening their people.

As seen previously, Louis B. Mayer was a friend of the influential newspaper man (and Roman Catholic), William Randolph Hearst. Mayer asked Hearst to talk to Hitler, and this Hearst did, after which he reported to Mayer that all was well. This reassured Mayer. Many Jewish moguls simply took the position of Adolph Zukor of Paramount: he said Hollywood should stay away from making movies of political significance and stick to entertainment alone. They desperately wanted to be seen as Americans first and only as Jews second – if at all. They had spent their lives doing all they could to assimilate as Americans and play down or ignore their Jewishness. And if they were now seen to be openly opposing Nazism, they feared this would simply draw attention to themselves as Jews, and thus (in the eyes of many Americans) as foreigners controlling this huge industry of Hollywood. In addition, as was pointed out by Hy Kraft, a screenwriter working for the Anti-Nazi League, “It was a matter of business. The motion picture companies had large interests in Europe for distribution of their pictures.” ²⁴⁰ So they did not want to offend the Nazis in Europe for fear of losing money, or perhaps even their business interests there.

It was only when the elite Hollywood Jews began to feel threatened by Nazis in Hollywood itself, and when the Nazis closed down their distribution offices in Germany (in the case of Warner Brothers, the Nazis murdered their representative in Germany), that they were galvanised into action against Nazism.

The Los Angeles Nazi Bund was targeting the Jews of Hollywood, through its periodicals and via radio. A meeting of Jewish film executives was called on 13 March 1934 to see what they could do to counter the Nazi attacks on them. There was fear at the meeting, but also anger. Louis B. Mayer called for retaliation, and a committee was formed to raise funds to counter the Nazi onslaught against them. All the major Jewish studios were represented: MGM, Columbia, Twentieth Century, Warner Brothers, Paramount, Fox, and RKO. This committee later became the Community Relations Committee (CRC).

The committee’s work, however, was defensive; the Jewish movie executives were not prepared to become as radical as the Jewish Communist writers of Hollywood, who were far more aggressive in combatting Nazism. The Jewish Marxists’ Hollywood Anti- Nazi League was not only opposed by the Nazis, but by the Jewish Hollywood elite as well. The CRC tried very hard to persuade the Anti-Nazi League to change its name to the Hollywood Anti-Nazi, Anti-Communist League!

Here was a strange spectacle indeed: the rich Hollywood Jewish executives at odds with the Hollywood Jewish writers and others, because of opposing positions. The executives were opposed not only to Nazism, but to Communism, but they just could not seem to understand that the Hollywood Anti-Nazi League was comprised of liberals, Socialists and Communists who only opposed Nazism, not Communism!

In early 1936, Jewish executives and writers again got together to thrash out what kind of response they should make to what Hitler was doing; but the meeting, which went on into the early hours of the morning, broke down into serious squabbling between the different factions. The older, conservative Jewish executives wanted to remain quiet about Hitler, whereas the younger, leftwing and Communist Jewish writers wanted a far more militant stance against him. But as the year progressed, even a number of the conservative Jewish executives began to start speaking out against Nazism, albeit timidly at first. Louis B. Mayer now called on the USA to join with Britain in opposing Germany.

Finally, some four hundred movers and shakers within the movie industry gathered together to commit themselves to openly warring against any cause that was threatening the United States. It may have meant Communism especially, but it meant Fascism as well. They were being careful to emphasise that both Stalin and Hitler must be condemned.

The Legion’s Desire for Papists to Replace Jews as Directors and Screenwriters

The Legion of Decency, for some time after it first began, entertained the hope that Roman Catholic directors and screenwriters would replace the Jewish ones, thereby influencing films for “good” (as Rome understood the word). The bishop, Cantwell, was certainly in favour of it, telling the bishop McNicholas that such work was at that time “largely in the hands of Jews and people without any faith”. In 1936 some Roman Catholic colleges gave consideration to starting screenwriting courses, and the Jesuit publication, America, called on Roman Catholics to compete with the “heretics, pagans and infidels” who were churning out the movies. It stated that “priests and nuns… Catholic husbands and wives… altar boys and first communion girls” would provide “sure-fire dramatic material. A Catholic wedding, with a white veiled bride, is intensely more dramatic than a ten minute marriage before a Justice of the Peace, wearing a sign-on-the-dotted- line look, chewing a cigar, and surveying a shot-gun in the comer.” But as one researcher dryly remarked in response to this, “the market for films about altar boys and first communion girls was obviously limited.” ²⁴¹ Quite. The heart of man naturally runs in the direction of excitement and thrills, especially those of a sexual or violent nature. Pro-Papist films would only appeal to Papists, and not even to all of them; films with violence and sex appealed to all unregenerate people.

Breen Crams Papist Ethics “Down the Throat of the Jews”

Joe Breen himself viewed his role as something of a divine calling. Jesuit priest Gerard B. Donnelly, visiting the Breen Office in 1936, reported as follows, as he listened to Breen’s fulminations: “Anybody else in the job would be too polite, wouldn’t fight, wouldn’t curse; the studios would mistake politeness for weakness and ride roughshod over the Code. But he [Breen] could fight, he could yell louder than [Jack] Warner or [Sam] Goldwyn; he was the one man who could thrust morality down their gullets. The hand of God had been there.” Neither Breen nor Donnelly, apparently, saw the contradiction in a cussing, swearing Papist lecturing others about morality! Romish morality has never been averse to swearing, among other things. Donnelly went on, making use of Breen’s own words about himself, about “the horrible state of affairs that would be in existence if he [Breen], a Catholic, were not sitting at the bottle neck, the rotten filth that would be in the pictures. And more than that – the hand of God (he said) had been in this whole thing.”

Yes, Breen believed his job was a calling; a divine vocation. And his religious leaders believed it too. They loved having Breen there, for Hollywood was in the palms of their hands as a result, even though Jews ran the studios. Hollywood belonged to Rome. Donnelly wrote of Breen, “He was the one man in the country who could cram decent ethics down the throat of the Jews, make them like it, and keep their respect.” ²⁴²

The House Committee on Un-American Activities

Back in 1934, a Jewish-American in New York, Samuel Dickstein, introduced a resolution for the creation of a committee to investigate Nazism in the United States. The bill was passed, and the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC) came into being. But many viewed it as a “Jewish bill” and German-Americans picketed the last session of the committee with signs saying things like “Heil Hitler” and “Down with Dickstein.” In 1937 he again introduced a bill for the creation of another such committee. This time, however, he was trumped by a Texas Democrat named Martin Dies, who submitted a resolution for the creation of his own HUAC. Dies became its chairman. He was viewed by many Jews as anti-Semitic, and with good reason, for despite his denials he certainly associated openly with certain pro-Nazis. For example, the first investigator for the HUAC was a speaker for the Nazi Bund. And then there were others who were decidedly anti-Semitic and yet who collaborated with the HUAC, such as Joseph R Kemp, the publisher of a Fascist magazine; William Dudley Pelley, head of the pro-Nazi Silver Shirts; and James Colescott, Imperial Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan.

Thus, although the original HUAC was created for the investigation of Nazism within America, this second HUAC had no such interest. Its interest was in investigating Communism in America, not Nazism. Of course, both Nazism and Communism were anti-American, but sadly Jews – so many of whom were pro-Communist – only wanted the HUAC to investigate Nazism because of its threat to Jews, and the HUAC Gentiles – so many of whom were pro-Nazi – only wanted the HUAC to investigate Communism. It is a tragic fact that in that era, and so often afterwards as well, many who were anti-Communist were pro-Nazi, and vice versa.

We will hear more of the HUAC.

The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938): Never Let the Facts Get in the Way

This film by Michael Curtiz, and starring Errol Flynn, was immensely popular at the time and was passed by the Breen Office – and yet the Roman Catholicism in the film (such as there was) was reduced to little more than slapstick humour and was never taken seriously. For example, Friar Tuck made people laugh but certainly did not engender real, deep respect for Romanism, and in other ways the Romish religion was not treated seriously in the film. It would appear that the film passed the Breen Office scrutiny because it did not attack Romanism outright. After all, as everyone who knows the story of Robin Hood is well aware, many of the villains in the story are the greedy, fat, pompous, persecuting bishops of Rome and other Popish leaders. This fact was well known to screenwriter Roland Leigh as well, but he did not want to offend with the film and stated: “Undoubtedly in medieval times the church took unwarranted liberties with its power and influence. Equally undoubtedly we have no desire to offend either the Catholic or Protestant church of today… a tactful compromise will have to be arrived at.” ²⁴³ So: in the usual Hollywood fashion, never mind the facts, never mind the historical setting, throw these out if they offend modem movie audiences. Why let the facts stand in the way of a good story? And so, instead of Robin Hood opposing the greed and oppression of the Romish hierarchy of his day (which would offend Roman Catholic film audiences), almost the only nod to Roman Catholicism in the film was Friar Tuck’s jovial behaviour. Breen could pass it. History had been safely set aside, and audiences would not be misled by the truth. This was the legacy of the Breen Office and of the Legion of Decency: to avoid giving offence to Roman Catholics, including ignoring the truth about their bloodthirsty, greedy religion.

Angels with Dirty Faces (1938): the Prototype for the Movie Priest-Hero

This film, starring Irish-American Pat O’Brien as a priest, was a triumph for Rome. After its success, Hollywood producers knew that in the Roman Catholic priest they had found a new movie hero for the times. A hero, moreover, who would certainly make Joe Breen as happy as could be.

This film was the prototype for many other images of urban Roman Catholics and their lifestyles. It was about a fighting priest who challenged underworld vice. Despite the fact that the producer, director and writer were all Jews, it was a strongly pro-Papist film through and through, and the Romanism of the film was maintained by the two Irish-American actors, Pat O’Brien and James Cagney, both of whom had been raised as Romanists, and who, in Cagney’s words, “knew the ceremonial forms [of Romanism] and very well did we know them”, ²⁴⁴ and insisted on the authenticity of Roman Catholic ritual in the film.

Boys Town (1938): a Fighting Irish Priest at the Centre

This film was a great success, depicting a fighting Irish Romish priest, played by Spencer Tracy, who depicted real-life Romish priest Edward J. Flanagan, a personal friend of his. In fact, when he won an Academy Award for this part, Tracy gave the Oscar to Flanagan with this inscription: “To Father Edward J. Flanagan, whose great human qualities, kindly simplicity and inspiring courage were strong enough to shine through my humble efforts.” ²⁴⁵

U.S. Romanism: Anti-Communist, Pro-Nazi, Pro-Fascist

In the United States, the Roman Catholic hierarchy was solidly behind Franco in Spain, behind Hitler in Germany, and Mussolini in Italy, and just as solidly anti-Communist. In fact, at their annual meeting in 1936 the American bishops voted to make a study of U.S. Communism so as to combat it. The hierarchy felt that Nazism and Fascism could be used to combat Communism, which was in line with the Vatican’s support for Hitler, Mussolini and Franco, who were all Roman Catholics and were serving the Vatican’s interests. Various influential Roman Catholics warned of the growing Communist menace in Hollywood. Quigley warned McNicholas after the 1936 meeting of bishops that American Communists were seeking to harness Hollywood to serve their interests, and that the Legion would have a real battle on its hands. A few years later he stated that Communism was now so strong in Hollywood that the fight against “Red propaganda would make the battle for decency [the reason the Legion had come into being in the first place] seem a skirmish.” ²⁴⁶

In 1936 Joe Breen stated that he could see there was a very definite attempt to get Communist propaganda into an increasing number of Hollywood films. Even allowing for the likelihood that Breen may have seen more than was actually there, it cannot be denied that the Communist movement saw the immense power of movies, and was seeking to harness that power. And priest Daly issued a similar warning. Then in 1938 John J. McClafferty reported at length to McNicholas on what he perceived to be the growing Communist take-over of Hollywood.

In 1939 the film Confessions of a Nazi Spy was released, just before the outbreak of the Second World War. The film dealt with the Nazi threat to the United States; but a Breen staff member, Karl Lischka, attempted to delay production, stating it was unfair to depict Hitler as “a screaming madman and a bloodthirsty persecutor”, considering his “unchallenged political and social achievements”. Breen himself gave the film a seal because it was based on a true spy case, but priest McClafferty labelled it as Communist propaganda. And the Jesuit publication, America, a month before the attack on Pearl Harbour, stated that Hollywood was promoting Communism. Occasionally some Romanist would admit that Hitler was also doing evil things, but seldom if ever was it stated to be as evil as Communism. For example, in the IFCA’s Quarterly Bulletin the question was posed: “Have you ever noticed in motion pictures the present tendency to deplore Hitlerism and all its concomitant atrocities, and to gloss over or even to make light of the work of Stalin?” The message was clear: Hitlerism may have been bad, but Stalinism also was, and much worse.

These Roman Catholics were not simply pro-Nazi because they were anti-Communist, although that was of course a major part of it; but it must be remembered that they were pro-Nazi because Roman Catholicism was pro-Nazi.

Thus two extremely powerful forces were at work in Hollywood at this time: Communism, which was most certainly seeking to use Hollywood to promote its agenda, and was even succeeding to some extent; and Romanism, which at that time was firmly anti-Communist, and was doing its best to combat Communism, even if it meant supporting Nazism.

Blockade (1938): Papist Anger at a Perceived Communist Film

This film, inspired by the Spanish civil war, caused an outcry from American Roman Catholics. It had been written by John Howard Lawson and directed by William Dieterle, two men whom priest McClafferty had stated were leading leftists in Hollywood. Breen had declared that the script would only be approved by him if there was absolutely nothing in the movie tying the story to either side in the Spanish civil war. The last thing Rome wanted was a film depicting its hero, Franco, in a bad light. And so, to get past the censors, the film’s hero fights in an army without a name, against an enemy that is never identified. But even such radical steps were not enough. Despite the precautions, Life magazine declared that those who read the newspapers “will see in Blockade a stem indictment of General Franco’s war, a passionate polemic for the humble Spaniards fighting for Republican Spain.” All this horrified the Papist censors of the PCA and the Legion, with Will Hays (a non-Papist himself) telling priest McClafferty that he always remembered the words of the pope, Pius XI, spoken to him (Hays) in a private papal audience. Pius had said it was Hays’ responsibility to keep Communist propaganda from being depicted in films, and he had shown Hays a communication from Stalin to Communist Party leaders worldwide, ordering them to take control of the movie industries wherever possible. ²⁴⁷ Nevertheless, even though Hays believed Breen had erred in granting a seal to the film, he felt that if the Legion attempted to prevent the showing of it, this would be even worse.

After Martin Quigley had met with the producer, Walter Wagner, Wagner agreed to add a foreword to the film. This foreword, written by Quigley himself, stated: “This story of love and adventure is not intended to treat with or take sides in the conflict of ideas involved in the present Spanish crisis.” The Legion, however, felt that this was not strong enough. But what could be done? The Legion had been formed to protect Rome’s moral values, not deal with political issues, and if it condemned the film it would certainly give the impression that it was overstepping its boundaries – an impression it certainly did not want to give, even though it desperately wanted to extend its power. So in the end, it classified the film in its “special” category, with the following words of explanation: “Many people will regard this picture as containing foreign political propaganda in favour of one side in the present unfortunate struggle in Spain.” This was at McClafferty’s suggestion. Of course, Rome did not view the Spanish conflict as “unfortunate” at all, and it most certainly favoured one side in the conflict! The hypocrisy here was probably lost on most if not all of the Legion’s members. Their “Church” always had double standards.

Roman Catholic priests and organisations came out with guns blazing against the movie for what they called its pro-Red, anti- Christian (meaning anti-Romanist) message. There were picket lines in several cities. The film studios got a fright, but they were ultimately victorious in this particular battle because the film was not deemed morally objectionable, only politically so, and thus the Legion’s hands were tied to a large extent.

The House Committee on Un-American Activities Turns Its Attention on Jewish Hollywood

In May 1939, Martin Dies, the anti-Jewish, anti-Communist head of the House Committee on Un-American Activities, began to cast his and the committee’s eyes towards the Jews controlling Hollywood. “It was apparent,” he said, “that un-Americanism had made more progress in California and on the West Coast than in any other part of the country.” And: “I told the producers we had reliable information that a number of film actors and screen writers and a few producers either were members of the Communist Party, followed the Communist line, or were used as dupes, and that there was evidence that the Hollywood Anti-Nazi League was under the control of Communists.” ²⁴⁸ In this he was certainly correct, as we have seen previously. It is just such a pity that in combatting the dreadful menace of Communism and its efforts to infiltrate Hollywood so as to use that powerful medium for Red propaganda purposes, the HUAC did not show the same zeal, or even interest, in combatting that other dreadful menace, Nazism. As shown previously, various HUAC collaborators were decidedly pro- Nazi and against the Jews just because they were Jews, rather than being solely against Jews who were Communists. This meant that the HUAC investigations into Hollywood took on the decided appearance of being an anti-Jewish witch-hunt. The HUAC did not make a clear distinction between Jews who were Communists in Hollywood, and Jews in general.

There is the possibility, also, that the older Jewish producers, who, as shown previously, were often anti-Communist, had actually invited Dies and his committee to come to Hollywood to investigate the radical leftwingers within the Hollywood writers’ fraternity, and even to help destroy the Screen Writers Guild. For it will be remembered that Hollywood’s writers were often decidedly pro-Communist. If this is indeed what they had done, little did the producers realise that Dies would not be content with merely investigating the writers, but the entire Hollywood industry for Communist subversion.

In July 1940 the HUAC work began. A former Communist, John L. Leech, told Dies in closed session that Hollywood was a major centre of Communist subversion, and he gave Dies a list of 42 members, sympathisers and contributors to the Communist Party. These had to face Dies and answer for themselves. But after a month Dies declared that it was all over. The whole thing just seemed to fizzle out, at least for the time being.

Then the Second World War touched America, and the menace of Communism receded somewhat into the background as attention was focused on the menace of Nazism. But the HUAC would be revived after the war, as will be seen.

The Hollywood Jews Support the War Against Nazism

Warner Brothers decided to make anti-Nazi movies, even though Harry Warner had reservations about doing so, being concerned that such movies would be interpreted by non-Jews as having been made by Jews just because they were Jews. When Europe went to war, however, the Warners wired President Roosevelt that “personally we would like to do all in our power within the motion picture industry and by use of the talking screen to show the American people the worthiness of the cause for which the free peoples of Europe are making such tremendous sacrifices.” ²⁴⁹

The Hollywood Jews were worried, and they had reason to be. There were many in America itself who sided with Hitler and hated the Jews. In late 1940 the Papist Joseph P. Kennedy, the U.S. ambassador to England but a man suspected of being pro-Nazi, went to Hollywood and at a meeting he requested, addressed the Jewish executives. He called on them to remain neutral, for Britain had not won the war yet. He very forcefully told them that anti-Nazi films should not be made, that anti-Semitism was on the increase in Britain, and that there were those who were blaming the Jews for the war. In America itself, a large percentage of the population deeply distrusted Jews, and furthermore there were those who felt that their control over Hollywood was being used to push America into the war. Movies, in a word, were being used for pro-war propaganda purposes, which infuriated those Americans who were opposed to getting involved in the conflict in Europe. A Senate sub-committee was appointed to investigate, and the Hollywood Jews had to appear before it.

But they came out with guns blazing, defending themselves – and they had the support of the president himself. The sub-committee adjourned to consider the information that had been gathered, but then Pearl Harbour was attacked and America was brought into the war anyway.

The Office of War Information (OWI) Steps into Hollywood

With the outbreak of World War Two, the Breen Office was forced, against its will, to make certain changes; certain capitulations to the times. Will Hays and Joe Breen wanted Hollywood, even in war time, to provide nothing but entertainment, and not to be used for war propaganda. Nor would the Production Code Administration’s standards be lowered in the least to permit more profanity, etc. The Office of War Information (OWI), however, saw things differently.

The United States’ Roosevelt Administration realised that Hollywood could be a powerful ally in winning over Americans to the idea of entering into the Second World War. So the federal government created the OWI, its purpose being to use film, radio and the press to build public understanding of and support for the war; i.e. to coordinate wartime propaganda across the civilian media. Movies, of course, were ideal tools for this, and Elmer Davis, the director of the OWI, set it out very well when he stated that the “easiest way to inject a propaganda idea into most people’s minds is to let it go in through the medium of an entertainment picture when they do not realize that they are being propagandized.” ²⁵⁰ The OWI established a special unit called the Motion Picture Bureau for this purpose, and published a booklet entitled Government Information Manual for the Motion Picture Industry. This manual wanted film-makers to ask, regarding each film, “Will This Picture Help Win the War?” The OWI wanted moviemakers to present the war as a “people’s war”, with America united against Fascism and in alliance with Russia, Britain and China. This meant that Hollywood effectively now had not one but two supervisory agencies – the PCA and the OWI – and not one but two guidebooks – the Production Code and the Information Manual. The manual became in effect a second Hollywood code during the war years, with Hollywood producers being asked to submit their scripts to the OWI for examination. It was inevitable that there would be a clash.

Joseph Breen had long opposed any propaganda in films, censoring those which contained political content deemed to be such. The OWI, however, believed that the PCA’s Code “lulled the home front” and “impeded the war effort”. To the OWI, the PCA was fiddling while Rome burned, arguing over morality in pictures when it should have been employed in the service of the war effort.

During those years, then, Breen and the PCA were often pretty much limited to moral issues, whereas the OWI controlled the political content of the movies.

The fact that hundreds of Hollywood executives and other Hollywood people had been commissioned to make training and propaganda movies for the war was something that did not sit well with the U.S. Congress; and in early 1943 another Senate committee was established to investigate. But it did not come to any firm conclusion. The truth is that during the war Hollywood’s Jews produced many films showing up Nazism as evil and the Allies’ cause as just. But the Jewish moviemakers were not doing this solely because they were Jews and Nazism was anti-Jewish; they wanted to make these films to show all Americans how patriotic, how American, they (the Hollywood Jews) really were. As two examples: Jack Warner said, “I want all our films to sell America ‘long’ not ‘short.’ My brothers and I are examples of what this country does for its citizens. There were no silver spoons in our mouths when we were born. If anything, they were shovels. But we were free to climb as high as our energy and brains could take us.” And the president of Paramount, Barney Balaban, said, “We, the industry, recognize the need for informing people in foreign lands about the things that have made America a great country.” And he added, “We are prepared to take a loss in revenue if necessary.” ²⁵¹

Breen’s decided antipathy to the American government using Hollywood for propagandists, pro-American films during World War Two sprung, without question, from his Roman Catholicism. The pope of Rome at the time, Pius XII, was pro-Nazi and anti-Communist, ²⁵² but many Roman Catholics were unaware of his pro-Nazi position. Breen was anti-Nazi and anti-Communist; and America’s close relations with Soviet Russia and with Stalin (via pro-Socialist President Roosevelt) filled him with concern. America and Russia may have been allies against their common enemy Nazism, but Breen did not view this as a good thing. In this he was certainly right. And what is more, he saw that Hollywood itself had become to such a large extent decidedly pro- Communist. As we have seen, Hollywood was dominated by Jews, and many Jews were Communists. “Hollywood films such as Mission to Moscow (1943), a starry-eyed whitewash of Stalinism, and Song of Russia (1944), an anthem to the noble heart of Mother Russia, were celluloid testimony to the affection between Hollywood and Moscow, something that before the war would have been unimaginable, and would be so again soon after.” ²⁵³ Hollywood had immense power to influence public opinion, and always has had. The evidence is seen in western society today, where leftist causes and pro-Marxist positions, promoted by Hollywood, are now fashionable and have been for decades. Breen, like many Papists of his generation, rightly saw the danger of Communism and its subversive tactics against the West, even while they could not see the dangers of their own Roman Catholic religion.

So Breen was firmly against the OWI, saying in an interview that it had “set out to use the screen to propagandize for selfish if not sinister purposes.” He added that the OWI personnel was dominated by “the short haired women and long haired men type.” When the interviewer asked what he meant by that, he replied, “Pink ”. ²⁵⁴

When Mission to Moscow was released in 1943, the difficulty for the Papist censors was that it contained no morally objectionable scenes, so they could not condemn it, even though it portrayed Stalin in a good light and was thus extremely objectionable, politically, to the Legion. President Roosevelt, arch-Socialist that he was, had encouraged the making of the film precisely because he believed it would improve relations between the USA and USSR. The strongest action the Legion could take was to give it a rating of “A2”, meaning “suitable for adults”. There was no question that the film was Red propaganda, and plenty of angry letters from Roman Catholics to priest McClafferty of the Legion made this point clear, but there was nothing more he could have done. The Legion was created to condemn morally objectionable films, not politically objectionable ones.

But of course, the Legion of Decency was extremely opposed to any pro-Red films, and longed for more to be done about them. The film, For Whom the Bell Tolls, about the Spanish civil war, was one which caused great concern to the Papist censors. “The Spanish consul in San Francisco had even asked the church to suppress the film, but Quigley warned McClafferty that any attempt to oppose it on anything other than moral grounds would be ‘political dynamite.”’ ²⁵⁵ After Breen had worked the film over, so that it no longer mentioned Franco or the Republican forces, the Legion gave it a “B” classification for various moral reasons.

How World War Two Changed Hollywood – and American Morals

At this time the film studios once again started to push the limits, with racier dialogue and sexier scenes. It caused Will Hays to meet with the studio bosses in 1940 to express the Legion’s increasing concerns. One such film, which the Legion condemned, was My Darling Daughter (1939), a film about premarital sex. Breen only approved it after Warner Brothers agreed that there would be no hint of any illicit sex in the film, even though this was what the Broadway play, which the film was based on, was about. Breen may have approved it but the Legion was horrified, especially at the sexual dialogue and the implication of a trial marriage. It condemned the film. Warner eliminated the offensive scenes and lines, and the Legion then gave it a “B” classification.

Another film, This Thing Called Love (1941), was an opportunity for Hollywood writers to again attempt to introduce some suggestive lines and “sexiness” into a film, with another “trial marriage” theme. Breen’s PCA eventually passed it (reluctantly), the Legion very naturally condemned it, Columbia studio made the cuts, and the Legion then passed it with a “B” classification.

The Legion believed that Hollywood was attempting to destroy morality in America, via its treatment of marriage, divorce, and remarriage. What deeply troubled the Legion, too, was that it often felt it had to condemn a film which Breen and his PCA had approved. Breen himself, however, devout Papist that he was, was troubled as well. Complaining about Hollywood moral standards to Count Enrico Galeazzi, an influential Roman Catholic, Breen branded the USA a “nation of pagans”, and said that most Americans had by this time sunk so low that they no longer even professed a watered-down Protestant “Christianity”. ²⁵⁶ He believed a solution was for the bishops in Roman Catholic countries of Europe to lead boycotts of immoral movies. This would never have worked, however, because European Papist nations did not have their own versions of the Legion of Decency. Breen spoke to Quigley about doing what they could to deal strongly with films which treated divorce and remarriage sinfully, but Quigley, despite agreeing with Breen, felt that if the Code was amended in this way it would cause a backlash against the Roman Catholic “Church”. ²⁵⁷

Also in 1941, the film Two-Faced Woman was released. It was about a woman who, fearing she was losing her husband to another woman, posed as her twin sister to get her husband to fall in love with what he thought was a “sexier” version of his wife. It contained passionate love scenes and racy dialogue. The film was passed by the PCA, but the Legion was incensed and said it would be condemned if changes were not made. In addition, the powerful archbishop of New York, Francis Spellman, condemned the film in a letter that was read out at all masses in his diocese, calling it a “near occasion of sin”. In some places the film was banned, in others cuts were ordered. Many people were angered that the Romish “Church” had such power over what people could or could not see. The American Civil Liberties Union even got involved. This was the first time there was such a widespread public condemnation of the “Church” of Rome’s power over the movies, and it caused Romish leaders to go on the offensive. Martin Quigley even accused one periodical of acting like the Ku Klux Klan in its criticism of the Legion. Pressure continued to mount against the film, until MGM said it was withdrawing it pending discussions with the Legion. After the studio eliminated various scenes and much dialogue, the Legion classified it as a “B” and it was again released.

World War Two was to change the morals of Americans. The Legion, of course, was deeply concerned that the movies were playing a major part in lowering morality – as indeed they were. Breen recognised this, writing to priest McClafferty in 1944, “it would appear that there has been a near approach to what looks like a complete breakdown in the moral structure of the nation.” ²⁵⁸ Yet at the same time Breen, working as he did for the film industry, came to the conclusion that with the changing morality in society he would have to accept, to some extent, the changing morality of the movies.

Language in the movies became harsher and cruder, for example, yet more socially acceptable. But in this area the Breen Office continued to apply the same standards for language in films as it had before the war. This annoyed and angered the OWL It felt that if a film showed the Americans and the Allied forces in a good light, the Breen Office should turn a deaf ear to swear words and blasphemy. The need for such films in a time of war over-rode all other considerations, including those of decency and morality, it believed. The true Christian of course would state categorically that no circumstances justify a lowering of morality.

One such film was In Which We Serve (1942), a British film seen as patriotic and thus helpful to the wartime effort. But it contained certain expletives, considered mild by the public in those days, which caused the PCA to censor it. Another film it censored for the same reason was We Are the Marines (1942). This brought down upon the Breen Office a flood of criticism from many quarters. But Breen stood firm, stating, “the motion picture screen would do a very definite disservice to the growing boys and girls of America if we were to accustom them to harsh vulgarities, or worse, in screen dialogue.” ²⁵⁹

The PCA emerged victorious in this matter; but then, having won its point that the use of such words would be permitted at the sole discretion of the PCA when used by military men, it turned around and relaxed the provisions of the Code in the case of these two wartime films, because of the nature of the scenes in which certain words were used. Yet when the movie Air Force (1943) was submitted to the PCA, Breen insisted that an expletive which by then was considered mild be deleted; but as he also knew that the air force was on the film’s side and that public opinion would be on the air force’s side, he exercised the “sole discretion” granted to him and permitted the words to remain!

Breen, and even occasionally the Legion of Decency, applied double standards to their movie reviews. For example, when the movie Miracle of Morgan s Creek was released in 1943, it was okayed by the Breen Office and given a “B” rating by the Legion, the latter doing so because the movie was “very funny”. And yet this movie was about a young woman who becomes pregnant while drunk by a man she cannot remember afterwards. This hypocritical standard was very confusing to people, and the film generated a lot of angry letters from a concerned public.

Breen had changed, to some extent, with the times. For example, back in 1935 a film called Double Indemnity had not been granted the seal, because of the “general low tone and sordid flavor of the story”, and the fact that it contained an “adulterous sex relationship”; but in 1944 he approved a new script of the film, stating that “details of crime have become more common” in the intervening years “and adultery is no longer quite as objectionable.” ²⁶⁰ Breen, the Roman Catholic, was in fact serving two masters: Rome and Hollywood. And he was finding it a difficult juggling act. The Legion, on the other hand, usually (though not always) served only one master: Rome. This explains why in general, Legion standards were higher than Breen’s, but (as seen above) not always by much.

This again goes to show the subjective nature of this kind of censorship, when the Bible is not the standard.

Hollywood’s Strong Roman Catholic-Jewish Alliance at This Time

In the late 1930s and into the 1940s the Legion was extremely powerful, and moviemakers were not prepared to antagonise it, so they made films that painted the Roman Catholic religion in a very good light. One pro-Papist film after another was released by Hollywood, including some extremely successful ones: for example, Boys Town (1938), Angels with Dirty Faces (1938), The Fighting 69th (1940), Knute Rockne, All American (1940), The Song of Bernadette (1943), Going My Way (1944), and The Bells of St. Mary’s (1945). It was a period of Romanist advancement on a number of fronts in the United States, and a confident and powerful Romish hierarchy was going all out to Romanise America. And one of the ways it was doing so was through its huge influence over Hollywood. ²⁶¹

In Hollywood there was thus a working alliance between Roman Catholics and Jews. But what did these two groups stand to gain by their strange alliance? Each group stood to gain much – and did. “Catholic censors, concerned to insinuate themselves into the heart of Jewish Hollywood, would eventually become themselves industry insiders by shaping production standards in ways that benefited the studios and punished independents and foreign rivals to the American movie industry. Jews would benefit from their efforts through box-office profits and in terms of increased cultural capital. By delivering high-minded and even sacred topics on-screen as antidotes to the charges of vulgarity that were launched against them by Catholics and Protestants, Jews joined Catholics as new participants in the American cultural and moral mainstream.” ²⁶² Together they moulded America’s values and morals through the movies they made. “Catholics and Jews found themselves together in the movie industry and created a set of American values and practices that spoke to their own position as minority communities in what they perceived to be a Protestant America.” ²⁶³

But these two quotations only tell a part of the story. Yes, Jewish studio bosses, etc., stood to gain financially from the alliance, and by making themselves more acceptable in American society thereby. But Roman Catholics did not only gain a foothold in Jewish Hollywood or the position of industry insiders; they also gained immense influence and power over the reshaping of the United States of America in the Vatican’s image. Little did Protestant Americans realise how their lives, their values, their morals and practices would be moulded and formed and manipulated by Roman Catholic and Communist forces (often Jewish-dominated) through the decades. All thanks, to a vast extent, to Hollywood.

And yet voices were beginning to be raised against the Code and its enforcers:

Gone With the Wind (1939) and Rebecca (1940): Rumblings of Discontent Against the Code

Although Roman Catholic domination of Hollywood was almost total in the 1930s and first half of the 1940s, and the major studios submitted to the PCA and the Legion of Decency with barely a whimper, there were occasional but very serious challenges, at least from maverick producers. One of these was David O. Selznick, and another was millionaire Howard Hughes.

Breen was always wary of Selznick, saying he produced more unacceptable material in a year than any two larger studios did. Selznick, for his part, believed that the times had changed and Breen had not changed with them. After Selznick left MGM in 1939 he established his own film company, Selznick International. In that same year he produced Gone With the Wind, cementing his position as one of Hollywood’s “greats.” In that film, actor Clark Gable utters the word, “damn”. This became one of the most infamous utterances in Holly wood history. Joseph Breen, applying the Code firmly, stated that the line had to be cut from the film, although he sympathised with Selznick as the word was not used as a curse in that context; while Selznick, who was strongly opposed to movie censorship, resisted the strict application of the Code to the matter. Selznick also demonstrated that the word appeared in various magazines, including Ladies Home Journal, and had been used in a previous film in a similar way. He filed an appeal with the board of directors of the MPPDA, and eventually he emerged the victor and the line stayed in the film, being permitted by Will Hays. But the Breen Office came in for much criticism over its opposition to the word. Hollywood columnist Jimmie Fidler mocked Breen as “probably the only Irishman in history to be appalled by so mild an expletive”. ²⁶⁴ In truth, however, Breen, who was known to use far stronger language himself, was merely applying the letter of the law so to speak, when he tried to enforce the Code’s position on the use of such words. Selznick, meanwhile, called for a reform of the Code, branding it “dated”.

Martin Quigley believed, with Breen, that Will Hays’ decision had done much damage.

But the scene with the infamous word was not the only one to which Breen objected. In another scene in the film, a wounded man is brought to a brothel for medical attention. Breen did not want the brothel as the location. When one of Selznick’s assistants said to him that brothels were a reality of life, Breen pointed out that bathrooms were a reality as well and he went to one every morning, but that did not mean it should become part of a film. In the end, he allowed the brothel to stay in the film as long as nothing was shown that would make prostitution appear to be pleasant or exciting, so as not to stir lustful emotions in young people. ²⁶⁵

So very subjective! The only censorship there should be is that of the State for the protection of the physical lives and property of its citizens. This is the State’s God-given duty. Any other censorship, whether applied by the State or (as in this case) from religious or other institutions, oversteps that boundary and becomes each man doing what is right in his own eyes, censoring things which do not need to be censored, and not censoring things which should be.

In 1940 Selznick and Alfred Hitchcock (a Roman Catholic) made the film Rebecca, containing adultery, murder, and hints of abortion and lesbianism. Naturally Breen insisted on cuts to anything that smacked of abortion or sexual perversion, but in the novel on which the film was based, the murderer is not punished. This, of course, was also unacceptable to Breen, for he strongly believed that all crimes be punished in movies. To get around the problem, he suggested to Selznick that instead of a murder occurring in the film, the death should rather be an accidental one. Selznick had no choice but to agree if he wanted his film to see the light of day – but he was livid, and considered suing the Hays Office. He said that he would be a Hollywood hero for waging war against “so insane and inane and outmoded a Code as that under which the industry is now struggling.”

The movie, however, was a great success at the box office, and Selznick’s anger abated – for the time being. But he would not disappear. And he would challenge the Code, and thus the Roman Catholic “Church”, a few years later.

The Fighting 69th (1940): Rome’s Army Chaplains Exalted

In 1940 Warner Brothers released one of the most pro-Irish (and thus pro-Papist) films to date, a combat movie entitled The Fighting 69th. This film, “[bjesotted with near-toxic levels of blarney, brogues, and malarkey,” demonstrated the plain raw fact that Irish Romanism “was in full command of the center stage in American culture.” ²⁶⁶ The film was brimming with stereotypical Irish soldiers and an Irish priest-chaplain. This war film promoted Roman Catholicism by “recounting the glorious achievements of the Rainbow Division and its Irish Catholic contingent…. Pat O’Brien was unrelentingly pious and patriotic as Father Francis J. Duffy, the real life chaplain of the unit…. Father Duffy has a formal monument and his own park in the middle of Times Square, but another part of his legacy is Hollywood’s deification of this Irishman as the prototype for all chaplains in its pro war films. There’s a little of Father Duffy in every brave cinematic religious mentor leading his flock to glory and salvation.” ²⁶⁷

Still, even the production of this pro-Papist film was not without objectionable aspects as far as the Legion was concerned. Priest Devlin of the Los Angeles Legion attempted to get Warner Brothers to do something about what he called Duffy’s “religious indifferentism” in the film, i.e. his belief (at least as portrayed in the film) that all religions had merit and were acceptable to God. This of course was certainly not official Roman Catholic doctrine, which held that “outside the Church [of Rome] there is no salvation”. Devlin said that producers always sought to put “expressions of tolerance in the mouth of a character of a priest”, such as “all religions are good, we’re all going to Heaven by different routes”, “it doesn’t matter what your religion is so long as you have some religion.” He added that it was difficult to explain the Roman Catholic teaching of “tolerance” to the producers, and that “the best we can do is to have such expressions removed.” ²⁶⁸

The reason Devlin found it difficult to explain Rome’s teaching on tolerance to movie producers was very simple: Rome had no true teaching on tolerance! Biblical Christianity proclaims very clearly that the Lord Jesus Christ is the only way to heaven and to God the Father, for this is precisely what Christ Himself taught (Jn. 14:6; Acts 4:12).

But tolerance is about allowing those of other religions to state their beliefs as well (even if one totally rejects them), and not persecuting those of other religions. The Papal system, of course, throughout history persecuted even unto death those who differed with her in matters of religion! It is not surprising, then, that film producers had an extremely difficult time trying to understand Rome’s view of “tolerance”. It was simply a myth, one shattered by centuries of bloodshed by fanatical Papists.

Breen’s Brief Resignation

Breen wrote to Jesuit priest Daniel Lord expressing his frustration with the Legion of Decency, which wanted more restrictions on films than he did; and in May 1941 he actually resigned as Hollywood censor – and, astoundingly, announced that he was going to be working for RKO studio as general manager. He gave assurances that RKO would conform to the Code. However, not even a year later he was fired, and again became Hollywood censor in 1942. Why was this done? Well, “the industry was unable to find a person on which Martin Quigley, the producers, the Catholic church, and Will Hays could agree. The Legion pressured Hays to agree that any replacement must be a Catholic; but which Catholic?” ²⁶⁹ The movie studios themselves were in favour of Breen’s return, and so it came about that he was re-appointed to his old post. But his brief attempt at moviemaking had publicly humiliated him.

Guadalcanal Diary (1943): a Huge Propaganda Boost for Rome’s Supposedly Anti-Nazi Stance

Two decades before the ecumenical movement proper would get off the ground in a big way, Hollywood films of the war era were promoting the concept of Roman Catholic-Protestant “unity”: that it did not matter whether an Allied soldier was Roman Catholic or Protestant – both were Christians and both were fighting on God’s side. In Guadalcanal Diary, within minutes of the film’s beginning it is made clear that there are Protestant, Roman Catholic and Jewish sailors all fighting side by side; the crew on deck sing the Protestant hymn, “Rock of Ages”; and then the Romish priest celebrates mass. And this was to be standard fare in war film after war film. “Almost every film featured a platoon or squad or barracks with WASPS, ethnic Catholics, and Jews”; but there was something more – a constant glorification of the Romish priest-chaplain, in particular: “The chaplains assigned to these units were frequently Irish Catholic giants with hearts of gold, dazzlingly fine psychological insights, and an encyclopedic grasp of moral theology. Hollywood glorified an almost endless parade of courageous [Papist] chaplains dragging men to safety, hearing last confessions, mending broken hearts, curing battle jitters, and anointing the dead. The heroic padre became a leading icon in Second World War films…. Master sergeants may have aided in teaching the manual of arms, but Irish Catholic priests in uniform were the drill instructors of the soul.” “Father Donnelly in Guadalcanal Diary, one of the most fully developed examples of this convention, can stand as a token of literally dozens of other Hollywood portraits of Catholic chaplains…. wherever the boys were, Father Donnelly or some other surrogate of Catholicism was there. Much was made of the Irish side of their priesthood. Irish chaplains tolerated drinking, dancing, and even wenching well enough; they even countenanced doubts, fears, and tears rather well. What they couldn’t stand, however, was cowardice or indecision; the lukewarm had no place in this holy war.” ²⁷⁰

Was this all just coincidental? By no means. It was a very deliberate strategy of the Romish hierarchy. And in typical Papist fashion, as shown from the quotation just given, various sins were tolerated as long as the Roman Catholic boys continued fighting bravely. Nothing new in this: Rome has always been very willing to overlook all kinds of sins as long as her soldiers have fought her wars so as to obtain the desired results. In the case of Romish American soldiers fighting Nazism, the desired result was to convince Protestant America that Romish soldiers were loyal Americans. It was also to have a back-up strategy in case Hitler lost the war: Rome could then claim to have been against Hitler all the time. Rome always backs both sides in a conflict, so as to cover all bases.

The Song of Bernadette (1943): Jewish Collaboration in Promoting a Papist “Saint”

In 1943 The Song of Bernadette was released and became extremely popular. This was a Roman Catholic epic about a nineteenth-century French peasant girl, Bernadette Soubirous, who claimed to have had visions of the virgin Mary. What was very significant about this movie was that it was a collaborative effort between Roman Catholics and Jews. How did this come about?

The movie was based on a novel, published the year before. But the author was not a Papist, he was a Jew! His name was Franz Werfel, and he had fled Nazi Czechoslovakia. Roman Catholics had sheltered him in Lourdes, which had been the home of Bernadette, and it had a famous Marian shrine where it was claimed that miracles happened. As a result, Werfel made a vow to tell the story of the “miracle” of the shrine of Lourdes. Fie vowed “that I would evermore and everywhere in all I wrote magnify the divine mystery and the holiness of man.” This in itself was a very Popish thing to do, of course, for Papists are fond of performing vows in return for what they believe to be answers to their prayers. This naturally then struck a cord with Papists. Accordingly, soon after he arrived in New York Werfel wrote The Song of Bernadette. It became a bestseller, and both Werfel’s escape from the Nazis and his writing of the novel were viewed by Papists as yet two more of Bernadette’s miracles.

It turns out, however, that Werfel’s authorship of the book was not so miraculous as Papists liked to believe. After all, his wife, who escaped with him, was a devout Papist! Furthermore, she was the widow of the composer Gustav Mahler, who, although bom a Jew, had been baptized as a Roman Catholic in 1897. With such a devout Papist for a wife, doubtless relentlessly whispering about Lourdes “miracles” and other Popish mumbo-jumbo into his ear, Werfel’s reverence for Bernadette was not at all surprising.

And Papists were thrilled to be able to take this book, written by a Jew yet praising a Papist “saint”, and promote it to largely Jewish- controlled Hollywood.

Roman Catholic and Jewish collaboration on the film was prominent from the start. The director was a devout Romish mystic, Henry King. The lead actress, Jennifer Jones (nee Phyllis Isley), had had convent schooling. The film’s musical score was by Alfred Newman, who, although he was a secular Jew, researched Romish choral, convent and liturgical music so as to produce the score. Checking on the accuracy of the movie’s religious details was a Romish priest, Cyrill Fischer, who had himself fled Europe after criticising Hitler and who had become Werfel’s friend, instructing him in detail about Romish rituals. ²⁷¹

This working alliance between Jews and Romanists in the making of this film “illustrates how the ethical concerns and cultural position of Hollywood’s Jews could be articulated through the religious images of Catholics, another minority American religion.” ²⁷² In other words, this film brought Jews and Papists together precisely because they were both religious minorities at the time, and shared a number of common concerns in Protestant America.

Jennifer Jones was praised by the Jesuit magazine, America, as the ideal choice for the lead role. It called her “an exemplary Catholic girl”, who had been “Prefect of her Sodality” and stated that she had “never missed a retreat while in school, and would absolutely not attend movies during Lent.” This gives us a good insight into Rome’s warped sense of what constitutes a “Christian”. But as it turned out, their “exemplary Catholic girl” was not so exemplary after all: her marriage was falling apart and she was having an affair with the married producer, David O. Selznick. ²⁷³

When the film was released, the Roman Catholic hierarchy went all out to see to it that it had massive exposure, including amongst influential leaders in politics and industry. ²⁷⁴ Director King was very happy with this. But an incident that occurred during the making of the film showed just how devout – and naive – this man was. The cinematographer, Arthur Miller, used a spotlight on Jennifer Jones to suggest the aura of sanctity that supposedly surrounded her character. But in an interview Miller said that King, the Papist mystic, did not know of the special spotlight, and actually took the halo which he saw around Jones to be (in Miller’s words) “something spiritual that had crept into the picture from heaven.” ²⁷⁵

And now, as David O. Selznick had done with Gone With the Wind, another maverick producer of this era, millionaire Howard Hughes, decided to challenge the Code and its enforcers. And the challenge he mounted would be a huge one.

The Outlaw (1943): Howard Hughes Challenges the Code

The super-wealthy Howard Hughes was fiercely opposed to the censorship stranglehold over the industry. In 1943 he released his film, The Outlaw, a western about Billy the Kid. “It was condemned by the Catholic Legion of Decency for almost a decade, denounced in pulpits from coast to coast, and banned by state and municipal censorship boards – and it broke box-office records wherever it was allowed to play.” ²⁷⁶

For the female lead, Hughes found 19-year-old Ernestine Jane Geraldine Russell, and this movie turned her into the Hollywood star Jane Russell. It also “generated more publicity for an unknown actress (Jane Russell) than any other film in history.” ²⁷⁷ The script was certainly not historically accurate, and was (for its time) full of sexual material, including an implied rape of Russell’s character, a casual sexual relationship between Russell’s character and the two main male characters and no condemnation of it as being wrong, and Russell’s low-cut blouse. In addition the sheriff was killed and the criminal went unpunished. The Production Code Administration not surprisingly condemned the script, ordering Hughes to remove such things from it and saying that Russell’s body must not be exposed.

Now normally, whenever a studio received a PCA condemnation, it would rewrite the script to bring it into line with the Code. But Hughes refused to do so and went ahead with making the movie. After it was completed in 1941 it was reviewed by the PCA, which found it utterly unacceptable and refused to give it the seal of approval until offensive scenes were corrected. But Joseph Breen knew that Howard Hughes would probably not listen to him, and he told his boss Will Hays that Hughes would appeal. Breen said that The Outlaw went beyond any previous film in exposing or emphasising the female form. He sent a letter to every Hollywood studio letting them know that the PCA would not issue a seal of approval to any film which exposed or emphasised a woman’s body. Nevertheless, even without the Code seal, the film was shown – not by studio-affiliated theatres but by independent ones. And it raked in the bucks.

While launching a massive publicity campaign which successfully turned Jane Russell into a “star” even before she had been seen on the screen – billboards and magazine photo spreads were provocative in their exposure of her, all in preparation for the film’s release – Hughes demanded that the MPPDA board of directors hear his case. The end result was that the board upheld the PCA ruling, but told Hughes the seal of approval would be granted if he deleted about twenty-five feet of film (about a minute) in which Jane Russell’s cleavage was exposed. This amounted to something of a victory for Hughes, and Joseph Breen was unhappy about it. Hughes did as required, and the seal was issued. Hughes had in fact stared down the censors and won.

But instead of immediately releasing the film, Hughes stalled. Although the seal had been issued, state censorship boards insisted that more cuts be made to the film, and Twentieth Century-Fox grew nervous about distributing it. Hughes waited two years, releasing the film in 1943.

Breen was fuming, especially because Hughes took delight in rubbing Breen’s nose in the dirt, with such advertising for the film as, “The Picture That Couldn’t be Stopped!” Also, Hughes was claiming his film had been released with no cuts at all, which was untrue.

Roman Catholics wanted to know if their “Church” had approved the movie, and how the Legion of Decency had rated it. But the Legion’s National Office had not reviewed it, so the task was given to its San Francisco branch, which condemned it as immoral. And yet even so, when the film opened the public flocked to see it in huge numbers, and it made a fortune for Hughes. Clearly, Roman Catholics made up a very large proportion of those who went to see it, regardless of what their “Church” or their Legion said about it.

But Hughes again pulled the film, re-releasing it three years later in 1946, believing that it would do well even if he did not have Roman Catholic approval. The Legion condemnation of the film was still in force, but this did not concern him, and to make a point he deliberately opened the film in Chicago, the second most powerful Roman Catholic diocese in the United States and a place of solid support for the Legion of Decency. And he again made the claim that the film was screened “exactly as filmed”. Breen and the MPPDA (which had now been renamed the MPAA – the Motion Picture Association of America) were furious, and Hughes was held in violation of the Advertising Code. Breen demanded that Hughes surrender the film’s certificate of approval issued in 1941. Hughes refused and also sued the MPAA for millions of dollars, claiming it interfered with his ability to market the film, and an injunction prohibited the MPAA from acting against the film until the court had resolved matters. Knowing this would take months, Hughes continued to promote the film in the meantime. When it opened in Chicago, Roman Catholic protesters and picketers made a hue and cry, but the crowds flocked to see it and it did extremely well at the box office. And in a city such as Chicago, so very Papist, there can be no doubt that despite condemnation from the Legion, priests, picketers and protesters, huge numbers of those who went to see the film were Roman Catholics.

The film broke records in Los Angeles, and then opened in St. Louis, which was the diocese of Jesuit priest Daniel Lord. Protesters, mainly Roman Catholic children, marched with banners urging people to boycott the film, but when the police department’s Morality Squad decided there was nothing objectionable about it, police chased the child protesters away. Once again The Outlaw broke all box office records. And it did so in many other parts of the country as well.

And then, in 1949, after the film had already grossed over $3 000 000 for Hughes, he resubmitted The Outlaw to the MPAA, and the Code seal was re-issued. And both sides – Hughes and the MPAA – claimed victory.

But it was not all smooth sailing, for Popish pressure was immense. Nationwide, Roman Catholic groups protested against the movie, and did so for several years. Bishops blasted the film as corrupting and destructive of morals. A bishop in Galveston, Texas, called for a year-long boycott of Loew’s theatres in Houston, and in Philadelphia the cardinal, Dennis Dougherty, threatened theatre owner William Goldman with a year-long boycott by Roman Catholics of any of his theatres that showed the movie. Dougherty also forbade Roman Catholics from seeing it, and declared that any newspaper advertising it would be condemned from the pulpit. According to Variety magazine, “roving bands of Catholics” threatened theatre owners. Local officials in heavily Roman Catholic areas supported the Romish leadership’s opposition to the film. Hughes even attempted to bribe priest Devlin, film advisor to Cantwell the bishop, to get the film reclassified.

The Legion’s priest McClafferty suggested the changes that would need to be made to the film before the Legion could reconsider, and Hughes agreed to comply with at least some of these. But William Scully, the bishop of Albany, when approached by McClafferty, said that the film should be pulled from circulation for some time and then re-issued once the cuts and changes had been made. Hughes then said he would revise the film’s ending, and publicly state that he had made changes to the film at the Legion’s request, in exchange for a lifting of the Legion’s condemnation. He also said that in future, all his films would first have to receive Legion approval before he would release them. But the Episcopal Committee decided not to negotiate further with him.

Hughes then approached Martin Quigley and asked for his advice on what should be changed in the film to make it receive Legion approval. Quigley told him, and Hughes accepted and made most of the changes Quigley recommended. But this time Hughes warned Quigley that if the Legion still refused to reclassify his film, he would use advertisements in the press to charge the Roman Catholic “Church” with acting as an extra-legal national censorship board.

Quigley accepted the new version of the film and approached the Legion, which for various reasons very reluctantly agreed to re open negotiations with Hughes. Hughes, for his part, said he would substitute the new verison for the old; he eliminated the idea of rape in one scene; he shortened a bedroom scene; and he added an epilogue which was meant to convey the message that crime does not pay. The Legion, still reluctantly, reclassified it with a “B” rating in 1949. But a number of Romish leaders were very unhappy with the decision.

It was now obvious that times were slowly beginning to change. No longer would a film necessarily bomb at the box office if it did not have a PCA seal of approval, or if it had been condemned by the Legion of Decency. Howard Hughes had proved that a film-maker could ignore both the Legion and Joseph Breen himself, and still make a popular film. “The Outlaw demonstrated that there was a huge market for movies that stepped outside the restrictive codes that had determined movie content for close to two decades…. Howard Hughes proved that the public would go to movies rejected by the PCA and the Legion.” ²⁷⁸

The immense success of this movie showed two things. First, that the moral standards of the American public in general were deteriorating rapidly from what they had been; and second, that despite intense resistance from the Romish hierarchy, the Legion of Decency, etc., Roman Catholics were no longer as subservient to their bishops and priests as they had been, no longer as willing to pay attention to what their leaders said when it came to movies. There were priests who did not even know much about the Legion and who did not consult it regarding films. ²⁷⁹ In this sense, Romanists in America were being influenced by the American way of life, which was so opposed to Rome’s authoritarian, rigid, top-down system that for centuries had held so many millions of Papists in subjection in Europe. That kind of authoritarianism was the very opposite of what the American people, as a whole, cherished and sought to defend.

Americans were increasingly interpreting the “liberty” enshrined in their laws as liberty to sin, which was never the intention of the founding fathers of that great nation. America’s moral foundation was under immense strain, and Hollywood was contributing greatly to that. And so the irony is that something that was bad for America as a whole – increasingly unrestrained “liberty” – was at the very same time making it difficult for the Roman Catholic institution to successfully apply the kind of heavy-handed tactics to get its own way that it was able to use so successfully in other parts of the world. Roman Catholic Americans were greatly influenced by the same American spirit that influenced their fellow-countrymen, and increasingly resented any restraints placed upon them, even when such restraints originated from the hierarchy and organs of their “Church”, which they believed was necessary to their salvation. It is a dilemma Rome has always faced in America, and one which drives it to work so tirelessly for the overthrow of America’s freedoms, both the good ones and the bad. If Rome had its way, America would be a religious dictatorship, just as so many countries in Europe have always been.

A war was under way: a war between a rigid, autocratic “Church” and a society in transition, losing its moral foundation and beginning to rebel against the moral standards of previous generations. Which would emerge victorious in the end?

Or would they end up merging, with the “Church” of Rome slackening its rigidity in order to accommodate a changing society and thereby keep its members? We shall see.

Rome’s Almost-Total Domination of Hollywood At This Time

Mavericks like Hughes notwithstanding, at this time Hollywood was under almost-total Roman Catholic domination and influence, via the Breen Office and the Legion of Decency; and one pro-Papist film followed another, which moved the Protestant Digest to say, “A visitor from Mars, popping into a dozen cinemas at random, would be convinced that the United States is a Catholic nation. If Roman Catholic domination of censorship continues, the film screens of most of the world will be flooded with pictures such as Going My Way [1944], The Song of Bernadette [1945], and The Bells of St. Mary’s [1945].” Breen’s biographer, after giving this quote, went further by adding: “The Protestant gripe list was too short. A preacher seeking to rid the screen of meddlesome priests might also have mentioned San Francisco (1936), Angels with Dirty Faces (1938), Boys Town (1938), Knute Rockne, All American (1940), The Fighting 69th (1940), Men of Boys Town (1941), and The Keys of the Kingdom (1944), in addition to dozens of prison and combat films where Catholic priests were the chaplains chosen to take the long walk to the chair with convicted killers or lend spiritual comfort to GIs in foxholes.” Film-makers, he added, “took care not to get [Breen’s] Irish up with a depiction of Catholicism that was anything less than worshipful.” ²⁸⁰

This near-total control was not to last. But for now, and for a good many years to come, the religion of Hollywood was Roman Catholicism.

Going My Way (1944): Making Roman Catholicism Acceptable in Protestant America

In 1944 a movie was made that would do wonders for the acceptance of Romanism in mainstream America. It was called Going My Way, and it starred the popular singer and actor Bing Crosby in the lead role as an Irish Roman Catholic priest, Chuck O’Malley. The film was a smash hit. The Jesuit magazine, America, declared it to be “the freshest, most original material that has recently been brought to life on celluloid.” Life magazine said that Crosby’s performance was “one of the few satisfying interpretations of the priesthood to emerge from Hollywood.” ²⁸¹ And a Romish cardinal said that it did more for the Roman Catholic “Church” than a dozen bishops could have done in a year. ²⁸²

Some Roman Catholics were not happy with the film, but they were in the minority. Priest Paul J. Glenn in Columbus, Ohio, wrote that it was “un-Catholic” and even “anti-Catholic”. One of the worst things in the film, Glenn felt, was when the two priests shared a nightcap and the younger one then sang an Irish lullaby to the older one to lull him to sleep. Glenn said that viewers would conclude “that to be Catholic is to be Irish, and to be Irish is to be a whiskey drinker.” There were those Romanists who agreed with him, but when the pope himself, Pius XII, discussed the film with its director, he said, “Don’t you love that scene where the priest takes a little drink?” ²⁸³ Naturally, the vast majority of Romanists sided with their pope, and the film was a huge hit.

Ironic, is it not, that in the midst of World War Two – a war to such a large extent instigated by the Vatican and its Jesuits ²⁸⁴ – a film about a Popish priest would become such a hit in Protestant America?

Bing Crosby’s mother was a strict Irish Romanist, and his father had converted to Romanism in order to marry her. As a teenager Crosby served as an altar boy and attended a Jesuit-run high school. The film’s director, Leo McCarey, was a Romanist of Irish-French stock. His aunt was a nun who by his own admission influenced him greatly. And the film’s songwriter, Johnny Burke, was also a Papist. It is no wonder that the film was so pro-Papist.

“Going My Way marked a key moment in the cultural history of Catholics in America.” ²⁸⁵ How so? Well, up until then Romish priests had been portrayed in a sombre way, and this was how they were perceived in the popular imagination. But Bing Crosby created a new kind of priest for the screen, one who was jovial, worldly-wise, easy going, very American, even heroic. This priest sang, played the piano, lived in a light and airy rectory with a peaceful garden, went to the movies and played golf. He kn ew all about love and romance and was happy singing about it. He even wore a straw boater hat, perched rakishly on his head! Roman Catholics liked it because there was such a decided contrast, in the film, between O’Malley’s character and the stiff, older priest, who was unable to fit in with the daily life of his parishioners, and who represented the kind of pre-war Romanism which now seemed to them old-fashioned and out of touch. O’Malley’s character represented a new kind of Romanism, and it was immediately popular – and not just with Papists but many Protestants as well, for in so many ways priest O’Malley’s world looked just like that of ordinary Americans, including American Protestants. It was all so familiar, and it revolutionised the way people viewed the Popish priesthood. In so doing, it gave a huge thrust forward to Roman Catholicism in the United States, and in time throughout the Protestant world.

The film was “an imagining of the Catholic parish priest as a sign of modem American cultural vitality. For Catholics Leo McCarey and Bing Crosby… the parish can be nothing other than the backdrop for a tolerant, progressive, sports-loving Catholicism.” ²⁸⁶ Precisely the image of Romanism that the hierarchy wanted to convey! No wonder Romish nun, poet, and president of St. Mary’s College in Notre Dame, Indiana, Mary Madeleva, wrote to director McCarey, “Going My Way is synonymous with the Catholic way and can become, if it is not already in essence, the American way. You have been rarely intuitive in understanding and expressing this.” ²⁸⁷ How the Popish hierarchy in the USA must have been rejoicing! The film presented a Roman Catholicism far removed from the dark, sordid, secretive, sinister Romanism with which Protestants were familiar. This film’s Romanism was cheery, light, happy, easy-going, fun even. In addition, it showed the Romish priest at the very centre of all aspects of American life, moving effortlessly from working-class neighbourhoods to upper-class circles. “The enclosed and protected sacred spaces of the Catholic tradition – convents, monasteries, cathedrals, shrines – were construed by Protestants to be spaces of entrapment, bondage, and superstition. In those semi-secret places, many nineteenth-century Americans imagined a powerful and corrupt Roman church reigning against the purifying influence of reason and individual freedom.” ²⁸⁸ Sadly, the dark, sinister Romanism was the reality; but such is the power of the movies that a single film could do so much to change Protestant attitudes to this religious system, the very religious system branded in the Bible as “the Great Whore” (Revelation 17), the religion of Antichrist (2 Thessalonians 2).

The Bells of St. Mary’s (1945): Sequel to Going My Way

The sequel saw Bing Crosby return as the loveable priest, along with Ingrid Bergman as a beautiful nun. Again there was light-hearted singing, comedy, and the relationship between the two main characters, the priest and the nun, who, although both sworn to vows of chastity, are obviously attracted to each other. Nothing sinful occurs between them – that would never have passed the Romish censors – and the film was another huge hit with audiences. The two films together did wonders for Rome.

The Fighting Sullivans (1944): a Pro-Papist War Film

As mentioned previously, in the midst of World War Two films portraying Roman Catholic Americans as loyal Americans fighting Nazism were very popular. The hierarchy of the “Church” knew well enough that Rome was actually on the side of Hitler and Nazism, but this was not the kind of information they wanted Protestant America to know, and thus men like the immensely influential cardinal, Francis Spellman, assured American Roman Catholic soldiers that they were fighting God’s battles against the Nazis. There was a concerted effort to portray American Papists as loyal patriots.

The Fighting Sullivans was a film aimed at doing just that. It was based on a real Irish-American Roman Catholic family from Iowa whose five sons were killed in combat when the cruiser they were on went down in the South Pacific. Director Lloyd Bacon focused on the Romish sacraments in his film: what are called Baptism, Penance, Holy Communion, and Matrimony. This sentimental movie really played up the religion of the five young men, uniting their Romanism to their Americanism and sending the strong message that Romanism in America was on an equal footing with Protestantism and Judaism, and that Roman Catholic lads were just as loyal to America as anyone else.

The tragedy is that these and countless other young Roman Catholic men died fighting a foe that was supported by their own “Church”. Roman Catholic soldiers were fighting Roman Catholic soldiers, and millions were slaughtered on both sides to advance the goals of the Papacy.

The Sign of the Cross (1944): Depicting Papists and Protestants as United Christians Under the Cross

Many of Hollywood’s war films promoted the concept of the unity of Roman Catholic and Protestant soldiers fighting the Nazis, that both were Christians, both were fighting under the cross of Christ, and both were fighting on God’s side. Cecil B. DeMille re-released his film, The Sign of the Cross, in 1944, in which a prologue was added which connected the martyrs who died under Nero Caesar in the first century AD with the “Christian soldiers” dying in the war with Nazism. In the film two chaplains, one a Papist and the other a Protestant, affably chat together and display their unity, and agree that the soldiers, whether Papist or Protestant, are united by the sign of the cross.

The Keys of the Kingdom (1944): Acceptable to Jesuit Advisors After Major Revision

The script for this film was based on a book by A.J. Cronin. It was the story of a liberal priest, Francis Chisolm, who was often at odds with his conservative priestly colleagues. In the book Chisolm was made to say things like, “religious belief is such an accident of birth God can’t have set an exclusive value on it.” And: “there are many gates to heaven. We enter by one, these new [Methodist] preachers by another.” In other words, he believed (contrary to Romish theology) that there were “many ways to God.” His best friend was an atheist who, when he was dying, said that he still could not believe in God, but Chisolm told him that God believed in him.

Chisolm’s beliefs were certainly contrary to the true Gospel, which states categorically that only Christ is the way to heaven (Jn. 14:6; Acts 4:12). But such statements were anathema to the Roman Catholic institution as well, although for a different reason: Rome believed then, as it had for centuries and as it continues to believe to this day, that “outside of the Church [of Rome] there is no salvation.” ²⁸⁹ So when producer David Selznick wanted to turn the book into a movie, he anticipated problems with the Romish hierarchy. He met with priest Devlin to try to work something out, but Devlin was adamant that before the film could be made the script would require massive editing. Not surprisingly, what particularly angered the priest was the priest-character Chisolm’s statements regarding there being many ways to heaven, so contrary to Popish teaching.

When Selznick approached Breen, he got no encouragement from that quarter either. Breen told him that some of the priests in the story might violate the Code’s prohibition against priests being depicted negatively in films, and that Protestants might take umbrage at the treatment of the story’s Methodist missionaries. Other prominent Papists advised Selznick to hire Jesuit priest Wilfred Parsons as the technical consultant on the film, which he did. Another Jesuit, Albert O’Hara, was signed on as an advisor as well.

Parsons’ major headache was with the “broad-mindedness” of the story’s priest-character. He and Selznick clashed over how best to alter these things in a way acceptable to the “Church”. Parsons wanted the character’s words to be so drastically altered that they no longer said anything like what they had originally, and Selznick could not accept that. To make matters worse for Parsons, his Jesuit superior in Washington warned him that neither his name, nor that of the Jesuit Order, could be used as a defence against future criticism that could lead to them being censured. The superior told Parsons that he would have to end his involvement with the production of the film unless he was able to persuade Selznick to “eliminate all indifferentism and off color Catholicism with which Father Chisolm is saturated”. ²⁹⁰

Selznick, meanwhile, had reached the point where he was no longer keen to begin production on the film, so he sold it to Twentieth Century-Fox. Fox agreed to a number of Parsons’ suggested changes. For example, when Chisolm had originally spoken of “many gates to heaven”, this had now been altered to, “Each of us travels his own road to the Kingdom of Heaven. Though I know another’s to be wrong, still I have no right to interfere with his choice.” Parsons was only partially satisfied with this change, feeling it could be misunderstood.

When Parsons learned that the Legion of Decency was considering a “B” rating for the film (objectionable in part), he was very troubled. He managed finally to get the studio to remove the “different roads” line from the film.

He may have feared the worst from the Romish press and others, but when the film was released Romish reaction was far more positive than he thought it would be, with major Romish publications stating that the film was a big improvement over the book. And the Legion actually classified it “A-I” (suitable for general audiences). How ridiculous to be happy over the greatly-altered film version of a story which, in its printed version, remained intact!

God Is My Co-Pilot (1945): Another Pro-Papist War Film

This was yet another war film which strongly promoted the Roman Catholic chaplain. Again, the chaplain was a big Irishman, intensely patriotic, who gets the film’s atheistic pilot-hero to trust in him. The priest preaches to him, and reads him a prayer written by a British pilot killed in the war, a prayer about believing in God and how God gave him strength. And by the end of the film, the hero piously repeats the prayer.

Will Hays Replaced by Eric Johnston, but Joe Breen Still the Real Power

Will Hays resigned in 1945. He was kn own as “the Little General” and “the Presbyterian pope”. He had been at his work since 1922, a period of twenty-three years. But Hollywood no longer felt he was effective.

In his place came Eric Johnston: Republican, anti-Communist, successful businessman – and Episcopalian. His job was to promote the movie industry and to deal with movie censors. And as mentioned previously, the MPPDA was now renamed the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA).

This change worried the Legion. As one author put it, “Quigley and the church leaders had never really trusted Hays, but he was the devil they knew. The devil they didn’t know was his replacement, Eric Johnston… who, in his first press interview, remarked that the ‘Hays job has to be remodeled and changed.’” ²⁹¹

But Johnston’s Episcopalianism notwithstanding, the “Breen Office” was still predominantly and vehemently Roman Catholic, and promoting a Roman Catholic version of morality. And Hollywood was still astoundingly pro-Papist. The Protestant Digest declared: “For years now, the custom has been to work Catholic churches, sacraments, charitable institutions, hospitals, schools, madonnas, altars, doctrine, and priests into pictures with or without a pretext.” ²⁹²

PCA officer, Eugene “Doc” Dougherty, told Albert Van Schmus, a Congregationalist seeking a job at the PCA in 1949, “You know, I don’t want to discourage you, but in a way you should be a Catholic to be a member of the Code staff.” Later, when he got the job, Van Schmus said of Dougherty, “He was very encouraging, but he said, ‘I have to be honest with you, I think that’s what a member of the staff needs to have. They’ve got to understand that kind of morality.” ²⁹³ Yes, the PCA may have hired non-Roman Catholics, but at heart it was a Roman Catholic organisation through and through, promoting a decidedly Roman Catholic morality.

Breen himself, when Johnston took office, was promoted to vice president of the MPAA. And he retained the same autonomy he had enjoyed under Hays, to preside over the PCA “without any interference or outside influence.”

Chapter eight – The 1940s: Challenges to the Code and to Roman Catholic domination

Hollywood’s “Golden Age” Begins to End, and Breen’s Iron Grip Begins to Loosen

When the Second World War ended in 1945, Hollywood’s “Golden Age” began to end as well. The war itself played a large part in this, for the wartime movies had exposed audiences to much more combat and bloodshed than had ever been seen before in films, not to mention other issues, and once the war was over it was found virtually impossible to return to the pre-war Hollywood morality. The world had changed, and Hollywood was beginning to change as well. Joseph Breen’s Roman Catholic morality was still dominant, but it would not be what it once was. And eventually it would be overturned completely.

Also, although Hollywood had enjoyed a virtual monopoly over American entertainment during the war, this changed after the war, due in large measure to the fact that, as soldiers returned home, started families and moved to suburbia, there were other entertainment options available to them, such as sports and, in particular, television, as more and more households started to own a TV set. Hollywood was struggling against this new household idol called TV, and it was losing the battle, with attendance at movies dropping by the millions. As a result, it kept up its steady attempts to whittle away at the restrictions placed upon it by the Code. Breen kn ew it, and in early 1946 he met with a number of priests, who all agreed to continue to resist Hollywood’s attempts to lower moral standards by introducing such themes as rape, homosexuality and abortion into the movies.

After the war, Hollywood was no longer merely churning out films with entertainment value. Increasingly, films also now contained messages: religious messages, racial messages, social messages of all types. This was what audiences wanted. With the end of the war, Americans now wanted movies to say something to them about the domestic issues their country faced; they wanted movies to make them think, not just to entertain them. But this was not a good thing: Hollywood should never have become the nation’s teacher. Sadly, however, it did.

For example, various films began to portray the newly popular evil of “psychoanalysis”. And although the Code did not specifically mention psychiatry, psychoses, etc., moviemakers thought they could get around certain Code provisions by introducing the themes the Code denied them under the guise of psychiatric and psychoanalytic themes. How wrong they were. Reporter William Weaver, on behalf of the Breen Office, issued the following warning: “writers who interpret this fact as a swell new way to ‘get around the Code’ are in for enlightenment to the contrary, for the policy of the PCA with respect to this new variety of material is to be the same as that applied to the old, exacting of the psychiatrically motivated wrongdoer the same penalties that would be exacted of him if he weren’t nuts”; and, “There’ll be no Trojan horse of contraband under [a] Freudian banner.” ²⁹⁴ There were no flies on Joe Breen.

And yet, despite his vigilance, times had changed and the psychologist was beginning to rival the Romish priest in post-war America, with Hollywood jumping on the bandwagon. This, too, played a part in the undermining, over time, of Breen’s – and Rome’s – dominance of Hollywood morality. The Roman Catholic doctrines of sin and free will and human responsibility were gradually being replaced, in movies, by the new psychological doctrines of “mental illness”, the “unconscious” and “compulsive behaviour”.

And then there were what were called the film noirs. These dark films proliferated after World War Two, and were often very violent and sadistic, graphically so. They were aimed at a male audience, whereas more traditional Hollywood fare was aimed at women first and foremost, for the studios knew that if women could be enticed to watch a movie, they always brought their men along and thus the studios made more money. But film noirs, because of their realistic violence, attracted a male audience and held little attraction for women. These films were desensitising men to violence and were another sign of the changing morality of America after the brutality of the war.

The Breen Office was appalled by the sadistic nature of film noir, and determined to act against this genre. It was an uphill struggle, however. The times had changed and were still changing, and the rising tide of film noirs was becoming extremely difficult to stem, as censorship was being increasingly challenged in court. The once-absolute authority of the Breen Office was beginning to totter.

The Revival of the House Committee on Un-American Activities

After the war, and despite the fact that Martin Dies was no longer in charge of the HUAC, it was revived, thanks to the efforts of a congressman, John Rankin, who saw to it that it became a standing committee of the House. In 1947 the HUAC began the first hearings into alleged Communist infiltration of the film industry. The Legion of Decency remained convinced that Communists were infiltrating Hollywood, and in 1945, soon after the war ended, priest John Devlin, who headed the Los Angeles Legion, let priest McClafferty kn ow by letter that as far as he was concerned the Communist menace was growing in Hollywood, especially among screenwriters. He believed they would attempt to remove all references to God and spiritual values from movies, undermine the Legion, and insert Communist teaching. The Jesuit magazine America, also, claimed that a number of films were serving the interests of Communists. It is no surprise, then, that when in 1947 the HUAC began its investigations of the film industry, most Roman Catholic leaders were fully supportive of it.

The new chairman was Edward Hart, but Rankin was very influential within it. The latter believed there were strong links between Judaism and Communism, but unfortunately he showed that he was anti-Jewish on racial grounds as well, which certainly did not help his case. For example, he once said of a women’s delegation that opposed a bill of his, “If I am any judge, they are Communists, pure and simple. They looked like foreigners to me. I never saw such a wilderness of noses in my life.” This was clearly an unnecessary derogatory remark about Jewish features. On another occasion he called a columnist who attacked him a “slime mongering —”. Another Jewish writer was branded “that little Communist —”. Thus Rankin often revealed that he hated Jews merely because they were Jews, and was not solely against the pro-Communist position of many of them. To make all this even worse, he professed to be a Christian. He once told the House, “I have no quarrel with any man about his religion. Any man who believes in the fundamental principles of Christianity and lives up to them, whether he is Catholic or Protestant, certainly deserves the respect and confidence of mankind.” ²⁹⁵ Apart from the fact that this statement revealed his ignorance of the heathenish nature of Roman Catholicism, it also revealed that, to him, only his concept of “Christianity” was real religion. Even though true Christians reject all other religions as false, they believe in the doctrine of religious toleration as taught in the New Testament. Rankin clearly did not.

Rankin cast his eyes upon Hollywood and the Jews who dominated it. When Edward Hart resigned as chairman in mid-1945, Ra nk in became acting chairman and lost no time. He claimed that he was about to reveal “one of the most dangerous plots ever instigated for the overthrow of the government…. The information we get is that [Hollywood] is the greatest hotbed of subversive activities in the United States. We’re on the trail of the tarantula now, and we’re going to follow through.” Not long afterwards he also stated: “we are out to expose those elements [in Hollywood] that are insidiously trying to spread subversive propaganda, poison the minds of your children, distort the history of our country, and discredit Christianity.” ²⁹⁶ Again, he was mostly right: Hollywood was an immoral, dangerous place, and was indeed doing much of what Rankin accused it of doing. Unfortunately, though, he severely weakened his case, not only by his hatred for Jews just because they were Jews, but also by making outlandish statements so obviously false that he often came across as a raving fool – such as this one: “Communism is older than Christianity. It is the curse of the ages. It hounded and persecuted the Savior during his earthly ministry, inspired his crucifixion, derided him in his dying agony, and then gambled for his garments at the foot of the cross; and has spent more than 1,900 years trying to destroy Christianity and everything based on Christian principles.” ²⁹⁷

And it emerged that Rankin’s rantings against Communism, as accurate as they often were, nevertheless had originated, some months before him, in the rantings of anti-Jewish Nazi sympathisers and “far- right” extremists. One of them was a “Reverend” Gerald L.K. Smith, a man once jailed for using obscenity and disturbing the peace, and described as “America’s most raucous purveyor of anti-Semitism and of racial and religious bigotry.” Opposed to America joining the war against Nazi Germany, he was influential in establishing the America First Party, calling for a negotiated peace with Germany and a solution to the “Jewish problem.” He described himself as a “Christian Nationalist”, a term so often used by extremists full of hatred and pro- Nazi sympathy, bent on attacking Jews in the name of “Christianity”.

Smith ranted against Hollywood as the enemy of the Church and the Christian home. In a six-part series in The Cross and the Flag, the organ of Smith’s party, entitled “The Rape of America by Hollywood”, an anonymous writer declared: “Controlled by foreign-bom, unassim- ilative upstarts, many of whose records smell to high heaven, Hollywood has been raping American decency, national honesty and financial well-being. Christ was crucified on Calvary; and the same despisers of Christ are still busy in this world, especially in Hollywood, crucifying all of the Savior’s fine principles.” As is so often the case, there was much truth in this, but it was spoiled by the extremist position of the organ and the party, dressed up in a “Christian” guise. Fighting Communism cannot be effectively or honestly done by pro-Nazis. One cannot lambast one evil while supporting another.

Smith and Ra nk in were working together, with Smith openly declaring his support for Ra nk in’s investigation into Hollywood and saying, “We Christian Nationalists must give this investigation our full support, because the anti-Christians and anti-Americans are doing all in their power to smear Mr. Rankin and the committee with which he is associated.”

A one-day hearing was held in Los Angeles, conducted by the new chairman of the HUAC, John S. Wood, and HUAC investigator Ernie Adamson. They then declared that Communists were certainly aiming to control the film industry, and that further investigations would be conducted. The committee began its hearings in Washington, and called as a witness none other than the “Rev.” Gerald L.K. Smith. He told the committee, “There is a general belief that Russian Jews control too much of Hollywood propaganda, and they are trying to popularize Russian Communism in America through that instrumentality.

Personally I believe that is the case.” Once again, there was truth in what he said, but his own anti-Jewish stance on racial grounds made his motives highly questionable. Not all within the committee supported Smith, however, and some congressmen were angry when denied the opportunity to interrogate him.

Jews themselves were frightened by the support granted to Smith by Rankin. In 1946 a Columbia University professor had been issued this warning by an HUAC investigator: “You should tell your Jewish friends that the Jews in Germany stuck their necks out too far and Hitler took care of them and that the same thing will happen here unless they watch their steps.” ²⁹⁸ No wonder they were afraid. The HUAC might have been anti-Communist and yes, many Hollywood Jews were Communists; but statements like this one showed that the HUAC appeared to be on a racial Jewish witch-hunt.

Senator McCarthy’s Investigations into Communist Subversion of Hollywood

When in 1946 the election brought the Republicans into control of both the House and the Senate, the HUAC was strengthened. Its new chairman was John Parnell Thomas, a Republican congressman and an Irish-American Roman Catholic. But although a Papist, he also attended Baptist services and sometimes publicly said he was an Episcopalian!

Thomas was a staunch anti-Communist (as many Papists at that time were), and a staunch supporter of Rankin. Once in charge of the HUAC, he lost no time in getting down to business. In May 1947 he and some other HUAC members set themselves up in Los Angeles to investigate Communist infiltration of the movie industry.

Senator Joe McCarthy, a Roman Catholic, was at the centre of the investigations into Communist subversion of Hollywood, the U.S. government and labour unions. In early 1947 McCarthy was presented with an FBI report detailing Soviet espionage activities in the United States government – a report that had been previously ignored by the State Department. McCarthy chose not to ignore it but to act upon it. What he uncovered revealed, as one investigator put it, “the most successful secret war ever waged by one government against another. We know now that the Roosevelt Administration was quite literally crawling with Soviet agents.” ²⁹⁹ And not just the U.S. government, but Hollywood was riddled with Soviet agents as well! The studios were under Jewish control, and a large percentage of Communists in the USA were Jewish; and when one examines how they used their films to undermine and destroy America’s (and the West’s) morals and the Protestant faith, one can clearly see the Red agenda at work. Furthermore, KGB documents recovered from Soviet archives in the 1990s revealed just how extensive the Soviet penetration and subversion of Hollywood really was. Many powerful people in Hollywood were fully prepared to betray their own country and advance Stalin’s foreign policy objectives of undermining America.

The truth is that Stalin, the monster-dictator of Soviet Russia and a mass murderer, had identified Hollywood as one of his top five U.S. targets. He knew the power of film to promote the Soviet/Communist message to the masses. Shortly after coming to power he stated: “If I could control the medium of the American motion picture, I would need nothing else to convert the entire world to Communism.” In saying this, he was merely elaborating on Lenin’s statement before him: “Of all the arts, for us, the most important is the cinema.” ³⁰⁰ These men could clearly see the massive propaganda power of the movies. And Stalin went about taking control of Hollywood via Red double agents within the industry. “Countless producers, writers and stars all proved willing to combine and connive at brain-washing the world about the marvels of the Soviet system. ‘Message’ films such as Mission to Moscow, Song of Russia, North Star and scores of other productions did more to glorify the USSR than the Moscow propaganda machine had any hope of doing.” ³⁰¹

McCarthy, for daring to expose the Soviet subversion of America’s film industry and thereby doing an extremely valuable service for his country, became the target of a massive, Communist-orchestrated character assassination. Liberal U.S. newspapers were at the forefront of this intense smear campaign, including the New York Times and the Washington Post. He was accused of everything under the sun, including “Red-baiting”, political witch-hunts, unsubstantiated charges, conservative fanaticism, and much more. He was vilified and ridiculed. “The real story about McCarthy is that he was hated and vilified, not because he attacked the innocent, but because he successfully exposed the guilty.” ³⁰² Tragically, top U.S. politicians did nothing to help him, even though they knew he was right.

It emerged that one of the most important Communists working in Hollywood was Ella Winter, wife of screenwriter and fellow Communist, Donald Ogden Stewart. Winter recruited various film stars for the Communist cause, including Charlie Chaplin, Humphrey Bogart, Katherine Hepburn, Lauren Bacall and Marlon Brando. She made use of them to promote various Red causes, one of the most important being the campaign to keep the United States out of World War Two. She and Stewart threw lavish parties which were paid for by Moscow’s trade mission in San Francisco, and at these parties the Hollywood elite were coaxed to make donations. In this way, the likes of James Cagney, Bing Crosby, and Humphrey Bogart helped to hinder Britain’s efforts to defeat Nazism, as these fundraising parties sponsored strikes in armaments factories which made weapons for British troops. ³⁰³

Dalton Trumbo, the highest-paid screenwriter in Hollywood at the time, was a card-carrying member of the Communist Party, a frequent guest at the Ella Winter parties, and a close friend of William Holden, Bogart, Hepburn and Chaplin. His 1941 film, The Remarkable Andrew, was a deliberate propaganda film for the Soviets, its objective being to keep the U.S. from siding with Britain against Nazi Germany.

However, the Soviet Union’s use of Hollywood to do what it could to prevent the USA from entering the war in support of Britain did an about-turn when Hitler attacked Russia in June 1941. When this happened, Stalin instructed his agents in Hollywood to now do all they could to force the USA into the war on Britain’s side, to help defeat Hitler! It is known that by 1943, the KGB Bureau in San Francisco was providing the Communists in Hollywood with $2 million a month. ³⁰⁴

In the McCarthy hearings into Communist subversion of Holly wood, some 400 actors, actresses, screenwriters, producers, directors and agents were identified as members of the Communist Party or fellow- travellers. The actual figure was certainly much higher.

Fourteen anti-Communist witnesses testified, one of them stating that Hollywood was “the hub of Red propaganda in the United States.” But virtually all of them were members of an organisation called the Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals. This had been formed by Sam Wood, a Hollywood director who was a friend of the Roman Catholic media magnate, William Randolph Hearst, and a staunch anti-Communist. It aimed to remove Communist influence in Hollywood.

The conclusion reached by the HUAC after it had heard the testimony of these fourteen witnesses was that “up until recently there has been no concerted effort on the part of the studio heads to remove the communists from the industry, but that in fact they have been permitted to gain influence and power which has been reflected in the propaganda which they have been successful in injecting in numerous pictures which have been produced in the last eight years.”

Once again it must be said: it is very true that many in Hollywood were seeking to use the movie industry to promote Communism in the United States and the western world. But the HUAC had relied heavily on the evidence for this fact that had been provided by neo-Nazi, anti- Jewish organisations. This caused many to view the HUAC findings with deep suspicion.

Many of the Hollywood Jewish writers, directors, actors, etc., were very pro-Communist and were certainly seeking to make use of Hollywood to promote Communism. But at the same time, many of the Hollywood Jewish elite – the top Jewish executives – were actually anti-Communist, at least for pragmatic reasons, as we have shown previously. But it did not help their case that during the war they had produced so many films opposing Nazism – this just made them look doubly suspicious in the eyes of neo-Nazis and indeed of other Americans as well, because everyone knew that Hitler hated Jews, so surely the support of Hollywood for anti-Nazi films just proved the Hollywood Jews were pro-Communist? This is how many reasoned. And then too, it really did not help their case at all that President Franklin D. Roosevelt – a notorious leftwinger and Communist sympathizer – had encouraged the Hollywood Jews in their anti-Nazi stance and thanked them often enough for it! It is truly tragic that many anti-Communists in America could not see that being anti-Nazi did not automatically make one pro-Communist. They simply could not keep the two issues separate. And this was because so many conservative anti-Communists at that time were Roman Catholics and decidedly pro-Nazi.

The Hearings, the Testimonies, the Resistance

The HUAC wanted the Jewish executives to suspend all suspected Communists in their studios. FBI agents worked with the HUAC as well. Jack Warner, who was a friend of FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover, was the first Jewish executive to provide the investigators with the names of those he thought might be Communists.

In September 1947 John Parnell Thomas announced that the hearings on Hollywood would begin soon, and that he would expose 79 prominent Communists or Communist sympathisers within the film industry. 43 people were subpoenaed to appear. Nineteen of these were viewed as leftwingers who had been pointed out by the Motion Picture Alliance. And ten of those nineteen were Jewish. This just strengthened the feeling inside and outside Hollywood that anti- Semitism was a powerful motivating factor in the hearings. It filled the Jewish executives with fear. They decided to co-operate with the HUAC and admit that Communists were at work in Hollywood, but at the same time to deny that the films they made contained subversive Communistic content.

Jack Warner testified first, and in doing so stated that he had been too emotional in naming the names of radicals during the previous session, and retracted some of the charges. He added that although subversive writers had attempted to use his films to push a radical message, he had removed them. Yet when asked who they were, Warner said he did not know, saying, “I had never seen a Communist and wouldn’t know one if I saw one.” ³⁰⁵

When Louis B. Mayer testified, he said he held Communism in contempt; and although he spoke strongly against Communist writers, he added that he knew of no Communists working for his studio. According to at least one pro-Communist MGM writer, Mayer was not being honest, for he certainly did know of Communist writers working for him.

But some within the film industry decided to fight back. Various liberal Hollywood writers, directors and actors came together to form the Committee for the First Amendment, its purpose being to go to Washington to protest against the attack on freedom of political association. This liberal group included such famous names as Humphrey Bogart, Judy Garland, Frank Sinatra, Kirk Douglas, Katharine Hepburn, Henry Fonda, Groucho Marx and Gene Kelly. In a deliberately highly publicised trip, nineteen alleged Communists were flown, in Katherine Hepburn’s own plane, to Washington to testify, including the likes of Lauren Bacall, Gary Cooper, Humphrey Bogart, Robert Taylor and Burt Lancaster. At least one of them, Bogart, afterwards admitted that the trip was “ill-advised, even foolish… I am sorry I did it and now see that I was duped, that I was victim to the Communist conspiracy. It won’t happen again.” ³⁰⁶

The promised purge of Hollywood got underway. The very first hearing, at which the HUAC questioned John Howard Lawson, rapidly degenerated into a slanging match between the two sides, and Lawson was eventually removed by police. As one witness after another was called up, they denounced the HUAC for its illegitimacy and its implicit anti-Semitism in no uncertain terms. Rick Lardner, Jr., told the committee, “Under the kind of censorship this inquisition threatens, a leading man wouldn’t even be able to blurt out the words ‘I love you’ unless he had first secured a notarized affidavit proving she was a pure, white Protestant gentile of old Confederate stock.” ³⁰⁷

At the hearings, nine of the nineteen co-operated, but the other ten refused to answer questions about their membership in the Communist Party, appealing to their First Amendment rights. They were defiant and abusive. They became known as the “Hollywood Ten.” According to the evidence unearthed from the Soviet archives, those named by McCarthy were indeed Communists and radicals, receiving their instructions from Moscow. They actually surrendered on instructions of the KGB, which stated that it would in the meantime turn them into martyrs in the outside world and continue to insist on their innocence.

The uncooperative witnesses were all held in contempt by the House. Rankin said the HUAC was attempting to “protect the American people against those things in which these people are now engaged who want to undermine and destroy this Republic, to destroy American institutions, and to bring to the Christian people of America the murder and plunder that has taken place in the Communist-dominated countries of Europe.” Referring to the Committee for the First Amendment, he pointed out the names of those who had signed the petition: “One of the names is June Havoc. We found out from the motion-picture almanac that her real name is June Hovick. Another one was Danny Kaye, and we found out that his real name was David Daniel Kaminsky. Another one here is John Beal, whose real name is J. Alexander Bliedung. Another one is Cy Bartlett, whose real name is Sacha Baraniev. Another one is Eddie Cantor, whose real name is Edward Iskowitz. There is one who calls himself Edward Robinson. His real name is Emmanuel Goldenberg. There is another one here who calls himself Melvyn Douglas, whose real name is Melvyn Hesselberg.” ³⁰⁸

Rankin was right. A very large percentage of leftists in Hollywood were Jews who had changed their names so as to hide their Jewishness. There can be no doubt that many of these were seeking, by their involvement in Hollywood, to push for leftist change within American society.

Eric Johnston, the president of the MPAA, under pressure to produce a plan of action to take care of the alleged radicals within Hollywood, brought the top movie executives together to come up with something. He stated categorically that the executives had to fire those unco operative witnesses or they would never be respected by American society. Being accepted into mainstream America was what the older generation of the Jewish Hollywood elite had spent their whole lives working to achieve, and Johnston’s words hit home. A committee was chosen to issue a public statement, known as the Waldorf Statement. The ten witnesses were to be discharged from their employment until they renounced Communism under oath, and the movie producers agreed that they would not knowingly employ Communists. Of the fifteen producers who signed the statement, ten were Jews.

The ten witnesses were fired, and large numbers of other Communists and liberals were dealt with at the same time. The Hollywood Ten were sentenced to prison. Even those Jewish studio executives who did not agree with the HUAC, believing it was wrong to fire men because of their political beliefs, nevertheless went along with the purge to save their studios and their own necks. In doing so, they earned themselves a lot of good publicity and a lot of goodwill from the public.

As for John Parnell Thomas himself, the HUAC chairman, despite his staunch anti-Communism he had not been above reproach. In 1948 he was indicted for conspiracy to defraud the government, having billed the U.S. Treasury for people who had not actually worked for him. He was eventually sentenced to prison for eighteen months. But oh what irony! Thomas was incarcerated in the very same prison in which two of the Hollywood Ten, Rick Lardner, Jr., and Lester Cole, were incarcerated – and at the very same time! The man who tried to cleanse Hollywood of leftists found himself in the same prison as two of those very leftists.

Overall the hearings were a failure. “Unfortunately… the Congressional interrogators and FBI investigators failed to penetrate the real depth of communist subversion in the film capital. Basically, not much was learnt about party operations in Hollywood, largely because none of the co-operative witnesses had ever been in the party. Misled by double agents in their midst and false information peddled by the KGB, McCarthy left many Soviet sympathisers in key positions in Hollywood, with a far-reaching influence that affects the industry to this day.” ³⁰⁹ Very true. For to this day, the Communists, liberals, and their fellow-travellers in Hollywood always scream “McCarthyism!” whenever it becomes necessary to hide their true colours, and the subversive pro-Communist work they are doing in and via Hollywood. “Today McCarthyism is still a scarlet ‘M’ word used by the left as a trump card to terminate debate and intimidate adversaries. Used as a spear to paralyse all opposition to communism, it has become communism’s best friend.” ³¹⁰

Romanism at War with Communism in Hollywood

Many within the U.S. government were, thus, very rightly deeply concerned about Hollywood’s immense power over the masses, its ability to promote Communism to Americans and the world via its movies. What a pity, however, that Congress, in its commendable zeal to crush Communism in Hollywood, totally failed to discern the threat to America, via Hollywood, of another great evil: Roman Catholicism. Its immense influence within Hollywood was ignored. “Neither the Production Code Administration nor Joseph I. Breen came under scrutiny during the investigations, a measure of the depth of ignorance in the halls of Congress about the true nature of the ideological apparatus dictating the party line in Hollywood.” ³¹¹ And, furthermore, the fact is that “the forces behind much of what was happening were the soldiers of American Catholicism marshalled by Senator Joseph McCarthy [a Roman Catholic], the darling of Holy Name societies, sodalities, and first communion breakfasts.” ³¹²

McCarthy was right in seeing the influence of Communists in American society; but even so he was a Roman Catholic, with a Roman Catholic agenda. And in the Cold War period, under the pontificate of Pius XII, that Romish agenda was very much an anti-Communist, anti-Jewish one.

And so it is not surprising that Hollywood during this period produced a rash of movies with themes of conservative Romanists waging war against Communists: movies such as Guilty of Treason (1949), The Red Danube (1949), The Red Menace (1949), My Son John (1952), and The Miracle of Our Lady of Fatima (1952).

The poster advertising The Red Menace, for example, stated of the Romish priest portrayed in the film, “the fearless, fighting priest, who conquered evil with faith!” ³¹³ As for My Son John, this movie, in particular, portrayed the confrontation between the evil of Communism and the supposed good of Romanism. It was Leo McCarey’s creation, the same man who brought Going My Way and The Bells of St. Mary’s into being. He was a staunch anti-Communist, and the film reflects this strongly, but it also lays out a very strong pro-Roman Catholic message.

The Miracle of Our Lady of Fatima was another very pro-Papist film, centred around the supposed apparition of Mary to some Portuguese children in 1917, during which (it was claimed) she promised the conversion of Russia to Roman Catholicism if Russia was consecrated to her. The film shows Communists terribly mistreating priests and nuns. It depicts an all-out Marxist war against the visions claimed by the children. Of course, there was historical truth in what was portrayed, and there can be no doubt at all of Communism’s sadistic evil. But in its portrayal of “Mary”, etc., it pushed an obvious pro- Papist message as the answer to godless Communism.

Duel in the Sun (1947): Another Challenge to the Code and the Legion Stranglehold

Producer David O. Selznick continued his fight with the Papist censors. In 1944 RKO bought the film rights to a novel entitled Duel in the Sun. The studio requested Selznick to loan them an actress and a director, who were under contract to him, for the film. The actress was Jennifer Jones, who had previously played the part of the virgin Mary in The Song of Bernadette. She was very popular with filmgoers. Selznick also bought the screen rights from RKO.

The PCA deemed it unacceptable when it reviewed the script, because it contained illicit sex, murder for revenge, and lacked the full “compensating moral values” which were required by the Production Code. There was an implied rape in the film, and a hint of nude swimming. It also featured a vulgar religious figure, known as the “Sin Killer”, and the PCA demanded that RKO emphasise this man was not an ordained minister, and he was not to be depicted in the film as a “travesty on religion.” Portraying negative images of “clergy” was a violation of the Code.

Selznick had no time for Breen or the Code and threatened to go to court if necessary. But despite his fighting words, in order to make the film acceptable to the PCA and to the Legion of Decency he decided to include what he considered enough “moral values” to make the film acceptable, including severe punishment for the criminals, and he agreed to make various changes to the original script. In this way he hoped that the things deemed objectionable in the film would be overlooked by the censors. The PCA people were still uncertain, but as Selznick kept rewriting the script for them, they found it difficult to condemn it outright, and so in 1945 approval was given to the working script, and work on the film began. PCA officials visited the set at times to make sure that the costumes were not too revealing and that the swimming scenes were not too explicit. Cuts to suggestive scenes were insisted upon, and made, although Selznick was enraged. And in December 1946 the PCA issued its seal of approval. This was surprising, given the fact that, as Variety magazine stated, “rarely has a film made such fra nk use of lust”. But the film actually opened on the west coast without first being submitted to the Legion for approval.

But if the PCA had been lenient this time, many influential Roman Catholics were having none of it. Tidings, the Romish weekly of the Los Angeles diocese, branded the film as “plush pornography”, and Roman Catholic film critic William Mooring told Romanists that this film was more dangerous morally than The Outcast, and that it violated the Production Code by creating sympathy for sinners, detailing seduction, and mocking religion. It certainly did this. Moreover, because Jennifer Jones had previously played a religious role in The Song of Bernadette, Mooring was angry that she now played such a seductive one.

Selznick’s choice in his casting of the leading roles, in fact, appeared to be a deliberate thumbing of his nose at the Roman C atholic institution. Not only had Jennifer Jones previously played Mary, but Gregory Peck had previously played the part of a Roman Catholic priest in Keys of the Kingdom. Peck himself later said that Selznick took a kind of “perverse delight” in casting him as the male lead in Duel in the Sun, adding: “He took two saintly characters and made us into kind of sex fiends.” A reviewer in the Los Angeles Times wrote that the film “is sex rampant. Jennifer Jones is no Bernadette. Gregory Peck… is no ‘Father Chisolm.’ But these two are hotter than a gunman’s pistol.” ³¹⁴ Protests against the movie poured into the Legion.

The Papist archbishop, John Cantwell, warned all Romanists in Los Angeles that, “pending classification by the Legion of Decency they may not, with a free conscience, attend the motion picture Duel in the Sun ”, for it “appears to be morally offensive and spiritually depressing.” Then Martin Quigley, the Legion’s unofficial spokesman, stated that the film would definitely be placed in the “Condemned” classification, telling Selznick that unless he greatly altered it (and he suggested many cuts), the “outcome would be disastrous”. ³¹⁵

Selznick wrote to the editor of Tidings, the Popish weekly which had branded the movie “plush pornography”, saying that the reviewer had a “callous and diseased mind” for casting “a wicked and wanton slur upon Miss Jones… a distinguished artist… a Catholic who has received her education in a convent.” ³¹⁶ He conveniently overlooked the fact that this Roman Catholic actress was perfectly content to be having an extramarital affair with him!

Selznick considered ignoring the Legion, having reason to believe that the film, which was already doing extremely well at the box office, would continue to do so even if the Legion condemned it. But first he wanted to make certain that Eric Johnston and Joseph Breen supported him. His film had been approved by the PCA, after all; but would they and Hollywood studios support him against the Legion? As it turned out, the studios would not help him fight the Legion, even though they themselves were sick and tired of the Legion’s interference. They were simply too afraid of the financial consequences of being at odds with Rome’s powerful Legion of Decency! In Selznick’s own words, they were “completely yellow”.

Selznick, hung out to dry and doubtless gnashing his teeth in rage, came to the conclusion that it would be best for him to edit the film in the ways Quigley had suggested. It was hoped, by both Selznick and Quigley, that these changes would move the Legion to give the film a “B” classification (i.e. containing some objectionable material). Selznick therefore made the cuts and submitted the film to priest Patrick Masterson at the Legion, and Quigley himself told Masterson that Selznick had fully co-operated with him and with Breen. But the priest was far from satisfied. After reviewing the film he let Breen know by letter that it should never have received the PCA seal. It was far too explicit in the Legion’s opinion. And even Breen admitted he had made a “serious error” in granting it a seal.

Meanwhile the protests increased. In Los Angeles, Roman Catholic sodality groups threatened a possible month-long boycott of all films, because films like Duel in the Sun were so immoral; in Houston, the Catholic Youth Organization requested that the mayor ban what it called “this masterpiece of filth [which] glorifies drunkenness, adultery, rape and other forms of lowest immorality”; priest John Sheehy in Boston said that this film would result in “thousands of priests [being] detained years longer in confessionals seeking to dispel the evil images bom of witnessing this alleged entertainment.” ³¹⁷ Significantly, though, and a sign of changing times, thousands of letters were written in support of the film as well, even from Roman Catholics.

Selznick was incensed with the Legion and wrote that if it gave his film a “C” classification, well then, so be it. “We have suffered enough from the shenanigans of [the Legion],” he wrote. ³¹⁸ He also said, “Reverend Masterson has not been designated by God as the final word in what is seriously offensive and we are… sure that the non- Catholics of America, and a goodly percentage of Catholics as well, do not accept him.” ³¹⁹ The film had received the PCA seal of approval, Selznick fumed, but of what good was such an approval if a film then had to be submitted to religious censors at the Legion of Decency?

Even though Selznick was a man who had no qualms about making a morally offensive movie and thus his desire to want to release this movie cannot be condoned at all, he was absolutely right in his comments about Masterson: the priest was not appointed by God, and the Roman Catholic institution’s arrogance in setting itself up as the moral guardian of America was repugnant, for this religious system has never had a leg to stand on when it comes to matters of morality. Selznick was also right when he said that Masterson’s views were not acceptable to non-Papists, nor even to a large percentage of Papists. Still, Americans permitted the Legion to act as their moral guardian.

Selznick raged against the Legion, and threatened to release the film anyway and then take out full-page advertisements, and make use of radio and other means to tell his side of the story. He believed this would end the Code and result in federal censorship, but he did not care.

This protracted battle between an independent producer and the powerful Roman Catholic Legion finally ended with a Legion victory. Selznick had fought to retain the film’s ending even though the Legion had considered it immoral, but he was now permitted to retain it as long as he added a prologue and an epilogue to the film, making it clear that sin is sin. This was done, with the prologue speaking of the “forces of evil” in battle with “deeper morality”, and the “grim fate” awaiting “the transgressor upon the laws of God and man”, and the “Sin Killer’s” character being based on “bogus unordained evangelists” who were “recognized as charlatans by the intelligent and God-fearing.” The epilogue, too, written by the Legion’s monsignor, John McClafferty, spoke of the “moral weakness” of Jennifer Jones’ character that led to “transgressions against the law of God.” ³²⁰ The film received the “B” classification Selznick had been hoping for.

But the truth is, such prologues and epilogues had little effect on audiences. Most people walk out of a movie without watching the credits at the end, and therefore would miss the epilogue; but more than that, they were watching the film precisely because they were attracted by the provocative nature of the scenes, and no amount of moralising either before or after the film would make an impression on them! The Roman Catholic censors may have eased their own consciences by insisting on these inclusions, but if they really believed these somehow sanctified the film, they were naive in the extreme. The only possible response to films of an immoral nature is for the people not to view them – not attempt to clean up an immoral movie by cutting this and that and pasting prologues and epilogues. People are not fools. They can see through such inconsistency.

The film broke box office records as people nationwide flocked in droves to see it. And some of these places were Legion strongholds. Clearly Roman Catholics were rushing to the theatres just like so many others. A Roman Catholic university, the University of Santa Clara, California, even used the film as a fundraiser, with a Jesuit priest telling Selznick that he was very grateful the film had raised thousands of dollars for under-privileged youth!

“The refusal of Breen, Johnston, and industry leaders to defend Selznick, and themselves, from Legion attacks simply encouraged the Legion to continue to demand that it be given the right of final approval of all films produced in Hollywood. It was a decision the industry would soon regret, and it would be another twenty years before the Legion stranglehold on Hollywood was broken.” ³²¹

Forever Amber (1947): a Major Studio Challenges Roman Catholic Censorship

In 1947 another movie made huge waves as well, with Papist censorship being challenged by a major Hollywood studio this time. The movie was Forever Amber.

The 1944 novel on which the movie was based was described by the Saturday Review of Literature as “the bawdiest novel…in years”, a story of multiple illicit affairs and more. The morals of Americans being now in rapid collapse, the book became a bestseller, and this attracted the attention of Hollywood, in particular of Twentieth Century-Fox. Joseph Breen naturally rejected the first synopsis of the proposed film when it was sent to him for review, saying it was “a saga of illicit sex… bastardy, perversion, impotency, pregnancy, abortion, murder and marriage without even the slightest suggestion of compensating moral values.” ³²²

Darryl F. Zanuck was head of Twentieth Century-Fox’s studio production, and he was given the task of producing an acceptable script. Fie knew that if he worked closely with Breen from the outset, this would save all the cuts that would have to be made to the film later. Fie told Breen that the film was a tragic tale of a girl who sins repeatedly and ends up losing all she sought to obtain by her sins. And he was successful in winning Breen over! Breen asked Zanuck to include a voice of morality in the film, which Zanuck did – and Breen was satisfied. Fie approved the basic script, priding himself on the fact that the PCA had the power to remove offensive material in such stories and keep only the good in them. This was so, even though, as Variety reported at the time, the “expurgated screenplay…has made the original story hardly recognizable.” ³²³

Again this shows the foolishness of this approach of the censors. The book remained intact; the filmed version was altered. The movie might be sanitised to some extent, but the unsanitised version of the story was still available for anyone to read.

Zanuck went ahead and made the film, a lavish and hugely expensive production, expecting no trouble from the Legion. It was scheduled for preview by the Legion just ten days before its release in October 1947. But he had miscalculated: priest Patrick Masterson, the Legion’s assistant executive secretary who was in temporary charge, was against it even before he saw it. However, the Legion reviewers themselves, those IFCA ladies as well as professional “lay” Roman Catholics, were far less offended than the priest was, and voted to classify the film as “A2” (i.e. unobjectionable for adults) or “B” (objectionable in part for all). Yes, even those staunch Roman Catholic Legionaries were softening morally as the years went by!

Masterson, however, was made of sterner stuff. He wanted the film condemned. He wrote to Francis Spellman, New York’s Romish cardinal, saying the film was immoral, and that the PCA was becoming increasingly lax in enforcing its own Code as time went by. Spellman agreed with him. He wrote a letter to all priests in his archdiocese, to be read out by them at all masses, in which he said that Forever Amber glorified immorality and licentiousness, and that Roman Catholics could not view the film with a safe conscience.

But this time – and it was the first time since 1936 – a major Hollywood studio (Twentieth Century-Fox) went on the offensive and threw down the gauntlet to the Legion of Decency. It pointed out that the film had been approved by the PCA. Priest Masterson told priest Devlin, “This time the chips are really down”, ³²⁴ and the mighty Roman Catholic hierarchical machine in the United States went into action. Philadelphia’s Romish cardinal, Dennis Dougherty, threatened that if the film was not removed, a year-long boycott would be imposed on all Fox theatres in his archdiocese by himself, just as he had threatened over The Outlaw previously. Romish bishops in Providence and in New York took a strong stand against it as well, with calls for a boycott in New York. But Fox did not buckle under this threat, so the Catholic War Veterans rallied to the cause, picketing theatres in Philadelphia and at a theatre in Rochester, New York. The dioceses of Buffalo, New York, and Rochester, New York, echoed Dougherty’s call for a boycott. Chicago’s Romish cardinal urged his people to avoid it, and Romanists in St. Louis were asked to avoid it as well. The protests spread further afield. The Legion got the mayor and city council of Grand Rapids, Michigan, to block the showing of the film. Protests by Roman Catholics got the film cancelled in Illinois.

But did the Roman Catholics of these and other great cities heed these calls, one and all, and boycott the film? Certainly not initially. Variety reported that, “Oddly enough, in cities like Philadelphia, Boston and St. Louis where [Roman Catholic] church influence is strongest, Amber is doing best”, noting that in St. Louis it was a big hit “despite… a blast from the Archbishop.” ³²⁵ Countrywide, including where the Papal hierarchy had called for boycotts, there were lines of people stretching for blocks to get into theatres and standing-room- only crowds inside.

But it did not last: although the film continued to do very well in urban areas, rural and independent exhibitors wanted Twentieth Century-Fox to conform to the Legion. Zanuck claimed that these exhibitors were themselves under threat from the Roman Catholics who wanted to see the film stopped. But there was also another reason: in the country’s capital, the hearings by the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC) were well under way, and the Hollywood Ten were accused of inserting Communist propaganda into films coming out of Hollywood. The screenwriter for Forever Amber, Ring Lardner Jr., was subpoenaed to appear before the HUAC regarding his association with the Communist Party in America. His collaborator, Philip Dunne, was a founder of the pro-Communist Committee for the First Amendment.

Twentieth Century-Fox decided to give in to the Legion. It was agreed that some lines of dialogue in the film would be cut, and a prologue and epilogue would be added which would clarify the guilt of the sinners in the film as far as the Legion was concerned. The prologue spoke of “the wages of sin” and of the heroine’s sins. And at the film’s end a voice-over by a main male character implored God to have mercy on both him and the heroine for their sins. With these changes, the film was given a “B” rating by the Legion, and the pickets and protests ended, except in Philadelphia where Romish cardinal, Dougherty, kept his boycott in place.

Ultimately, Forever Amber made a great deal less than its production costs. Yes, the Legion campaign had greatly contributed to this, but the original PCA censorship had done so even more, for it had changed the story so much from the novel that audiences, hankering after the sex that was a major part of the book, simply found the film boring when so much of the sexual content had been removed. This again shows how Americans’ morals had changed for the worse. They wanted sexual scenes, and were not prepared to financially support a film that had been purged of much of its originally-intended immorality.

Captain from Castille (1947): Whitewashing the Inquisition

Although various Roman Catholics, including Jesuit priests such as Daniel Lord and Wilfred Parsons, served as film consultants, advising studios on how to handle Romish themes in movies, it was announced back in 1933 by John J. Cantwell, bishop of Los Angeles, that all Roman Catholic film advising must fall under his authority because the film industry was situated in his diocese. He appointed one of his own priests as the official Romish film advisor. This was the Irish-born priest, John Devlin, who was the head of the Los Angeles Legion of Decency. Devlin threw himself into the work, reviewing a large number of scripts annually. He became the recognised Roman Catholic authority on all things to do with the film industry, and was feared by screenwriters and directors. But he also overstepped his mandate: instead of concentrating solely on how films treated the Roman Catholic religion, he also tried to influence them if the Irish were treated poorly in a film (in his opinion).

The script for Captain from Castille was based on a novel that revolved around the conquest of Mexico by Cortez. In the story, the Grand Inquisitor in Spain charges a man named Pedro De Vargas with heresy, and his sister is tortured to death by the Inquisition. Da Vargas goes to Mexico with Cortez, where the Grand Inquisitor is killed by the Aztecs.

Priest Devlin was not at all happy with the script, considering it to be a “deliberate attempt to discredit Christianity in general, and the Catholic church in particular.” ³²⁶ He claimed that the Inquisition had actually accomplished great good, and that the script exaggerated its evils! The Inquisition was, in truth, one of the greatest evils ever created, and – it was a Roman Catholic evil. This is the historical reality, and there is no escaping it. Millions of people were tortured and put to death by the Inquisition, which was serving the interests of the Roman Papacy. To claim that it accomplished great good was a shocking misrepresentation of the plain truth! But very typical of priests of Rome, who will go to any lengths to hide the truth about the Inquisition’s horrors from the world.

Devlin’s stance greatly troubled Darryl Zanuck, who asked the man who had worked on the script, John Tucker Battle, what could be done about it. Battle suggested that the Inquisition be downplayed, and that it not be tied to the Roman Catholic “Church” at all in the film. He also suggested that Cortez’s Roman Catholic motivation for conquering Mexico be removed from the film. And to cap it all, he suggested that a friendly priest should be worked into the film, who would represent “the true church”. True to form, “Hollywood never let the historical record get in the way of a good story”. ³²⁷ A film in which the Inquisition was divorced from Roman Catholicism was nothing but a fantasy. But at all costs the “Church” of Rome was not to be offended, for that would mean losses at the box office.

Zanuck himself was reluctant to make the changes, and in the end he added the “good priest” and downplayed the “Church” of Rome’s role in the Inquisition to some extent. But further than that he would not go. Devlin was satisfied for the most part, and the Legion gave the film an “A2” classification.

The Foreign Film Challenge to the Censorship System

The Roman Catholic-controlled censorship system in the United States film industry was now also being challenged from another source: film directors – often Roman Catholic directors – from Europe, where they were not bound by a Production Code and were consequently able to make movies which frequently contained far more immorality than anything Hollywood could belch out. European films were frequently more sexually explicit than Hollywood productions, as well as containing such things as murder, drugs, suicide, etc., and naturally many of them were rejected by the PCA, not to mention the Legion. After World War Two Martin Quigley was very concerned that European films would deteriorate even further morally, and if they were permitted into the U.S. this could undermine the authority of the PCA and the Legion.

Joseph Burstyn was at the heart of this challenge initially. A Jewish- Polish immigrant to the United States, he devoted himself to bringing foreign films to his adopted country. After World War Two he and his business partner, Arthur L. Mayer, imported a number of Italian films into the U.S., including The Bicycle Thief, which the Legion of Decency declared to be sacrilegious. The irony here was that such films were coming from Italy, an intensely Roman Catholic country where many of the directors were Roman Catholics, and yet being condemned as sacrilegious by the Roman Catholic Legion in New York!

By the end of the Second World War Hollywood was the undisputed capital of celluloid entertainment worldwide, with some 90 million people flocking to movie theatres every week. The film industries of European countries such as France, Italy and Germany were decimated by the war; and yet from 1945 to 1952, Hollywood, also, took a battering economically, in large part due to the House Committee on Un-American Activities branding it a hotbed of Communism, but also for various other reasons which it is not necessary to go into here. By 1950 movie attendance had plummeted to 60 million, and profits were falling rapidly too.

There was not much of a market for foreign films in the U.S., however, and in addition only a handful got passed by Breen’s PCA.

Open City (1946 but Shown in America in 1946/7): the Hypocrisy and Selective “Morality” of Papist Censorship

Now we will see an example of the selective “morality” of the Papists in control of Hollywood censorship (and thus of the selective “morality” of Rome itself), and of just how much of a sham their supposed “moral indignation” over immoral movies was. Papist censorship had far more to do with exerting control over Hollywood for Rome s own purposes than over keeping America’s morals intact:

A film coming out of Italy at this time was entitled Open City. It was directed by Roberto Rossellini, who claimed that he was neither a Fascist nor a supporter of Mussolini, and yet who, during the war, had made war propaganda films. Italian audiences had disliked the film; but it was smuggled into America and released by Mayer and Burstyn, and did extremely well in 1946. It seriously violated the standards of both the PCA and the Legion, covering as it did such themes as pregnancy out of wedlock, lesbianism, murder, drug addiction, graphic torture scenes, and a priest who helped the Communist-led Italian underground during the war. And yet, incredibly, the Legion did not find it offensive, giving it a “B” classification, and the PCA, also, made few objections when it was submitted! Burstyn was informed by Arthur DeBra of the PCA’s New York office (who reported to Joseph Breen) that the film was essentially acceptable, although a few scenes needed to be cut and trimmed. Burstyn did not make any changes, and the film played without a PCA seal for a year. In July 1947 Burstyn made the cuts and the seal was issued.

Why this astounding attitude, from both the Legion and the PCA, to this film? Normally a film such as this would have been automatically condemned and rejected by both, and in fact it was far more explicit than The Outlaw, Duel in the Sun, or Forever Amber. But it was passed with hardly a whimper.

Here is the reason: the Vatican loved the film! The Vatican’s “Central Catholic Committee” approved it, and a copy was even requested for the Vatican’s film library! And why did the Vatican love it? Why were the highest officials of the Roman Catholic institution prepared to overlook its sexual explicitness and graphic brutality? Firstly because at heart, these men were, and still are, like men everywhere else in the world: unregenerate, worldly, fleshly, sensual, attracted by such things. As we have said, all this censorship power over Hollywood had far more to do with exerting control over the industry than over any real desire to keep Hollywood morally clean anyway. And this would become even clearer in the coming decades, when censorship was abolished and yet various Roman Catholics, including Jesuit priests, would wholeheartedly endorse, and even be deeply involved in the making of, films that were full of sexual immorality, gratuitous violence, and even grotesque demon possession.

But there was also a second and very important reason why the Vatican loved Open City: the film presented “one of the most sympathetic portrayals of the Catholic church ever seen on screen. The typical Hollywood Catholic priest of the time… spun out pieties with moral absoluteness that allowed little thought for the other characters or audience members. In Open City the moral choices the [pro- Communist Italian] partisans have to make are anything but clear-cut, and the church… is tolerant and understanding when war forces [the characters in the film] to violate normal conventions. [The priest] is unalterably opposed to fascism and determined to fight for a better life for the people. In the film, the church has the total support of the people: Even the communists, who hate religion, turn to the church for help and support; what is more, the church is willing to help them because they are fighting fascism.” ³²⁸

It must be remembered that for centuries the Jesuits had made use of theatre to promote Roman Catholicism; and film was simply the modem equivalent of theatre. This is why they always wanted a controlling hand in Hollywood and in film media the world over. So when Open City depicted the Roman Catholic religion in such extremely positive light, the Vatican was fully supportive of it! And this is the reason for the willingness of Joseph Breen and his PCA, as well as the Legion of Decency, to pass the film with no condemnation! What utter hypocrisy.

And when one understands the role played in the Second World War by the Roman Catholic “Church”, one will be able to understand, even more clearly, why the Vatican viewed Open City as a wonderful propaganda tool to cover up the Vatican’s own involvement in the war. For the truth is that both Nazism and Fascism were given immense support by the Vatican! Flitler and Mussolini – both Roman Catholics – were hugely encouraged by the Vatican in their diabolical schemes, ³²⁹ the evidence for which is simply overwhelming and is so vast that to this very day Rome is doing its utmost to rewrite history. But now the war was over, and the Nazis and the Fascists had lost; and the Vatican was desperate to appear anti- Nazi and a«fi-Fascist to the world. This film was seen as a great help to the Vatican in getting the world to believe this.

This role of Rome in the war was recognised by Gregory D. Black, author of The Catholic Crusade Against the Movies, 1940-1975, when he wrote: “ Open City presented a church that few in 1946 would recognize. The role of the Catholic church in Germany had been one of conciliation toward Flitler, with no bishop taking to his pulpit to denounce the campaign against the Jews. Moreover, Pope Pius XII had not spoken out against the Holocaust, and this silence on Nazi atrocities subjected him to severe criticism soon after the war. Open City offered a refreshing tonic for a church so stung.” He went on: “American Catholics were not unaware of the controversy surrounding the pope. Given the position of the Vatican, it would certainly have been embarrassing for the American Catholic Legion of Decency to issue the film a condemned rating: The bishops would have been ridiculed in the American press and would not have relished explaining to Vatican officials why a film so favourable to Catholicism had been condemned in America.” ³³⁰

The film rewrote history. No wonder the Papist censors passed it. It depicted the Italians as being unitedly anti-Nazi and anti-Fascist during the war, which was simply not the case in fact. Italy was allied to Hitler, but this is not mentioned in the film. Nor, of course, does it come out in the film that Italian film-makers willingly produced Fascist propaganda films during the war years.

And there was something else as well: even though the priest in the film supports the underground Communist resistance movement in Italy, and at this time the Vatican (under Pius XII) was still very anti-Communist, yet already things were changing, and there were a great many priests who were becoming increasingly supportive of Communism. And just a few years later, a very pro-Communist pope would come to power, John XXIII. ³³¹ So this film was depicting a shifting of alliances within the Vatican itself, a re-orientation towards Communism, that would define the Vatican’s political affairs for decades to come.

Paisan (1946) and Germany, Year Zero (1948): the PCA in Conflict with Itself and with the Legion

Rossellini followed up with another film set in Italy during the war years, Paisan. This movie contained very controversial scenes, including prostitution, which would usually have earned any Hollywood movie a condemned rating. Arthur DeBra of the PCA’s New York office reviewed it and approved it, which greatly angered Joseph Breen at the Los Angeles office, who felt that it was sexually immoral. He correctly felt that if a foreign film depicting such scenes could be passed, then Hollywood film-makers would begin to demand the same treatment for their movies. And so he decided that from then on, all foreign films would have to be reviewed at the Los Angeles office – his office.

Next came a third film by Rossellini, entitled Germany, Year Zero, set in post-war Germany. This film contained scenes of child prostitution, child sexual abuse by a homosexual, child suicide, and the murder of a father by his son. Breen and the PCA were horrified by the film, with Breen branding it “thoroughly and completely unacceptable”, and moreover that it could not be made acceptable no matter how many cuts were made to it. The Legion of Decency declared it was “unfit for general movie audiences”, and that it would only give the film a “B” category if the scenes of paedophilia and child prostitution were cut and an epilogue was added, which the Legion itself wrote. These changes were made, the Legion gave it a “B” – but Breen was adamant: the film could not be made acceptable. It was a shock to the Papist Breen, having the Papist Legion approve a film he had condemned. It did not help him when a number of state censorship boards also approved it, either with minor cuts or none at all.

The film did not do well at the box office. But even so, the times had changed, and Joseph Breen was striving to maintain a form of Roman Catholic censorship that was no longer fully supported either by the general public or even by fellow-Roman Catholics. The Legion believed that he had become increasingly liberal (although in the case of this film it was the Legion that was more liberal than Breen), and McClafferty and Quigley had lost faith in him, although they still believed in the Code. Their problem was with the administration of the Code by the Breen Office.

In addition, there was some protest from Protestant groups about the PCA’s domination by Roman Catholics. They were convinced that Hollywood was churning out one pro-Papist religious film after another – and they were right. Furthermore, there was concern over the fact that priests of Rome were depicted as heroes, but Protestant ministers were depicted as weak and often comic.

A Protestant Film Council was established after World War Two for the purpose of advising Hollywood on Protestant issues, but it never became as influential as the Legion of Decency. In the words of Geoff Shurlock, who was later to replace Breen, the studios did not want “the Catholics running the industry, but [the Protestants] never showed themselves…capable.” ³³²

1948 Supreme Court Ruling Erodes PCA Power

It was a huge blow for Hollywood when, in May 1948, the U.S. Supreme Court decided that the movie industry was an illegal monopoly. It ordered a separation of exhibition from production. And what interests us at this point is that an important component of this monopoly was censorship, because the major studios had agreed to never produce nor play a film in their theatres that had not received a PCA seal of approval. But once the Supreme Court ruled, the power of the PCA was affected adversely. No longer was PCA power almost total, for now film theatres were independent of film production, and they could choose to play films that did not have a PCA seal. Moreover, if the Legion of Decency condemned a film, the theatres were no longer as concerned about it. This was a huge step in the direction of eventual termination of movie censorship, and a huge blow to both the PCA and the Legion, Rome’s twin pincers for controlling what Hollywood churned out.

Films, in the same way as newspapers and radio, were now deemed to be part of the press; and freedom of the press was guaranteed by the First Amendment in the U.S. Constitution. Films, therefore, could now be made under the same “press freedom” guarantees – with catastrophic results to Americans’ morality, and to the morality of the entire western world.

Miracle of the Bells (1948): Rome Turns a Blind Eye When Money is Flowing Romeward

When Frank Sinatra was cast as a priest in this film, this caused something of a stir, for he had become a somewhat notorious personality. The Romish cardinal, Francis Spellman, alarmed at the casting, asked Los Angeles auxiliary bishop, Joseph McGucken, to try to get RKO studio to drop Sinatra from the part. Although McGucken felt this could not be done, he contacted Joseph Breen regarding the rumours that Sinatra was involved with the Communist Party and that he was a womaniser. Breen admitted that in addition to having a problem with alcohol, Sinatra had kept “bad company”, notably leftists who had used him as a front; but he told McGucken that the actor had remained faithful to his wife. This was not true, although it is possible Breen did not know it. McGucken was able to pass on this information to Spellman, with the additional news that Sinatra’s managers had decided, for purposes of publicity, that Sinatra would become a benefactor of the Catholic Youth Organization. ³³³

Such has ever been Rome’s way: it can make a lot of noise about a person’s morals, political leanings, etc., but all that noise is silenced when there is money heading in Rome’s direction, even from the person concerned. Fra nk Sinatra, a notorious womaniser, unacceptable at first to Rome to play a priest in a film, became Frank Sinatra the good benefactor to the “Church” – and Rome turned a blind eye to what it had been opposed to before. Ah, the love of money (1 Tim. 6:10). Flow it can talk!

Joan of Arc (1948): a Screen “Saint” Causes Breen Pain

In 1948 the actress Ingrid Bergman appeared as the lead character in the Hollywood film, Joan of Arc. It had not been easy to persuade influential Papists that the film was a good one (from their perspective). In addition to priest John J. Devlin, Breen found three other priests (two of them Jesuits) to work with him on watching over the film’s production. This irked Devlin, who felt they were not needed and he was more than up to the task himself. And, giving away Rome’s real attitude to historical truth in movies, he told one of the priests that what was more important than historical accuracy was that the film should “carefully and sympathetically” put across the Roman Catholic viewpoint! Priest Patrick Masterson, himself deeply troubled that one of the Jesuit advisors was insisting on historical accuracy, said to Devlin, “After all, history is one thing, movies another.” ³³⁴ In other words, historical accuracy could go out the window – all that mattered was that the film was pro-Papist!

Ingrid Bergman was extremely popular and the film was expected to be a massive hit, especially as it was particularly aimed at pious Roman Catholic moviegoers, being about one of their famous “saints”. Joe Breen himself was ecstatic about the making of the film because of its pro-Roman Catholic message. And indeed, when it was released it played to capacity crowds. Breen could hardly contain his excitement, joy and praise for the film. Until…

Until Ingrid Bergman, a wife and a mother, went the way of virtually all Hollywood actors and actresses and started having an extramarital affair with Italian director Roberto Rossellini. Here was a woman playing the part of a Papist “saint”, and yet embroiled in a decidedly unsaintly affair. And it certainly affected the box-office success of Joan of Arc very negatively.

Breen, devout Papist that he was, was aghast. Writing to a Jesuit friend in France, he said her affair ranked as “possibly, the most shocking scandal which even Hollywood had had to contend with in many years. Miss Bergman, from the first day of her arrival here, has always conducted herself in a most commendable manner. There has never been even the slightest breath of scandal about her. She was regarded as a fine lady of unimpeachable character, a good wife, and a good mother.” ³³⁵ Perhaps so – but Hollywood has always been a cesspool, and sooner or later most actors and actresses succumb and dive into that pool.

Breen went further – he actually urged his Jesuit friend to try to intervene in the business, perhaps even by the Jesuits persuading the Vatican to somehow put pressure on the Italian government itself! As Breen’s biographer wrote, “to do what? deport Bergman to Hollywood escorted by papal guards?” ³³⁶ Breen also wrote to the lady herself, without success.

The Ingrid Bergman business gives us a glimpse into the devoutness of Breen’s Roman Catholic faith. He genuinely believed that he – assisted by the Jesuits and other powerful Romish allies – had been put on the earth not only to keep Hollywood morally clean but also to keep it as Roman Catholic as possible; and Bergman’s fall from grace was a severe blow to that objective.

The Bicycle Thief 91948): PCA and Breen’s Authority Undermined Still Further

An Italian movie called The Bicycle Thief was released in 1948 and directed by Vittorio De Sica. The Legion could not see anything immoral in it. Breen, however, was of a different mind, and said there were two scenes which had to be cut, one of which involved a boy urinating and the other, a chase through a bordello. But both Joseph Burstyn, the distributor, and De Sica refused to make any changes to it. They decided to appeal Breen’s ruling.

Burstyn went to the press, who ridiculed Breen and the MPAA for banning the movie. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) came out in favour of the film and against Breen, with its head branding Breen’s decision a “shocking demonstration of censorship power and must be condemned as a violation of free thought and expression.”

Martin Quigley supported Breen, not because the film was immoral but because the foreign film-makers, De Sica and Rossellini, were pro-Communist. “The Bicycle Thief comes from that sector of the European production which leans distinctly to the left,” his magazine, The Motion Picture Herald, stated. He said both men were members of “the pro-Communist Italian Film Congress.” ³³⁷ There was truth in this: European Communists were making left-leaning films and naturally their purpose was to indoctrinate. And so once again, we have the strange scene of powerful, conservative Roman Catholics in America seeking to stamp their own mark on an industry dominated by Communists or pro-Communists. For the true Christian, both are hostile to morality and biblical Christianity.

In March 1950 the MPAA board of directors assembled to listen to Breen and Burstyn state their cases, and Burstyn’s appeal was denied. It was a determined effort to prevent foreign films from having an American distribution, as these films were far more sexually explicit and it was believed (rightly) that they would lower the moral standards of Americans. Foreign film-makers could make such films because they did not have the censorship American films had. Breen knew that if foreign films containing such scenes and themes were to be allowed into America, the purpose for the PCA and for the Legion would essentially cease to exist. He wanted to maintain firm control over the films Americans were allowed to see. He wanted Rome in general, and himself in particular, to exercise this control.

A few months later, three major national circuits booked The Bicycle Thief, despite the MPAA ruling. This was a big blow to the authority of Breen’s PCA, for up until then major exhibitors had pledged not to book films that did not carry the PCA seal of approval; and now, for the first time, this pledge had been broken. No longer was it a given that exhibitors would automatically reject films with no PCA seal. The PCA and the Legion were losing power, step by step.

Beyond the Forest (1949): Abortion in Film

In 1949 Breen rejected a script for The Doctor and the Girl, a film involving abortion; but Eric Johnston, MPAA president, ordered Breen to negotiate with MGM studios about it. He did, despite reservations and a warning to Johnston that if the film was passed, other studios would start making films about abortion as well. The film was indeed passed, but, as Breen had predicted, almost immediately afterwards another script for a film involving abortion crossed his desk: Warner Brothers’ Beyond the Forest. The task of bringing the film into conformity with the Breen Office standards was given by Breen to Jack Vizzard. Vizzard had been studying for the Jesuit priesthood but had dropped out and joined the PCA. After Vizzard had made some changes Breen reluctantly gave the film a seal.

But priest Masterson was having none of it, and the film was condemned by the Legion of Decency. The film began to take a pounding from reviewers, and theatres discontinued showing it. Jack Warner asked Breen to try to get the Legion to back off- after all, Breen had approved the film. Vizzard was sent to Masterson, but the latter was not impressed with an ex-Jesuit seminarian who had approved such a film. Changes were made to the film, however, and the Legion reclassified it with a “B” rating.

Vizzard was then chastised by Martin Quigley as well, and Quigley also told Breen that the PCA had lowered its moral standards. Breen, for his part, said the scripts had become worse than ever. He was certainly correct when he told Quigley: “There is some sinister force at work hereabouts. I just can’t put my finger on it, but I am satisfied in my own mind that this condition, which has come about in recent months, did not just ‘happen.’ There is an African in the woodpile!” ³³⁸ Yes, he was right, as the studios pushed the boundaries in their efforts to get people away from their TV sets and back to the movie theatres; but what Breen did not grasp was that the Roman Catholic religion, which he so enthusiastically adhered to, was a major part of the problem, as it shoved hypocritical Papist morality down the throats of the movie bosses, who only swallowed it very, very reluctantly and vomited it out whenever they could.

The Legion of Decency Still Powerful, But…

As the decade of the 1940s drew to a close, it appeared that the Legion was still very powerful. Certainly most of Hollywood was reluctant to challenge it. As one participant in Life magazine’s 1949 “movie roundtable” put it: “the Legion holds the whip hand over Hollywood and nothing can be done about it.” ³³⁹

However, the evidence showed that the Legion, although still powerful, was in fact being supported less and less by Roman Catholics themselves. Huge numbers of them were simply ignoring their hierarchy and going to see the films they wanted to see. The situation, then, was as follows: a powerful Roman Catholic hierarchy in America determined to impose its authority on its subjects in the same way as it did in other, less democratic, more subservient and more Papist countries; a Roman Catholic population increasingly influenced by the American spirit of false moral “liberty” and to that extent less influenced than in previous generations by its religious leaders; and a movie industry where the studios were dominated by Jews and frequently strongly influenced by Communism, and yet still at this time lacking the willpower to stand up to the Papist Legion of Decency or the Papist-controlled Production Code Administration. For the time being at any rate, the Romish hierarchy was still on top and getting its way; but for how long?

The Code – and Breen – Come Under Increasing Criticism and Ridicule

In addition, the Code itself was coming under increasing criticism. Morally, times had changed after the war, and many wanted films to reflect those changes. Sam Goldwyn, the Jewish mogul of Metro- Goldwyn-Mayer fame, condemned state censors in an address in 1949, branding them as “petty, single-minded, single-tracked dirt-sniffers who feel they have to justify their official existence by using their scissors instead of their heads”. As regards the Code itself, he was almost equally as blunt: “It is my firm belief the time has come to bring the Code up to date, to conform to the changes that have taken place during the 19 years since it was first adopted. It needs overhauling, revamping, renovating.” ³⁴⁰ But Breen was adamant that the Code had to stay as it was, so that Hollywood would continue to provide “clean and wholesome entertainment” (at least in his judgment). It must be remembered that, for him and others, the Code was viewed as almost a divine document, based solidly on the Ten Commandments. Indeed, Motion Picture Herald at the time stated bluntly, “One does not consider it probable that even the dynamic Mr. Goldwyn would be trying to bring the Ten Commandments ‘up to date.’ Also, he can probably settle with his friend Mr. Joseph I. Breen easier than with Moses.” ³⁴¹

The attitude of many within Hollywood to the Code which they felt was outdated was expressed in an advertisement that appeared in the Screen Writer: “Wanted, an idea: Established writer would like a good updated idea for a motion picture which avoids politics, sex, religion, divorce, double beds, drugs, disease, poverty, liquor, senators, bankers, wealth, cigarettes, congress, race, economics, art, death, crime, childbirth and accidents (whether by airplane or public carrier); also the villain must not be an American, European, South American, African, Asiatic, Australian, New Zealander or Eskimo.” ³⁴²

The calls for changes became louder, more insistent. The Code was attacked, questioned, even ignored by many. Breen himself was increasingly being ridiculed, viewed as a relic of an earlier, more rigid era, no longer in tune with the changing times. And the opposition was not just coming from within Hollywood itself, but from the general public. Breen wrote to Daniel Lord in 1950 as follows: “In recent years… there has been a growing disposition to seek to destroy the Code, to do away with it…. I have noticed since the war, a very positive development that suggests paganism. This manifests itself by the disposition to throw off all standards of decency, of honesty, of honor.” ³⁴³

He was correct, of course. This is precisely what was happening. The battle was now on between Roman Catholicism and the anything- should-go immorality of an ever-growing number of people across America and the West, throwing off the moral restraints of their parents’ and grandparents’ generations, and insisting that entertainment should “change with the times” and pander to the lower moral standards.

Chapter nine – The 1950s: Roman Catholic movie censorship takes a beating

By the 1950s, Roman Catholic Americans were no longer a minority community on the edge of mainstream American society. They now numbered a quarter of the U.S. population, and occupied professional and managerial positions throughout the country. No longer were they bound to the “old neighbourhood” by their economic situation. And as they moved up the social ladder, so too the descendants of those Roman Catholic immigrants who had run the nickelodeons and movie theatres became directors of movies themselves.

Furthermore, during this time (the immediate post-war years) American Romanism not only blossomed, but became far less “European” and far more “American” than it had beenbefore. American Romanists themselves, having supported American anti-Communist nationalism, were now widely accepted, both in mainstream America with its newly wealthy Roman Catholic middle class, and in American politics. Wherever one looked in the United States of the late 1950s and early 1960s, one saw Roman Catholics dominating popular culture, epitomised by Frank Sinatra in the music industry. On TV, Papist monsignor, Fulton J. Sheen, had a programme entitled Life Is Worth Living. “After a century or more in urban ghettos, suddenly Catholics were everywhere.” ³⁴⁴

And this Romanist dominance of society was not by accident. The “Church” of Rome works tirelessly for world domination; and it was well aware that if it could conquer the United States of America, it would conquer the western world. And control of the mass media, in particular films and television, would ensure manipulation and indoctrination of the public in general, devoted as they were to their visual entertainment and visual news sources.

But this domination was to be constantly challenged in 1950s Hollywood.

Bitter Rice (1950): the Undermining Continues

The erosion of PCA and Legion authority was seen again with another film made in Italy, Bitter Rice, directed by Giuseppe De Santis, which was released in 1950 and which contained scenes of provocative clothing, seductive dances, nude swimming, illicit sex, and a plot that included abortion, a gruesome murder, suicide, etc. The distributors, Lux Films, did not even ask for a PCA seal, and it had been showing in the United States for some time before Breen and his staff saw it. They were shocked by the immorality and exposure of flesh. Quigley and the Legion condemned it, with the Legion branding it offensive to “Christian and traditional principles of morality.” The Tidings, a Romish newspaper in Los Angeles, said it was a Communist-inspired film.

Other leading Papists were worried about the film, too; but the PCA could not deny it a seal because Lux Films had not asked for one! They could not stop it being shown, and indeed large numbers turned out to see it.

As this particular film received wider distribution than was usual for foreign-language films, priest Little, concerned that a national campaign against it would make it still more popular, advised local Legion directors to act against it in whatever way they felt was best in their particular areas. Thus their responses varied, although most dioceses decided to just ignore it, hoping this would cause it to die a natural death in a short time. But this did not happen, and it continued to play.

Nevertheless, eventually Lux Films realised that even more money could be made from the film by making it conform to the Legion’s standards, thereby having the Legion remove the “C” rating. After huge cuts were made, it was finally reclassified as “B”.

The Miracle (1950): The Battle Over “Sacrilegious” Censorship

It was clear that although their power was still very considerable, the PCA and the Legion were not the a//-powerful organisations they had once been. It was a changing world, and there was a massive battle underway for control of the cinema. This was again brought home, with even more emphasis, with the release in America of yet another foreign film, The Miracle.

In 1950 Roberto Rossellini, an ex-Roman Catholic Italian director, made a film called II miracolo (The Miracle in English), which was screened at an art theatre in New York City. It had no nudity or crime, but it was “a modem religious parable” and the “Church” of Rome was livid over it. ³⁴⁵ It was an imported film about a simple-minded female goatherd who believes she has met “St.” Joseph, and who, when she finds herself mysteriously pregnant, believes the father is Joseph, and is ostracised and jeered at by others, finally giving birth in a local “church” building. When first shown in Italy, an organisation somewhat analogous to the Legion of Decency in that country strongly condemned it as an “abominable profanation”, but the Vatican did not attempt to suppress it. Leading Papists were unsure as to how to interpret the film. It might be an attack on the doctrine of the virgin conception and birth, but then again it might also be simply a commentary on the intolerance found in modem society. Not that it really mattered in the end, because it did not do at all well at the box office in Italy.

In the USA, however, it was a very different matter. Joseph Burstyn, who was in charge of showing it in New York City, was not legally bound to seek a PCA seal of approval for it as it was shown on the art-house circuit, and indeed he did not attempt to get one. But it was condemned as sacrilegious and blasphemous by the Legion, and the New York State board of censorship’s licence commissioner, Edward McCaffrey, a Roman Catholic, banned it from being publicly shown, despite having originally given it a green light. The movie was withdrawn from the circuit, but the distributors challenged the ban legally, and a formal hearing was scheduled for January 1951. This publicity did wonders for the film, which became extremely popular. Roman Catholics picketed the theatre showing it, but the ACLU and various newspapers weighed in, defending the movie and the right of people to see it – which large numbers did. The court ruled that McCaffrey had gone beyond his authority in banning the film.

New York’s cardinal, Lrancis Spellman, was outraged, and in a letter read out at every mass in the New York archdiocese he made his feelings clear, calling the film “a despicable affront to every Christian” and “a vicious insult to Italian womanhood”, calling for Papists to boycott the movie, and making it clear that he believed the movie was Communist-inspired for the purpose of ridiculing the “Christian” (i.e. Roman Catholic) religion and promoting the enslavement of America to atheistic Communism. He called on all decent people to join with him to oppose the “minions of Moscow” in their attempts to “enslave this land of liberty”. This religious hypocrite spoke of America in glowing terms as a land of liberty, yet knowing full well that his very “Church” hated the liberties enjoyed by Americans, and had always fought against them! Spellman’s call was heeded by Roman Catholic Americans, and picket lines consisting of Roman Catholic war veterans at the theatre showing the movie expanded to over a thousand people. The signs carried by the picketers read: “This Picture is an Insult to Every Decent Woman and Her Mother”; “Don’t be a Communist – All the Communists are Inside” and “Don’t Enter that Cesspool”. The picketers insulted those who tried to buy tickets. Counter-pickets also formed outside the theatre, and Protestant ministers complained about the Papists imposing their will on everyone else. Attitudes hardened on both sides of the issue. Bomb threats were even made against the theatre, followed by bomb threats made against St. Patrick’s Roman Catholic Cathedral!

Yet despite all Rome’s efforts, still the crowds came to see it.

Then Martin Quigley weighed in, with an editorial which, like Spellman, labelled the film as Communist: “With Americans dying daily in Korea, and the nation girding for total war if necessary to preserve our way of life, which is based on belief in God and the inalienable rights of man, it is intolerable that a film such as The Miracle should be shown in an American theater. Its logical birthplace in the modem world is the Soviet Union.” ³⁴⁶

It was utterly hypocritical of this Roman Catholic to speak of defending the American way of life, when Rome had been working to destroy that very way of life and turn America into a Papist nation. But of course this was the period before the pro-Communist pope, John XXIII, and the Papacy was still very anti-Communist. This would change in just a few short years. It was ironic, too, that he spoke of America’s belief in “the rights of man”, a concept bom out of the very humanistic/Communistic system he was condemning, and which, at this time, Rome was strongly opposed to anyway.

And the greatest irony of all? “Quigley may or may not have known that the Soviet Union rejected the film because it was, in their view, ‘pro- Catholic propaganda.’” ³⁴⁷ There were undoubtedly pro-Communist, anti- Roman Catholic films coming into America, and these most definitely had, as their purpose, the undermining of the United States; but it does not appear as if The Miracle was one of them. But to brand it as such was an easy way for the Romish hierarchy to raise the ire of anti-Communist American Romanists. It was a perfect way to kill two birds with one stone: to exert Rome’s power over what could or could not be shown on American screens, and to deal another hard knock to Communism, which was still Rome’s bitter enemy at this time.

And so, “Catholics from Cardinal Spellman on down freely tossed the charge of communism at all who favoured showing the film; picket lines and bomb threats were used in attempts to prevent audiences from seeing the film; those brave enough to run the gauntlet were accused of being communist or communist sympathizers; Protestant and Catholic representatives argued over what was and was not sacrilegious; and the professional film critics awarded The Miracle, at best a mildly curious picture, the Best Foreign Film of the year.” ³⁴⁸

The New York State censorship board now found itself under huge pressure to revoke its earlier decision to permit the film to be shown. Burstyn and his lawyers argued that this dislike of the film was pretty much limited to Roman Catholics, and submitted as evidence hundreds of letters from Protestant ministers who saw nothing wrong with the film at all. This is not to say that there really was nothing wrong with it, for by this time (the mid-twentieth century) many Protestant denominations and churches were already liberal in both doctrine and practice. But Burstyn was correct in stating that it was mainly Roman Catholics who were angered over the film.

Nevertheless, under extreme pressure from the Papal machine in America, the censorship board in New York revoked the licence to screen the film, stating as its reason that New York law insisted that “men and women of all faiths respect the religious beliefs held by others” and that the film associated the Roman Catholic and Protestant versions of the Bible with “drunkenness, seduction and lewdness” and was therefore sacrilegious.

But things were changing in Roman Catholic circles. Some Romish publications criticised their own “Church” for its picketing and its dictatorial style. An editorial in Commonweal said: “We are burdened with an ancient siege complex”. It went on to state that the Romish “Church”s use of threats rather than persuasion may have caused those who were not Roman Catholics to “feel as if they were being treated like children by an alien force that didn’t give two cents for their personal liberty.” This was strong criticism from a Papist publication in those times. And there were Roman Catholics who criticised their “Church” over its handling of this film, and lost their jobs. One was Fra nk Getlein, the film reviewer for the Catholic Messenger of Davenport, Iowa, who lost his job at Fairfield University, a Roman Catholic college in Connecticut, for his criticism. Another was William Clancy, a teacher of English at the University of Notre Dame, whose article, “The Catholic as Philistine”, in which he called the Roman Catholic campaign against the film “semi-ecclesiastic McCarthyism”, cost him his job as well. ³⁴⁹

Burstyn was down but not out. He appealed the ruling, but when the New York State Court of Appeals upheld it he filed a petition with the United States Supreme Court in December 1951. Oral arguments for Burstyn v. Wilson were set for April 1952. Burstyn was challenging the Supreme Court decision of 1915 in Mutual v. Ohio (examined earlier in this book) which had upheld the constitutionality of state censorship boards.

Ephraim London, who represented Burstyn, argued that film was entitled to the freedom which the U.S. Constitution guaranteed to the press, as it communicated ideas just like the press did. Citing hundreds of letters and petitions from Protestant ministers and people that The Miracle was not viewed as sacrilegious by them, London argued that the state exceeded the constitution when it upheld the religious views of one group (in this case, the views of the “Church” of Rome) above all others.

London was correct: in the United States, no religion’s views could be upheld above any others; a very sensible and wise law. It is what prevented the United States from persecuting people for their religion, as had happened so often in so many other countries of the world at one time or another, where such a law was lacking. For it is not the government’s place to interfere in religious matters. Whenever governments have done so, persecution has inevitably followed. The duty of the State is limited to matters of the physical world, not the spiritual. If citizens are threatened physically, or harmed physically, then the State must intervene; but in religious matters it has no jurisdiction from God, and should ideally have none in practice.

The end result was that on May 26, 1952, the Supreme Court reversed the decision of the New York Court of Appeals. And in writing the unanimous decision for the court, Justice Tom Clark essentially stated precisely what has just been set out as the proper approach, if only governments would follow it: he said that the State has “no legitimate interest in protecting any or all religions from views distasteful to them” and that it was not the business of government “to suppress real or imagined attacks upon a particular religious doctrine, whether they appear in publications, speeches, or motion pictures.” ³⁵⁰

This wise and sensible position could justifiably be dubbed the Gallio principle: when “the Jews made insurrection with one accord against Paul, and brought him to the judgment seat, saying, This fellow persuadeth men to worship God contrary to the law”, then Gallio, the deputy of Achaia, replied, “If it were a matter of wrong or wicked lewdness, O ye Jews, reason would that I should bear with you: but if it be a question of words and names, and of your [religious] law, look ye to it; for I will be no judge of such matters” (Acts 18:12-15). He did not practice what he preached, of course, for when the Greeks then proceeded to beat up the ruler of the synagogue, we are told that “Gallio cared for none of those things” (v. 17), even though this was now most definitely “a matter of wrong”; but he was right in his stance that it was not his business, as a political leader, to get embroiled in religious matters. If only governments had held the same sentiments through the centuries, there would have been far less religious persecution in the world! The government’s business is to maintain law and order, to punish evildoers, etc.; it is not its business to regulate religion, to say what may or may not be said in matters of religion, or to stick its nose into spiritual matters of any kind. The United States, more than any other nation in the history of the world, sought to separate the State’s authority from that of religious authority of any kind, refusing to get embroiled in religious controversies, leaving such matters to the religions themselves to deal with. This prevented persecution on religious grounds, for it is a fact of history that wherever a government involves itself in such matters, persecution inevitably follows.

When it comes to religious matters, would that the whole world adopted the Gallio principle! Tragically, today, even America is rapidly moving away from it, increasingly interfering in religious affairs and attacking those who oppose, on religious grounds, such religions as Roman Catholicism and Islam.

And here a word must be said, also, to those Christians who thi nk a government should be involved in upholding the true Christian faith. This is just as wrong when it concerns the true faith as when it concerns false religions! Some professing Evangelical Christians believe that if the majority of the population professes to be Christian, the government should outlaw all publications, films, etc., which attack the Christian faith. In this they greatly err. The followers of Christ must proclaim the Gospel of Christ by the method of preaching, of persuasion (2 Cor. 5:11), and it will be received by all those ordained to eternal life (Acts 13:48). We do not need, nor should we ever seek, the legislation of Christianity.

Just as the 1915 Supreme Court ruling had been a defining moment in movie history, when (as seen earlier) movies were declared to be a “business, pure and simple”, which could be regulated, so the 1952 ruling was another such defining moment. The 1915 ruling was now reversed, with the court arguing that movies were expressions of ideas and as such, were covered under the freedom of speech clause of the U.S. Constitution and could not be censored.

However, it stated that it had not ruled “whether a state may censor motion pictures under a clearly drawn statute designed and applied to prevent the showing of obscene films. That is a very different question from the one now before us. We hold only that under the First and Fourteenth Amendments a state may not ban a film on the basis of a censor’s conclusion that it is ‘sacrilegious.’” Thus, according to the Supreme Court, it might have been legal for a censorship law to prevent obscene films.

The Supreme Court decision was a major blow to censorship boards across America, and over the next few years they would cease to function, for the majority of them contained statements prohibiting films on sacrilegious grounds, and to do so was now unconstitutional. In addition, this ruling severely restricted the power of Joseph Breen and the PCA to demand that material which violated the Production Code be removed from films. Censorship was still in place after this ruling, but it was now greatly weakened legally.

The Legion of Decency was affected most of all. While professing to only rate films for Roman Catholic audiences, not censor them, the Legion had done its best to prevent all Americans from seeing The Miracle, regardless of their religious beliefs. And it had done so in a particularly vicious manner, with boycotts, pickets, threats of bombings, etc. “In essence, the Catholic church through the Legion, had demanded that the state declare Catholic theology as official dogma. Protestant organizations rightly opposed giving that kind of sanction to the Catholic church, as did the U.S. Supreme Court. The boundaries of separation between church and state remained firmly defined .” ³⁵¹ It was a major setback for Rome’s attempts to increase its power over the life of all the people of the United States. If it had succeeded, the “Church” of Rome would have vastly expanded its influence over this country it had sought to conquer for so long. It would have been one giant step closer to becoming the official “State Church” in the USA, something utterly alien to the U.S. Constitution and to all that America had stood for since its founding. But the sovereign Lord had decreed otherwise, and providentially this bold plot was overturned at this time. Rome would not give up, however.

The Legion of Decency, as a result of its actions against this film, suffered a huge blow. Even many Roman Catholics turned against it. After all, many of them could not help but imbibe much of the spirit of Americanism: of such concepts as freedom of religion, freedom of speech, freedom of the press. This has always been Rome’s dilemma in the USA – how to keep American Romanists faithful to Rome when they live in a country that is at its very heart the very antithesis of what Rome stands for. For example, the Roman Catholic publication, Commonweal, the only major Romish publication to support the Supreme Court decision, stated that when Romanists “obey the voice of the Church, it is a free act; to pressure or force, even indirectly, others who do not believe, into the same kind of obedience is to ask for servility.” ³⁵² This was an excellent statement in favour of religious liberty and liberty of conscience, and as such very American; but it certainly was not in line with the “Church” of Rome, which demands the very servility condemned in the statement, and has always used pressure and force against those who oppose it.

Never again would the Legion of Decency be the all-powerful institution it once was. It was concerned, but continued on, applying Roman Catholic standards to the films it examined. This in itself would have been perfectly fine if it did so solely as a watchdog for Roman Catholic Americans, but it continued to act as if it had a divine right to act on behalf of all Americans, Roman Catholic or otherwise.

There could be no doubt, however, that both PCA and Legion influence and authority had been much weakened by these things. Oh, they were still extremely strong, but things were not looking quite so rosy, quite so certain, for them anymore. And Hollywood film-makers were becoming bolder in their desire to challenge PCA and Legion interference.

A Streetcar Named Desire (1951): Yet Another Challenge to the Breen Office and the Legion

The assault on film censorship (which meant the assault on Roman Catholic-controlled film censorship) continued. The script for a film entitled A Streetcar Named Desire arrived on Joseph Breen’s desk in 1950. The Broadway play had been running since 1947, and contained themes of sexuality, homosexuality, suicide, adult-adolescent sex, rape, etc. It was a smash hit, which was why Hollywood showed interest in making a movie of it. But it was obvious it would fall foul of the PCA.

Breen objected to the homosexuality, nymphomania and rape in the story, and would never grant a seal if these themes remained. By various editings they were toned down, but not completely removed. Nevertheless the PCA seal was granted, quite surprisingly, after compromises were reached: Breen said he would accept the rape if it was done “by suggestion and delicacy”, and director Elia Kazan agreed that the film’s ending would provide “compensating moral values”. ³⁵³ But when priest Patrick J. Masterson of the Legion, and Martin Quigley, viewed the film, they were enraged, and Warner Brothers were informed by the Legion that it would condemn the film unless major cuts and alterations were made. Such was the Legion’s power, still, in Hollywood at this time that Warner Brothers actually hired Martin Quigley himself to do the editing, in 1951.

When director Kazan heard of the massive cuts being made in the editing room, he tried to stop the Legion. This same director would shortly appear before the House Committee on Un-American Activities. He was later to write in his memoirs, “It was at this time that I became aware of the similarity of the Catholic Church to the Communist Party, particularly in the ‘underground’ nature of their operation.” ³⁵⁴ In this he was more correct than he could ever have known. It is a fact (but outside the scope of this book to demonstrate) that agents of Rome were involved behind the scenes in the very creation of Communism, that Communism had borrowed much from the Roman Catholic institution, and that in the years to come the two would develop an increasingly cosy and symbiotic relationship.

When Kazan confronted Quigley over the cuts to his film, Quigley emphasised the importance of “the moral order over artistic considerations.” All true Christians would agree that morality must always be paramount, and that this film was blatantly immoral; but of course when Quigley spoke of “the moral order” he meant as understood and interpreted by Rome. He denied it, of course: Kazan was outraged that the Roman Catholic “Church” was forcing its moral values on all Americans, but Quigley’s rejoinder was that the Legion censored according to the Ten Commandments. This sounded so much broader, and so much more innocuous, than claiming the Legion was acting according to the moral values of the “Church” of Rome. But it was not true.

Kazan was furious, and he did not remain silent. In a New York Times article he made it clear that “a prominent Catholic layman” had forced him to accept the changes to the film, and he wrote: “My picture has been cut to fit the specifications of a code which is not my code, is not the recognized code of the picture industry, and is not the code of the great majority of the audience.” He also wrote, “I was the victim of a hostile conspiracy.” He branded Francis Spellman, the Popish cardinal, “the gluttonous Pope of Fifth Avenue” who had humiliated him. ³⁵⁵

We have no sympathy for the Kazans of the world. They deliberately seek to make filthy, immoral movies, a flagrant attack on decency and morality. We include his complaints here simply to show the power of Rome in Hollywood at that time. Immoral films, like immoral books, do no good whatsoever and an immense amount of harm. But the “Church” of Rome has no business being the moral watchdog of society, given its polluted and degraded history. And yet for decades the movie industry was essentially controlled by this false “Church.”

The Resumption of the House Committee on Un-American Activities in Hollywood

While all this was going on, in 1951 the HUAC hearings resumed suddenly again – after a few years of silence and inactivity. This time around, large numbers of witnesses gave the HUAC the names of political associates. Once again, the Jewish moguls in Hollywood were frightened. They kn ew that if they did not fire all radicals, liberals and Communists in their studios, they would face pickets and boycotts of their movies and the hatred and rejection of American society. So they acted. In their panic they even fired people who were not Communists or Communist sympathisers, but whose names appeared on the blacklist. The story is told of a Hollywood writer whose name was on the list, who worked for Harry Warner. Warner fired him. The man said, “This is a mistake,” producing documents which showed he was anti-Communist. “The plain fact is that I am an nnP’-Communist.” To which Warner replied, “I don’t [care] what kind of Communist you are, get out of here.” ³⁵⁶

The Greatest Show on Earth (1952): Legion Authority Weakened Further

As was seen, the U.S. Supreme Court had come to the decision that it was necessary for films to be included under the protection of freedom of speech, and that states should not be permitted to censor them. The protection given by the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution was now extended to movies. Not only that, but film-makers themselves were now emboldened to challenge the Roman Catholic influence on Hollywood exerted for so long by the PCA and the Legion. In 1953 Hollywood’s Samuel Goldwyn called for the Production Code to be reviewed and brought “reasonably up to date.” ³⁵⁷ Others were more blatant and called for the Code and all censorship to be scrapped. Even the Papist Commonweal publication, whose film critic was a consultant to the Legion, now called for the Code to be revised. ³⁵⁸

One of the Hollywood film-makers who was emboldened to challenge PCA and Legion authority after the Supreme Court’s 1952 ruling was Cecil B. DeMille, maker of various so-called “biblical epic” films that were neither doctrinally sound nor morally decent. He now decided to make a film about the circus – the result being The Greatest Show on Earth. The PCA did not object to the film, but the Legion gave it a “B” rating (objectionable in part for all) because of the costumes worn by the women and the lustful characterisation of one of the male characters, as well as the fact that another character had performed so-called “assisted suicide” on his dying wife (even though in the end he was arrested). The “B” rating meant that the film was off-limits to children, and DeMille was angry and refused to make any cuts. He also pointed out to Thomas Little, the monsignor of the Legion, that the costumes worn by the actresses in the movie were the same ones as were worn by Ringling Brothers and Bamum and Bailey circus, which was ritually blessed by a priest of Rome every year.

DeMille was supported by many Papists who could see nothing wrong with the film, including many priests. Romish disapproval of the Legion’s rating was voiced by many. One monsignor, J. B. Lux, arranged for four monsignors and a number of Roman Catholic “laypeople” to see the film. All loved it. Lux said the Legion’s concern about the “euthanasia” was “sheer nonsense”, and added that if the Legion objected to this film, Roman Catholics would not take the Legion seriously anymore. He went still further, saying, “we are not behind the iron curtain and we have a right to disagree [with] the Legion.” ³⁵⁹ Clearly, Legion authority was gradually waning in Roman Catholic circles.

The Legion rating was not removed, despite criticism from such Romish leaders. Nevertheless, the film did extremely well at the box office, and large numbers of Roman Catholics took their children to see it, as evidenced by the turnout in such Papist strongholds as New York City, Chicago, Baltimore and Pittsburgh. It had become obvious that a film-maker could challenge the Legion and still make a lot of money.

The Moon is Blue (1953): the PCA is Ignored and Cracks Appear in the Legion

The Moon is Blue was a Broadway play that had been running for three years without much complaint from religious institutions, including the Romish institution, despite the fact that the play was full of sexual innuendo in a comedy setting. A film version was planned, and United Artists agreed to distribute it even if the PCA refused to provide a seal and the Legion condemned it. The script was sent to the PCA, and of course it was found to violate the Code. And when the film itself was submitted to the PCA in 1953, Breen found it unacceptable. The MPAA agreed with Breen and a seal was denied, but this was because, if the MPAA gave a seal to the film, Breen’s authority, or what was left of it by this time, would have been severely undermined. The MPAA’s Eric Johnston said in a statement: “There has been a feeling in some areas both within and without the industry that the Code or some parts of it are out of ‘style.’ It is a living and vibrant document that deals with principles of morality and good taste. These are ageless.” ³⁶⁰

True to its word, United Artists distributed the film even without the seal. But the studio had to resign from the MPAA because membership was only permitted to those who upheld the Code.

Martin Quigley agreed with Breen and told the studio that the Legion would condemn the film if it was not revised. But the two priests in charge of the Legion, Patrick J. Masterson and Thomas L. Little, were shocked to discover that a committee of Legion reviewers from the ILCA were not much offended by the film, and recommended a mere “B” rating. There was not much about a “B” rating to put people off, including Roman Catholics. Times had changed; Romanists themselves had changed, and were no longer as morally shocked by such things as they once would have been. The movie industry had succeeded in wearing their morals down.

But the two priests, Masterson and Little, over-ruled the women of the ILCA and condemned the film. They did so not only because they disagreed with the ILCA’s recommendation of a “B” ruling, but also because Quigley put pressure on Masterson to make sure that the film was condemned by the Legion. Quigley did this because his own credibility would have taken a knock if a “B” rating was granted after he himself had told the studio that the Legion would condemn the film outright.

When Masterson died suddenly, Little took over the Legion. He urged Roman Catholics to avoid The Moon is Blue because “the strength of the Legion is going to be tested by the commercial success or non-success of this film.” ³⁶¹ He could see the handwriting on the wall: the Legion’s authority was in real trouble by this stage. He called on Papists to unitedly protest against the film, and bishops were provided with a sermon, to be given to the priests under them. He was supported by New York’s cardinal, Spellman, who called for a boycott, by Papists, of any theatre which showed the film. Bishops in Los Angeles and Philadelphia echoed Spellman’s call, although the majority of bishops in the United States did not – which was significant in itself. The Roman Catholic “Church” in the United States was no longer speaking with a united voice when it came to the movies. The film critic of St. Joseph s Magazine, which was “America’s Catholic Family Monthly”, came out in praise of The Moon is Blue, even calling it “wholesome”. Still, Roman Catholic pressure paid dividends in some parts of America. ³⁶² A priest in El Paso, Texas, informed the Legion that he had “put the hate” on the local chain which was exhibiting the film. The San Francisco Junior Chamber of Commerce cancelled its sponsorship of the film’s premiere. It was banned in Kansas, Ohio, and Maryland. Police in Jersey City arrested the theatre manager and took possession of two prints of the film. Upon being released the theatre manager showed a reserve print, and “was threatened by some local hoods.” ³⁶³ So much for Romanism being a loving, “Christian” church.

But ultimately the Legion did not succeed. Otto Preminger, the film’s director, stood firm, refusing to alter anything in it. Stanley Warner and United Paramount, two of the largest distributors, ignored the Legion and booked the movie. Although some state censorship boards banned it, others approved it. And eventually the courts overturned all decisions to ban the movie as being unconstitutional. Little even had to reluctantly admit that ticket sales had actually been given a huge boost by the Legion’s condemnation. The movie was a smash hit all over the country, playing to large audiences even in staunchly Roman Catholic cities, much to the disgust of Martin Quigley, who had helped to create the Legion back in 1934. ³⁶⁴

It was, in fact, the first time that Roman Catholics, in large numbers, had objected to a Legion condemnation. Priests joined people in speaking out against the Legion, voicing the once virtually heretical thought that the Legion had outlived its usefulness.

And Joe Breen’s authority suffered as a result of the furore over The Moon is Blue, as well. What is more, the Legion became increasingly concerned that Breen’s standards were dropping. In 1953, in fact, the Legion criticised Breen for his handling of sexually related matters in a number of films.

Martin Luther (1953): the Legion’s Agenda Exposed

In 1953 a low-budget film on the life of the German Reformer, Martin Luther, was released, and to the surprise of many it became a box-office hit. The film’s production was financed by six Lutheran organisations in the United States, and contained no sexual themes, no immorality of any sort, no violence. Joe Breen approved it, even though the PCA was dominated by Roman Catholics. But the Legion of Decency condemned it.

Although many were very surprised at this, no one who understood Romanism should have been. Martin Luther, the sixteenth-century German monk who defied the Roman Catholic “Church”, had sparked the Protestant Reformation. The Reformation was the greatest blow Rome had ever suffered. In the eyes of Rome, Luther was a heretic and he was deeply hated. There was no way the American Papist hierarchy was going to approve of the film.

But the Legion had a problem. It had always claimed that its purpose was to keep films moral by keeping immorality out of them. But there was nothing immoral about Martin Luther. Not only that, but the Legion had always claimed that it was broader in its mandate than simply condemning movies that offended Roman Catholic morals. It claimed to defend what it termed Christian morals in general. It desperately wanted to condemn this film because it presented Rome in such a poor light, but the only thing it could condemn about it was that it presented Rome in such a poor light! And it knew this would never fly, because condemning a perfectly moral film merely because it showed up the errors of Rome was outside the Legion’s mandate, and would result in a countrywide condemnation of the Legion from Protestant institutions. And the danger of that was that many would then see the truth – that the Legion of Decency was condemning it solely because it was a Protestant film. In Protestant America, despite the by-now huge influence of Romanism in politics and society, this was a massive risk to take. Rome’s power was immense and growing, but the United States was still a Protestant land. This was not Europe in the Dark Ages.

Realising this, Little, although longing to condemn the film as heretical and a danger to Roman Catholics, had no choice but to issue some other classification than a “Condemned” one. And so, even though many Papists urged him to condemn it, he called for it to be placed under the “Separate Classification” category, which was innocuous enough. This was eventually done, with the Legion issuing the warning to Roman Catholics that the film “offers a sympathetic and approving representation of the life and times of Martin Luther, the 15th century figure of religious controversy [actually he was a 16th century figure]. It contains theological and historical references and interpretations which are unacceptable to Roman Catholics.” ³⁶⁵

The Legion could not condemn the film, but Roman Catholic publications were free to do so, and they did with a vengeance, blasting it as inaccurate, unfair, unbiblical, and so on. The strongest condemnation came from The Wanderer, which charged the film’s director, Irving Pichel, with having connections with Communist front organisations and activities. Other Romish publications also claimed that the film had been made by Communists. This was a rather common tactic used by Romanists in those days, when the USA was facing down the Soviet menace and the Romish institution was still strongly anti-Communist. This would change in a few short years with the accession of the very pro-Communist John XXIII as pope of Rome, but in the early 1950s that was how things stood. The Papists’ case was strengthened, however, at least in their own eyes, when Allan E. Stone, the man who wrote the screenplay, appeared before the House Committee on Un-American Activities and admitted that he had once belonged to the Communist Party. Ah, now Romish publications could condemn Martin Luther as being un-American. And they did, vociferously.

However, such strong Legion opposition to the film did not help its cause at all, because the entire idea of censorship was under assault at that time in the U.S., and this kind of Legion vitriol only served to strengthen the case of those opposed to censorship. Moreover, although many Protestant institutions had often supported the Legion’s condemnation of various immoral movies, they now saw this Roman Catholic organisation coming out with guns blazing against a film for no other reason than that it was Protestant. The Legion’s cause was not helped, furthermore, by slamming the film as part of the international Communist conspiracy. This just made it look foolish. ³⁶⁶ It was obvious now, to more people than ever, that the Legion of Decency was not only concerned with matters of morality, but with advancing the Roman Catholic agenda. This was the period prior to the Second Vatican Council and the ecumenical movement – Protestants still very rightly viewed Romanism with deep suspicion, and many more Protestants than today were well aware of Rome’s desire for domination of the United States. The Legion’s hysterical reaction to Martin Luther only proved that they were right.

I Confess (1953): Pro-Papist Movie by a Jesuit-Educated Director

Nevertheless, although change was in the air, influential Roman Catholics in Hollywood still did much to promote their religion through film. One such was the Jesuit-educated Roman Catholic director, Alfred Hitchcock, whose movie I Confess was an attempt to glorify the Romish sacrament of confession and of a priest’s attempts to never violate the secrecy of the confessional, and even to sacrifice his own life if necessary. The priest in the film is linked to a crime but cannot clear his name without violating the confidentiality of the confessional. The film certainly glorified both the priesthood and the Popish sacrament.

The French Line (1953): Thumbing the Nose at the Censors

In 1953 the film, The French Line, was released by Howard Hughes, starring Jane Russell. Breen had passed the script but warned Hughes that the actresses must be properly covered when the film was shot. When the finished film came out, Breen saw that Hughes had paid no attention to his warning and RKO, Hughes’ studio, was denied a seal.

But Hughes did what would once upon a time have been utterly unthinkable: he simply ignored Breen, ignored the MPAA board of directors as well (RKO was a member of the MPAA so this was a deliberate rebellion), and released the film to the public anyway. Not only that, but he deliberately scheduled the film’s world premiere for the city of St. Louis – hometown of Jesuit priest Daniel Lord, the author of the Production Code, and a city with a large Roman Catholic population!

Hughes was deliberately challenging the PCA and MPAA to try to stop him, and they knew it. Breen was able to slap a $25000 fine on Hughes because RKO belonged to the MPAA, but for a multimillionaire like Hughes this was an ineffectual slap on the wrist. Breen sent PCA staff member, Jack Vizzard, to plan what to do about it with Romish archbishop, Joseph E. Ritter. They knew very well what was at stake, for Vizzard said it himself: “What was at stake was the survival of the whole system, and even the whole concept, of achieving decency in the movies. A successful breakthrough by Hughes, exploiting the bulge created by Preminger, would spell eventual doom for the entire experiment.” ³⁶⁷ By “decency in the movies”, of course, Vizzard meant, essentially, the imposition of Roman Catholic morality on, and control of, the movies. One must always read such statements by Romanists, especially ones influenced by the Jesuits as Vizzard was, in the sense in which they mean them.

When the archbishop asked Vizzard if he thought a pastoral letter should be issued forbidding Roman Catholics from seeing the film under pain of committing mortal sin, Vizzard replied that this was a good idea, even though he privately felt it was going too far. As for the Legion, priest Little told Hughes that unless he withdrew the film right away, the Legion would condemn it. When Hughes sent a print of the film to the Legion for review, the reviewers condemned it and told Hughes that serious cuts had to be made.

Hughes tried to get Breen to reconsider his conde mn ation of the film by resubmitting a new version for his evaluation. But Breen refused to budge, and Hughes then told the Legion that he was not going to withdraw his movie, nor make any further major changes to it just to please the Legion.

It had not gone down well with the archbishop, Ritter, when he learned that the president of Hughes’ RKO studios, James Grainger, was in fact a Roman Catholic himself, and that Grainger’s son Edmund had produced the movie! Ritter was livid that Roman Catholics were so morally degenerate that they could happily be involved with Hughes in the making of The French Line. Spellman, the cardinal, said he would lambaste such Romanists. ³⁶⁸ James Grainger told Little that as far as he was concerned, the Legion was not playing fair with Hughes and was being too straight-laced when it came to sexual matters and the exposure of the female form on screen. He pointed out that in Roman Catholic countries like Italy and France, it was acceptable for viewers to see more of the female form than what was permitted in America. ³⁶⁹

The Legion went ahead and condemned the film as obscene, suggestive, indecent and offensive; and Little called on bishops to put pressure on their local theatres not to book it.

Vizzard, the Romish archbishop Ritter, and priest John Cody tried to get Protestant and Jewish groups to protest against the film with Roman Catholics, but without success. So they then sent a letter to all priests in the St. Louis diocese, saying this movie would irreparably harm the Legion and the PCA and calling on Papists to make the film a failure at the box office. Then Ritter did what he had asked for Vizzard’s advice on – he declared in a letter read out at all masses held in the diocese that viewing the film was a “mortal sin” – the most serious form of sin known to Papists, a sin for which they believe they will go to hell if it is not confessed to a priest.

The Legion had learned from past mistakes, however. It had come to realise that loud pickets by angry Romanists outside theatres would actually generate more publicity for the film, so this time around priests went to theatre owners and simply asked them nicely not to show the movie. If the theatre showed it anyway, then the priests were to make “a temperate and heartfelt appeal” from their pulpits for their people to stay away from it. ³⁷⁰ Truly, Rome was realising that changing times meant changing tactics. They knew the days of priests throwing their weight around had ended, at least for the time being. Rome would have to try a more subtle, gentler approach. This was contrary to her nature but she had no choice.

And just in case one is tempted to think that this gentler approach was genuine, consider this: while publicly the priests of Rome acted gently and courteously, in private they found out which theatre owners were Roman Catholic and then tightened the thumbscrews, by (for example) refusing to administer the sacraments of Rome to the theatre owner. For a Papist, to be denied the sacraments is to be put outside the “Church”, and in danger of eternal damnation. Of course, one accepts that any church or professing “church” has the right to demand of its members that they accept the doctrinal position of the church, or they must leave. But acting in this cloak-and-dagger way, smiling publicly and threatening privately, was hypocritical, sly, sinister and nasty. It was, however, par for the course as far as Rome was concerned.

Furthermore, according to the manager of Lafayette Theater in Buffalo, New York, thousands of letters and phone calls had been received from Roman Catholics objecting to the movie, but these included some of “the most vulgar and obscene and immoral language ever uttered,” he told Variety magazine. ³⁷¹ Yes, Roman Catholics piously condemned various admittedly immoral movies, yet in their own personal lives they were so often immoral hypocrites.

Although high-ranking prelates continued to fulminate against the movie and declare it to be a mortal sin to watch it, and many theatres and municipalities refused to show it on the grounds of obscenity, large numbers flocked to see it, even in strongly Papist areas. Obviously Roman Catholics were turning out to see it despite the threats of their religious leaders, a fact admitted by priest Little himself in his annual report to the bishops. ³⁷² The film made a huge amount of money and was a box-office success. It would have made even more if Hughes had submitted to the PCA and the Legion, but he did not, preferring to thumb his nose at the censors and thereby drive another nail into the coffin of Roman Catholic-controlled film censorship in the United States.

On the Waterfront (1954): Social Romanism and Praising Jesuit Worker-Priests

Nevertheless, in the declining era of Breen’s dominance of Hollywood, there were films which still promoted a positive (albeit changing) image of American Romanism. One such was Elia Kazan’s On the Waterfront, described as “a hymn to a socially aware Church”. ³⁷³

The script was partly based on a series of stories by Malcolm Johnson, which highlighted the work of two Jesuit priests, Philip A. Carey and John M. Carridan. Scriptwriter Bud Schulberg, a self-described “liberal freethinker”, nevertheless was deeply impressed with the fiery Jesuit Carridan, a “tall, fast-talking, chain-smoking, hardheaded, sometimes profane Kerryman”. Carridan spoke of revolution, reconstruction, social justice, “Christian” (i.e. Papist) charity, and labour union power. This was the kind of priest Schulberg could relate to, a priest so un priestlike (for those times) that Kazan at one point pulled Schulberg aside and asked him, “Are you sure he’s a priest?” ³⁷⁴ This was the era when the Communist-inspired “worker priests” were gaining ground, and the Jesuits were often in the forefront. It was an era when the “Church” of Rome, still under an anti-Communist pope (Pius XII), was nevertheless beginning to change sides, from being decidedly anti-Communist to becoming increasingly pro-Communist. ³⁷⁵ Roman Catholicism was beginning to throw its huge weight behind the “workers of the world”. Worker-priests were agitators, on the side of the “workers”, and were often viewed as “men’s men” themselves, not just worldly-wise but worldly, cussing, hard drinking. All this was done to get the working classes to view the priest as “one of them”. And it worked.

This was how the priest was depicted in this film, modelled on the Jesuit Carridan. And also, another character in the film, a dockyard worker, is represented as a Christ-figure, and there is a very obvious parallel in the film with the crucifixion of Christ.

But despite such films, the times were changing. And Breen saw the writing on the wall.

The Battle is Lost: Joseph Breen Retires

Joseph Breen could no longer face up to the task. He had taken a beating and was feeling it. In 1954 he decided to retire from the Production Code Administration which he had dominated for two decades. He had sought to impose his Roman Catholic morality on Hollywood and had succeeded for years. The following quotation well summarises his influence: “Joseph Breen had more influence on the content and structure of films than any other single person in the long history of Hollywood. From 1934 to 1954, Hollywood’s golden age of studio production, producers had submitted more than seven thousand scripts and films for his inspection. His word was law during this long reign…. Without Breen and his view of the code, the films of this era would have had a much different look, structure, and feel.” ³⁷⁶

He had received various honours from his “Church” through the years. Loyola University of Los Angeles gave him an honorary degree in 1937, and St. Joseph’s University did so in 1954. Especially treasured by him was when he was made a Knight Commander of the Order of St. Gregory by the pope of Rome, Pius XI, in a ceremony at the Vatican itself. “The man who had ridden into the mouth of the dragon in Hollywood had literally been dubbed a knight.” ³⁷⁷

He had fought long and hard for Rome, and had been eminently successful. Rome’s domination of Hollywood’s “Golden Age” was primarily attributable to him. But it was now a different era. As Variety magazine stated in 1954, “Hollywood is taking a different view of screen ‘morality’ and, as a result, marked changes in [the] interpretation of the Production Code are on the way. In a sense, the picture business is embarking on a new era, for even the symbol of old-guard screen standards – Code administrator Joseph I. Breen – is doing a fade.” ³⁷⁸

In March 1954 Breen attended the annual Academy Award ceremony in Los Angeles, and was presented with an honorary Academy Award for “his conscientious, open-minded and dignified management of the Motion Picture Production Code.” ³⁷⁹ It was the movie industry’s shallow “tribute” to a man who had fought for years to tightly control the industry. The award was quite obviously given more as an empty gesture than from any sincerely felt gratitude. Hollywood moguls would never have viewed Breen’s censorship as “open-minded” in truth.

The Legion of Decency and Joseph Breen had worked closely together over the years. Although they sometimes differed, he and the Legion generally saw eye to eye and assisted one another in exerting their Roman Catholic influence over Hollywood.

With Breen gone, the Irish Roman Catholic dominance of Hollywood was over.

Chapter ten – The 1950s: Hollywood liberalises under Jesuit direction

Geoffrey Shurlock Replaces Breen; the Code Amended

The old guard was passing from the scene. Will Hays died in 1954, the same year that Breen retired, and Jesuit priest Daniel Lord, author of the Code, died in 1955. Breen was succeeded at the PCA by Geoffrey Shurlock. And in his appointment, too, there was an indication of changing times, for the Papist candidate to replace Breen, Jack Vizzard, did not get the post. Shurlock was not a Papist; he was an Episcopalian.

Although he pledged to stick to “the Breen principle” and, using Breen’s own phrase, “to make pictures reasonably acceptable, morally, to reasonable people”, Shurlock was certainly not as rigid as Breen had been, disagreeing with him on some of his decisions even when Breen had been his boss. Shurlock interpreted the Code far more liberally than Breen ever did, the latter being a strict conformist to the letter of the Code’s law. For this reason Martin Quigley and the Legion had been against Shurlock taking up the reins of the PCA. They wanted the PCA to remain firmly in Roman Catholic hands, but they were unsuccessful. Priest Thomas Little accused Shurlock of granting a seal to more immoral movies than had ever occurred before. Furthermore, under Shurlock the PCA came under ever-increasing pressure from all sides, dying a slow death year by year as it continued to lose ground. The “Shurlock Office” was just not the “Breen Office.” Calls were again being heard for the Code to be modernised. Sam Goldwyn stated, “The world has moved on in the years since the Code was adopted and I believe that, without departing from fundamentals, the motion picture industry should move with it.” ³⁸⁰

Inevitably, the MPAA buckled under the pressure and, in September 1954, approved the first really serious amendments to the Code since its adoption in 1930. Breen himself, before his retirement, had proposed the revisions.

Miscegenation would no longer be banned. If treated “within the careful limits of good taste”, inter-racial romance and marriage would now be permitted. Liquor, too, could be portrayed “within the careful limits of good taste”. Furthermore, certain words and phrases which had been forbidden previously were now permitted, including the words “hell” and “damn”, if their use was “governed by the discretion and the prudent advice of the Code Administration”.

TV Nudges Hollywood to “Spice Up” Movies

When, in 1955, Otto Preminger submitted the script for a film named The Man with the Golden Arm, a story about drug addiction, to the PCA, Shurlock rejected it. In addition to the drug theme, the film had suicide as a plot device, women in a strip bar, and was too violent. But Preminger ignored the PCA and made the film.

Shurlock rejected the finished movie. Legion reviewers from the IFCA were divided over it, with some saying it should be condemned but the majority opting for a mere “B” rating. Audiences flocked to see it. By this time drug themes were a regular part of many TV programmes, so audiences were not offended by the drug theme of this Hollywood film. Television, in fact, had far more liberty than the film industry, and this was one of the reasons why film-makers were becoming increasingly willing to challenge the PCA, the Legion, and the MPAA: if they did not make their movies more “spicy”, they argued, they would lose revenues as people would simply stay at home and watch TV.

Morals Plummet and the Legion’s Authority Wanes Still Further

Despite the Supreme Court’s 1952 ruling, the movie industry itself continued to enforce its Production Code for some years. But younger Americans in those post-war years were no longer simply accepting the values and norms of earlier generations. Morality itself was undergoing change, with previous standards now questioned and even increasingly jettisoned. The moral climate was deteriorating, things that had once been frowned upon were now being openly flaunted more and more, and the earlier standards were being mocked. The 1950s and even more so the 1960s experienced a social revolution that would completely alter the western world. As Bob Dylan, the voice of an entire generation of rebellious young people, was to later put it in a song, “The times they are a-changin.’” Indeed they were.

The Legion of Decency continued to fulminate against what it deemed to be objectionable movies after the Supreme Court’s 1952 ruling, the archbishop of Los Angeles called on priests in 1955 to warn young people about the dangers of immoral films, the American bishops announced plans to revitalise a campaign for morality in movies, and the pope of Rome himself, Pius XII, called on Italian film-makers to make moral films; ³⁸¹ but it was a different era and it was like trying to stem an unstoppable tide. The public, including a large section of the Roman Catholic public, no longer wanted to be dictated to by a moral watchdog. Morally, people had sunk to a new low in America and the western world, and were now wanting entertainment that was very far removed from that of previous generations.

Martin Quigley, devout Papist that he was, had fought for years through the Legion to keep movies “clean” according to Rome’s view of morality. In 1950 he was awarded the papal Medal of St. Gregory for his work in the Legion. He was extremely influential over Hollywood, the close friend of cardinals and priests. And yet by 1956 he was forced to concede, in a letter to the cardinal, Spellman, that “The Legion of Decency… is able no longer to exert its previous practical influence.” ³⁸² Indeed, Roman Catholics, like other Americans, were now “motorized and mobile, and had only to drive to an adjacent city to avoid a glowering parish priest at the comer Bijou. The battalions of obedient parishioners who once fell out of line at the ticket window had dispersed – gone to the suburbs, still observing the faith but refusing to genuflect on command.” ³⁸³ The American spirit of liberty of thought and independence had come into conflict with the Roman Catholic spirit of rigidity and top-down authoritarianism, and the latter was taking some serious body blows.

And then came a bombshell. And it was dropped by a Jesuit priest, no less.

Rome’s Policy Shift: the Jesuits Come Out Against Censorship

John Courtney Murray, a leading Jesuit theologian and intellectual, published an article on censorship in 1956 in which he questioned whether Roman Catholic adults were in fact obligated to follow the restrictions placed on the media by their religious leaders. He stated that censorship in a democracy was an infringement on freedom of expression and a dangerous one at that, and that only pornography should be restricted or banned. Without naming it, he even criticised the Legion of Decency’s power and influence. Boycotting a theatre, he argued, made Roman Catholics look ridiculous. He argued that they should be free to make up their own minds about what was obscene and what was not, and even appealed to Rome’s Canon Law, stating that Canon 1399, which established the categories of books which Papists were forbidden to read, appeared to suppose that ordinary Papists could decide for themselves. ³⁸⁴

But what had happened? Why had this Jesuit priest written such an article? Why had he even been permitted to by his superiors? What was afoot?

What must be understood is the nature of the Jesuit Order. The Jesuits, those fanatical agents of the Papacy, have also always been the intellectual vanguard of the Papal institution. Their goals are very long-term, their methods often extremely radical and even at variance with usual or traditional Papist policy. They are also far more lenient with Roman Catholics when it comes to sinful practices. For this reason they have often been intensely hated by other Romish religious orders. But they persist in pursuing their goals in their own way, and are not afraid to stand on many toes within the Papal hierarchy. They well know that they have far more power than any other religious order. Plus they have the ear of the pope of Rome, or, if a particular pope’s ear is not open to them, they have no scruples about removing him by an “accelerated demise”. History is replete with examples. ³⁸⁵

The truth is that “Murray’s article, published ‘with ecclesiastical approval,’ signalled an internal shift developing within the Catholic church over the role of movies.” ³⁸⁶ Let the reader keep in mind what was stated in the chapter on the Jesuit use of the dramatic arts centuries ago: how they lowered the perceived moral standards of the time and introduced elements and themes considered “borderline”, so as to keep their hold on their audiences. We wrote that it would become clear that the lessons the Jesuits learned centuries ago when producing their theatrical plays would be applied by them to the movie industry. This is precisely what was now happening. A number of intellectually “progressive” Jesuits had surveyed the Hollywood scene, and come to the conclusion that if Rome was to have any influence on the film industry in the world that was taking shape in the 1950s, an entirely different tactic would have to be pursued. The traditional methods, as epitomised by the Legion of Decency, would no longer work; that was self-evident. The world had passed the Legion by. It was a relic of an earlier time. Anew world required new methods, and the Jesuits believed they had the solution. The solution was not boycotts, pickets, fulminations about mortal sin, threats against theatre owners, and so on. No; the solution was far more subtle. And the fact that Murray’s article had been published “with ecclesiastical approval” showed that the new Jesuit tactic had won the approval of the Romish hierarchy.

The Jesuits were at the forefront of this new tactic. There was Murray; there was John G. Ford, a professor of Romish theology; Harold C. Gardiner, the author of The Catholic Viewpoint on Censorship; and Gerald Kelly, another professor of theology. All were priests, and all were Jesuit priests. Another priest was Francis J. Connell. He was not a Jesuit, but he was with them in this internal shift taking place.

These men did not necessarily oppose all censorship. In all likelihood they would not have been in favour of the unrestrained violence, sex, nudity and profanity that is so common in movies today. They believed, however, that censorship at the time was too oppressive. They did not necessarily believe the Legion should be disbanded, but rather that at the very least it should undergo a major overhaul. They believed that Roman Catholics would not necessarily be morally defiled by watching films which dealt with such subjects as adultery, divorce, crime, etc. Perhaps most importantly, they believed that the old tactics employed by the Legion made the Roman Catholic “Church” look foolish and old-fashioned. In the modem world, the Jesuits believed, this was not the way to promote Romanism or to combat Protestantism. Such methods belonged to the Dark Ages. It was time to change.

The arguments were not in fact new. Back in 1946 Francis J. Connell, one of the intellectual theologian-priests mentioned above, stated that Romanists were not strictly obligated to follow the Legion’s decisions. John G. Ford, one of the Jesuits theologians mentioned above, wrote that no Romish ecclesiastical law made the Legion’s classifications binding on all American Romanists. He pointed out that most Romanists – including himself – did not understand how something could be a mortal sin in one diocese but not in another. “There is no universal obligation,” he wrote, “binding Catholics in the United States under pain of sin to stay away from pictures classified as condemned by the Legion of Decency.” ³⁸⁷ Then in 1957 the Jesuit Murray, assisted by the Jesuit Kelly, published his views as well.

Naturally enough, this policy change was not welcomed by the old guard, such as Spellman, Little and Quigley, who continued to support the Legion’s position. Quigley, incensed at Murray’s article, branded the Jesuit’s view as being of the “Left”. In this he was right, for these “progressive” Jesuits were leftist in their stance. Quigley wrote frantically to Spellman, lamenting the declining influence of the Legion and the fact that large numbers of Papists no longer abode by the Legion’s classifications. He pointed out that even in his own diocese, under his own nose so to speak, a Jesuit priest named Joseph M. Moffitt had, in a sermon, asserted that the Legion pledge, taken by Papists annually, was voluntary, and that it was not a sin to go and see a movie that had been condemned by the Legion.

Baby Doll (1956): the Roman Catholic Machine Fights Back

In late 1956 the film Baby Doll was released. Described by Time magazine as “just possibly the dirtiest American-made motion picture that has ever been legally exhibited”, ³⁸⁸ it was about the marriage of a teenaged girl to a middle-aged man. The PCA was unhappy with the script and called for changes. When Jack Vizzard saw the film he was not satisfied, but director Elia Kazan finally convinced him that nothing could be cut from the film without damaging the story, and so a seal of approval was granted.

The Legion, however, was not so accommodating, and condemned the film as “morally repellent”, “grievously offensive”, “replete with sordid details, Freudian symbolism and undertones of perversion.” ³⁸⁹

Knowing how this film could weaken the Legion’s influence, Little called for local Legion directors to fight the film with everything they had. Quigley and Little got Spellman, known as “America’s Pope”, to condemn the film from his pulpit, reading a statement that had been prepared for him by Quigley, and describing the film as revolting, immoral, corrupting, evil, and (for good measure) unpatriotic as well – being, as he put it, possibly a greater threat to America than international Communism was. ³⁹⁰ On previous occasions when he had condemned films, Spellman had written a letter to be read by all priests during their Sunday masses, but this time he personally condemned it from his pulpit in St Patrick’s Cathedral. This was designed to impress Roman Catholics with just how seriously he viewed the whole matter.

This strong condemnation by Spellman was a triumph for Quigley, who thereby sent a clear message to those priests who were questioning the Legion’s authority that he was prepared to fight tooth and nail for the Legion to remain conservative, and take a firm stand against immoral movies.

Spellman (or rather, Quigley) was actually right in the sense that the Communists were using, and have continued to use, the movie industry to destroy the morals of the West; so that in very large measure, Hollywood is at least as great a threat as external Communist forces. This one movie, taken on its own, would not have been as serious a threat as he made out, but certainly, taken as a whole, Hollywood’s baneful influence was doing incalculable damage to the people of America and indeed, of the West in general. Especially when one bears in mind that Hollywood studios were riddled with Communists or Communist sympathisers. But without in any way condoning the film’s overt sexuality, labelling the film “unpatriotic” was without basis. It was a terrible movie for various reasons, but this was not one of them.

Spellman also lambasted the PCA, posing the question as to whether it had fallen into decay and collapse. It had once faithfully served Rome’s interests in Hollywood, but this was no longer something that could be taken for granted. He warned Roman Catholics in New York that if they went to see Baby Doll it would be “under pain of sin.” The Papal machine went into action. A number of bishops supported Spellman’s stance. Behind the scenes, the Legion leaned on theatre owners and distributors. One Papist theatre chain owner, Joseph P. Kennedy, whose son John would one day become the first Papist U.S. president, forbade his theatres from showing the movie. Some cities banned the movie entirely. The powerful Papist organisation, the Knights of Columbus, picketed at some venues, and the Catholic War Veterans took up the cause as well. Papist publications condemned the film in very strong terms. One British Jesuit priest named J.A.V. Burke, director of the Catholic Film Institute in Britain, lost his post as a result of Spellman’s mighty influence for saying that Baby Doll could be viewed by adults even though it was repellant. A British cardinal removed him from his position. As Burke himself put it: “the long arm of clerical vengeance reached across the Atlantic”. ³⁹¹

The movie’s director, Elia Kazan, fought back. “In this country, judgments on matters of thought and taste are not handed down ironclad from an unchallenged authority,” he told Spellman. “People see for themselves and finally judge for themselves. This is as it should be. It’s our tradition and our practice.” ³⁹² Kazan himself would not have dared to even say such things to a cardinal of Rome a mere two decades earlier. But he was less than truthful when he said it was American tradition and practice to see and judge for themselves, because he well kn ew that for decades Hollywood itself had bowed in submission to the will of the Romish hierarchy, editing its films to meet Roman Catholic requirements.

Others came out against the Legion’s stance on the film as well. The leftist American Civil Liberties Union said the Legion’s boycott was “contrary to the spirit of free expression in the First Amendment.” A number of New York Protestant ministers spoke out against the campaign, saying it was “the efforts of a minority group to impose its wishes on the city.” One wonders if they actually approved of the film. Even some Roman Catholics, who had imbibed more of the spirit of Americanism than their “Church” would have approved of, criticised the Legion’s campaign. One of these was John Cogley, writing in Commonweal. He believed Spellman had the right to issue the warning he did, but what troubled him was what he termed the use of “naked economic pressure”. This, he said, was similar to the coercive methods used by the Inquisition (which was Roman Catholic, be it noted!), and said that the “Church” should only use moral suasion to change people’s hearts. This sounded decidedly un-Papist, and it was. What is more, he was right. Such criticism did not go unnoticed by the Legion and its supporters. Quigley wrote: “The greatest hurt we are suffering is what is written and spoken by various persons who identify themselves as Catholics.” ³⁹³

The Spellman/Quigley condemnation of Baby Doll had the effect of making Roman Catholics want to see it even more. As Kazan said, “It took Cardinal Spellman to make it famous.” ³⁹⁴ Famous, perhaps, but not quite the financial success for which he had hoped; for although it made money, this concerted Papist condemnation did cause the movie to make less money than it would otherwise have done. Kazan was forced to admit that Spellman’s “attack hurt us… I never made a profit.” ³⁹⁵ And Ben Kalmenson, Warner Brothers’ executive vice-president, told Quigley after receiving a huge number of letters from people opposed to the film, “It was a terrible experience for our company, and we never want to go through it again.” ³⁹⁶ Even though other factors were at play – notably the fact that the film simply was not a “great” film, even by worldly standards – these things showed that, even in 1956, Roman Catholic influence and power over which movies should or should not be seen was still considerable. And in fact eight years were to go by before any other Hollywood studio took on the Legion like that again.

Tea and Sympathy (1956): Popish Prelate vs. Popish Publisher

In 1956 a film containing the themes of adultery and homosexuality was released, entitled Tea and Sympathy. It was based on a hit Broadway play of the same name. The PCA and the Legion fought hard to squash it, but in the end were unsuccessful. MGM studios obtained the rights to make the movie version of the play, although it decided to tone down the filmed version. The screenplay indeed contained toned-down homosexuality and a somewhat softened stance on the seduction of boys by grown women. But Geoffrey Shurlock and his assistant Jack Vizzard made it clear that a seal could not be obtained from the PCA for the film. The homosexual theme made it necessary for the PCA to automatically reject it, and the added theme of adultery between a married woman and a schoolboy made it doubly unacceptable.

MGM decided to challenge the PCA decision, calling for the MPAA board of directors to examine the script. The board told MGM and the PCA to work out a compromise, enabling the movie to be made and satisfying the PCA so that a seal could be issued. After some months of changes Shurlock felt satisfied.

It was another matter, however, with the Legion of Decency, which had no intention of approving such a film. But the days when such noises from the Legion would have made moviemakers quake in their boots were over, and MGM made the film. The female Legion reviewers from the IFCA, as well as priest Little and his new assistant, priest Paul Hayes, viewed the film. The IFCA women were not at all happy with it, not because of the homosexual theme but because of the adultery in it. Further changes were demanded by Little, but despite a number of alterations being made, the Legion was poised to condemn the film.

At a yet further screening of the film by Legion officials, Little also invited almost 40 prominent Roman Catholics, including fifteen priests, to pass judgment on Tea and Sympathy. Some of the priests were professors of Roman Catholic moral theology, and not all of them supported the Legion. After they had seen the film, Martin Quigley argued that it must be condemned, but not all agreed with him, including a number of the priests. In the end only four priests voted to condemn it, and eleven of them said it deserved either a “B” or an “A2” (unobjectionable for adults) rating. A Romish bishop, William A. Scully, who had been among those who reviewed the film, was the one who took the final decision: he decided that the changes that had been made, disguising the homosexuality and showing remorse for the adultery committed, meant that the film could be given a “B” rating.

The movie, when released, was a box-office hit. But Martin Quigley was a very unhappy man. Scully, the bishop, had over-ruled him. Quigley, however, was not giving up. He wanted the Legion to continue to be the conservative moral watchdog of Hollywood. He had an enemy, though, in Scully, who, along with Little, knew that Quigley was viewed in Hollywood as speaking for the Legion; in fact, he was viewed as pretty much being the Legion. Scully commanded Little “to break down the reputation [of Quigley] in the motion picture industry of being ‘the Legion of Decency.’” ³⁹⁷ Yes, the false “Church” of Rome is full of ambitious, jealous men, with their own power politics being played out behind the scenes as they jostle for positions and fame and respect. These are not Christian men, motivated by Christian principles!

And so, “The fight over Tea and Sympathy marked the beginning of a curious contest between the Catholic hierarchy and a Catholic layman over what subjects movies would be allowed to present. A significant issue in their growing disagreement over what was acceptable entertainment was which of the two men would control the Legion of Decency: the prelate [Scully] or the publisher [Quigley].” ³⁹⁸

The Code Amended Further

In 1956 the MPAA committee met to consider ways to again modernise the Code. One of those on the committee was Daniel O’Shea, president of RKO studios. He was a devout Romanist, and acted as a mole for the Legion, reporting on the committee’s activities to Little and Quigley (Quigley served as a special consultant to the committee), to keep them abreast of what was being decided. He warned the Legion, for example, of Shurlock’s attempts to liberalise the Code. ³⁹⁹

In December, after half a year of deliberation, the committee liberalised the Code somewhat. According to Eric Johnston, when he announced that the Code had been revised, it demonstrated that the Code was “intended to be – and has been – a flexible living document – not a dead hand laid on artistic and creative endeavor.” ⁴⁰⁰ Certain words that had been deemed profane and had been forbidden were now removed from the list, and a more relaxed stance was adopted towards themes of abortion, drugs, prostitution, scenes with excessive alcohol consumption, etc. The criterion was that such themes had to be handled “in good taste.” But such things as nudity, sexual perversion, comic bedroom scenes, open-mouth kissing, and venereal disease remained off-limits. As for miscegenation, it was simply not mentioned at all in this revision.

In one area, that of “National Feelings”, the Code was made more restrictive than before, in that it stated no picture would be granted a seal that tended to incite bigotry or hatred among peoples of different races, religions or national origins, and that offensive words were to be avoided.

Independent film-makers simply ignored the PCA and the Legion, and the limits were constantly tested and pushed.

Storm Center (1956): the Legion’s Big Blunder

Powerful it certainly was; but the Legion was struggling. It objected to the movie Rebel Without a Cause, with its youthful questioning of authority, and to the movie And God Created Woman, with its overt sexuality. But despite its protests people filled theatres to see both of them.

Then came a big blunder on the Legion’s part. It opposed a movie called Storm Center, which contained neither sex nor violence but which was about a librarian falsely accused of being a Communist sympathiser for refusing to remove a pro-Communist book from the library. The PCA was satisfied with it, but the Legion said it was leftist propaganda and placed it in its “Separate” category because, as the Legion’s assistant director, priest Paul Hayes, explained, it was a film that was morally acceptable but harmful on philosophical or dogmatic grounds, confusing liberty with unrestricted freedom. This argument was foolish, because pro-Communist books need to be read, analysed and exposed by the opponents of Communism. Communism can only be defeated if the public understands it, and knows how to answer it. And the same goes for any false ideology, and any false religion as well.

Besides, the Legion’s classification system was created for the purpose of condemning immorality in films, not political propaganda. Thus whenever the Legion attempted to condemn a film for its political message, it ran into trouble.

In the movie the librarian refuses to remove a pro-Communist book from the shelves when the city council orders her to do so, because freedom of speech is guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution. She is accused of being a Communist, the town turns against her, and the library is burned to the ground. In the end it is clear she was not a Communist sympathiser.

Communists did in fact seek to get their propagandistic literature onto library bookshelves, for the purpose of sowing the seeds of Communism among the people. But again it must be said, in order for such literature to be answered and exposed for the evil it is, people must be aware of what Communism is, how it works, what arguments it uses, etc. And how can this be done if it is impossible to obtain the information? The problem was that the Legion did have some grounds for concern. Julian Blaustein, the film’s producer, had been investigated by the California Senate Tenney Committee for leftist connections (as the Legion discovered). ⁴⁰¹ It was indeed possible that the film was an attempt, by leftists and/or Communists, to send out the message that people who wanted to censor Communist literature were fanatical narrow-minded idiots. This would be entirely in keeping with Communist tactics: a subtle, deceptive attempt, by means of a very powerful, visual medium, to indoctrinate people into Communism is certainly not the same thing as a straightforward handbook of Communist principles. The Soviet Union and Nazi Germany, well knowing the immense propagandistic power of films, made great use of them to spread their poison – a fact pointed out by Roman Catholic publications in America, which denounced Storm Center as the same kind of propaganda. In this, at least, they may have been right.

Little was supported in his decision to place the film in the “Separate” category by most Romanist publications. Commonweal, however, criticised the decision because the Legion had no mandate to condemn films for their political content. And the Legion decision was also condemned by the Motion Picture Industry Council. Also, the MPAA’s Community Relations Department supported the film. It was clear that many felt the Legion had become way too arrogant. But Jack Vizzard believed that the Legion was the same – it was Hollywood which was constantly pushing the boundaries that caused the friction. In this of course he was right. Hollywood was constantly pushing the boundaries, trying to get away with more and more, whereas the Legion was seeking (albeit more broadly than before) to uphold Roman Catholic standards of morality and politics.

Rome’s New, Liberal Approach to Movies: the 1957 OCIC Conference

The Legion continued to fight against the increasing liberalisation of the movies, but the Roman Catholic institution itself was beginning to liberalise, and the Legion was becoming an embarrassing relic of an earlier, more authoritarian and conservative “Church” to those driving this liberalisation. As their education had improved over what their parents and grandparents had enjoyed, large numbers of Roman Catholics were questioning their “Church’s” stance on many issues, and they felt that an organisation such as the Legion of Decency was treating them like children and idiots.

The Jesuit Order, in particular, was driving the liberalisation of the Papal institution, in order to make it more relevant in a rapidly changing world. Jesuit priest, John Courtney Murray, the religion editor of America, was advocating the doctrine that no minority religious institution (and the Papal institution was a minority religion within the United States) could impose its own standards on those of other religious institutions in a pluralistic society. This doctrine was resisted by other priests, such as Francis Connell, dean of the School of Sacred Technology at Catholic University, who stated that as the Roman Catholic “Church” was the only true Church on earth, its sacred duty was to compel all citizens to obey its moral standards even though it was a minority religion within the U.S. He told priest Little that the apostles themselves, despite being a minority group, “had the right to tell any Ruler of the Earth… that he must abolish any type of theatrical production they deemed harmful to morality.” ⁴⁰² Precisely which part of the Bible this priest pulled his doctrine out of, we are not told, and not surprisingly, for it is simply not found anywhere in the Scriptures.

More and more voices were being heard, from within the Roman Catholic community itself, against the Legion and its work. This situation was very shocking to Martin Quigley, who had worked for so many years in the Legion’s defence.

Even the Legion’s annual pledge came under fire, with priests themselves criticising it. Things were looking increasingly bleak for the Legion’s work. According to Quigley, ever-growing numbers of priests were actually telling their flocks that the pledge was optional. Roman Catholics were attending condemned films in growing numbers, and many priests were claiming it was not a sin to do so. Quigley was a deeply troubled man.

In January 1957 a Roman Catholic gathering took place at a Jesuit school in Cuba, for the purpose of studying cinema as an international mode of communication. It was organised by the Office Catholique International du Cinema (OCIC), which was created as far back as 1928, and delegates from 31 countries in Europe and the Americas attended. It was very interested in the subject of the classification of films.

The pope of Rome, Pius XII, sent a monsignor as his representative to the conference; and a message from Pius was read out in which he spoke of the cinema as “a privileged instrument” that could elevate men if used properly. He also wanted to see Roman Catholics appreciate film s even more, via instruction from their ecclesiastical leaders. ⁴⁰³ Indeed, the OCIC wanted to see Roman Catholics actually study movies in Romanist colleges, universities and seminaries; to attend good ones; etc.

One can see from this a real sign of the changed attitude of the Romish hierarchy, from the pope of Rome down, to the whole subject of movies. Men like Quigley represented the old school, but, devout Papist though he was, his “Church” was passing him by. A new approach was in the air. Indeed, Quigley was aware of it and although he had been invited to attend by the Legion’s monsignor, Thomas Little, who was there along with the Legion’s Mary Looram, he did not do so, believing that the OCIC had been taken over by leftists who did not uphold the morals he believed in. In this suspicion he was not far off the mark: the OCIC had supported and praised movies that contained sexual themes, etc. Clearly, although it was a Roman Catholic organisation, it reflected the changed stance of many within Rome towards such subjects in films and in society in general.

What had happened?

Rome, seeing the power of the film industry worldwide, was now prepared to overlook certain moral matters in movies if by doing so a wider, greater objective could be achieved. Not being a true Christian church, Rome, seeing that the morals of the world had changed, realised that in order for it to have influence it would have to lower its own standards along with the rest of the world, turning a blind eye to such things if by so doing it could retain an influence over its multiplied millions of subjects. In this it followed the world, because, unlike the true people of God, it is a part of the world, not separate from it. It was also following Jesuitism in this matter. The true Christian Church uses nothing but the preaching of the Gospel to win converts; the false “Church” of Rome, however, has to attract the worldly by worldly methods. Thus, while it preached morality, fidelity in marriage, the sin of abortion, etc., it felt that in matters of entertainment it would allow its people to indulge in such things, thereby keeping them happy and enabling Rome to focus on matters it considered more important to the “big picture” it always kept in view.

Instead of criticising or condemning movies that did not come up to its own official moral position, Rome’s new tactic was to rather praise the ones that did, and to be far more liberal in its outlook on the immoral ones. Quigley knew this was going to be the new approach, and he was dead set against it. So he stayed away.

In the very first session of the OCIC meeting, it became crystal-clear that a new brand of priest was loose on the world. Thomas Little gave a presentation in which he described the relationship between the PCA and the Legion of Decency, and said that this relationship meant there was a voice for morality and compensating moral values in American movies. But when he finished there was much anger among the delegates, and a Belgian Dominican priest laid into him, lashing out at his comments. Then Mary Looram, long-time chairwoman of the Motion Picture Department of the IFCA and head of the Legion’s reviewing staff, tried to defend the Legion, but did such a poor job of it that she was publicly derided by the audience. According to Jack Vizzard of the PCA, the meeting concluded that the Legion was “too legalistic and negative”. As for Little, he resigned as chairman of the sub-committee the very day after his presentation.

Considering that this conference had been held under the authority of the Roman pope himself, the public attacks on the American Legion of Decency, by Romish delegates from other Romish countries, confirmed that Rome was now advocating a more liberal approach to the movie industry. And after the conference was over, it was also clear that Rome’s new, more “broad-minded” approach was understood in American Roman Catholic circles as well. The archbishop, William A. Scully, chairman of the Episcopal Committee on Motion Pictures, although calling on Romanists to still support the Legion, nevertheless emphasised that it was not a censoring body, and praised the Cuba conference for the suggestion that Papists should actually study films.

And meanwhile, Jesuits continued to work for a greater liberalisation of what Roman Catholics could see in the theatres. Two of the “progressive” Jesuit priests, Gerald A. Kelly and John Ford, in an article published in September 1957, said that there were no official “Church” documents stating that viewing a particular category of film was a mortal sin. Individual priests and cardinals may have said so, but there was no official policy. In general, the priests said, it was best to refrain from watching films rated as “B” or “C”, but there may be exceptions, and thus to claim that all condemned films were almost always an occasion for mortal sin was being too strict. They even criticised the bishops who had originally founded the Legion of Decency.

Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison (1957): Another Pro-Papist War Film

Even though the times were definitely changing, Hollywood still brought out war movies from time to time that exalted Roman Catholicism. In this particular film, very loosely based on a true story, a devout nun and a U.S. marine are lost on a Pacific atoll, and come to see the similarities between her love for her religion and his love for the Marine Corps. The marine assures the nun that Roman Catholics are “good marines, the best”, which makes the nun very happy; and she blesses his fight against the Japanese and assures him that God protects His soldiers.

The film’s director, John Huston, planned all along to make this film a very virtuous one, insofar as the nun’s virginity and her commitment to her religion were concerned. The marine tells her he loves her and asks her not to take her final vows, but she refuses, and he accepts this. And he never forces himself on her. The film strongly promoted Romanism, and the supposed virtue and holiness of a nun’s life.

A Farewell to Arms (1957): Another Firm Nod Towards Priestly Virtue and Courage

This film was the second screen version of a book by Ernest Hemingway. In the first, released way back in 1932, a young couple’s marriage vows are blessed by a Romish priest-chaplain, and in the film’s last scene they go to heaven. All this, of course, was to please the PCA and the Legion of Decency, for Hemingway, a convert to Romanism himself, did not have these things in his story. In the second film version, released in 1957, yet another scene is added that Hemingway did not have: the martyrdom of a priest and a statement of the greatness of the Romish religion. When, during the war, a hospital has to be evacuated, the doctor, who has been opposed to what the priest-chaplain represents, is under orders to leave even though he (like the priest) does not want to, and now for the first time he is impressed by the priest and his religion, for the priest is staying. He says to the priest, “I am ordered by the military to leave, but you have much better orders to remain, Father. I salute your commanding officer.” The priest and his patients are shown singing the Ave Maria as they die in the attack on the hospital. ⁴⁰⁴ It was thus yet another war film in which the Papal institution was depicted as the great moral good – even though this very Papal institution had given its immense backing to Hitler, Mussolini and Franco. Such is the power of Hollywood to distort the truth; to rewrite it, in fact.

Thus, even during the protracted and slow death-throes of the PCA and the Legion, and consequently of Romish censorship of Hollywood, there were still films exalting Romanism. And there would be for years to come.

The Papal Encyclical Miranda Prorsus

At this point it would be very profitable to pause and examine the papal encyclical entitled Miranda Prorsus, which laid out (albeit in couched language) the new approach the Vatican was now pursuing to make use of films, TV and radio for achieving its goals. It was released by the pope of Rome, Pius XII, in September 1957.

In it, Pius called the motion picture one of the “most important discoveries of our times”, which had the potential to be “a worthy instrument by which men can be guided toward salvation.” He stated that it was “essential that the minds and inclinations of the spectators be rightly trained and educated” to understand the film-makers’ art form, and called on Roman Catholics to study the cinema in Romish schools and universities. ⁴⁰⁵

Pius was certainly not advocating that the Legion of Decency be dismantled; far from it. He made it clear that the Legion should continue to classify movies according to Romish moral standards, and that Papists should not attend immoral films. But even so the encyclical was very different from the one issued back in 1936 by his predecessor, Pius XI, entitled Vigilante Cum, which called for immoral films to be banned.

We will examine some key paragraphs of the 1957 encyclical:

Para. 34 says: “The Catholic Church is keenly desirous that these means [cinema, sound broadcasting and TV] be converted to the spreading and advancement of everything that can be truly called good. Embracing, as she does, the whole of human society within the orbit of her divinely appointed mission, she is directly concerned with the fostering of civilisation among all peoples.”

Right here the game is given away. Rome desires to “convert” these forms of mass media to her own purposes. Furthermore, as far as she is concerned, she has a divine mission to subjugate the entire human race to the feet of the pope of Rome, who is viewed as God on earth, the King of kings, the true ruler of all mankind. As for advancing “good”, Rome means something very different by this word, as she does by others, as expressed in the following paragraph from the encyclical:

Para. 35: “This, then, must be the principal aim of the cinema, sound broadcasting and television: to serve the cause of truth and virtue…”

“Good”, “truth” and “virtue”: wonderful sounding words, but what does Rome mean by them? One would be very mistaken if one assumes she means what the true Christian means by them! The question must be asked: whose “truth” (for example) must be served? The truth of Christ in His holy Word, the Bible? Certainly not, for Rome has never embraced Christ’s truth nor upheld it. She means her own version of “truth”, “virtue”, and “good”.

Para. 51: “These new arts which directly affect the eye and ear may give rise to innumerable benefits or innumerable evils and dangers, according to the use which man makes of them. Realising this, the Church has a duty in this regard which she is at pains to perform. Her task is… concerned… with religion and with the direction and control of morals. To facilitate the proper performance of this task, our predecessor of undying memory, Pius XI, declared and proclaimed that ‘it will be necessary that in each country the Bishops set up a permanent national reviewing office in order to be able to promote good motion pictures, classifying the others, and bring this judgment to the knowledge of priests and faithful.’ He added, too, that it was essential that all Catholic initiative relating to the cinema be directed towards an honourable end. In several countries the Bishops, bearing these directives in mind, have set up offices of this kind…”

Note the words: “control of morals”. Rome desires to control the morals of the whole world, for in her judgment the entire world must be Romanist. Working always towards this end, she knows the immense value of the mass media to enable her to achieve this aim. Roman Catholics are duty-bound to obey their pope in all matters of (Papist) faith and morals; and he directs every sphere of life for them, from birth to the grave. “Catholic freedom is restricted solely to the choice of methods to be used for implementing Catholic social policies and directives. In principle it is identical to Communist freedom. Significantly, both systems have the same aim and both use the same methods”. ⁴⁰⁶ Indeed so: both employ such methods as opposition to freedom of thought, freedom of the press, and freedom of speech.

Para. 52: “We desire that the offices referred to be set up without delay in every country where they do not already exist. They are to be entrusted to men who are experienced in these arts, under the guidance of a priest especially chosen by the Bishops…. At the same time we urge that the faithful, and particularly those who are militant in the cause of Catholic Action, be suitably instructed, so that they may appreciate the need for giving to these offices their willing, united and effective support.”

The pope of Rome’s explicit mention of Catholic Action in this paragraph must not go unnoticed.

Let us next consider para. 76 of this encyclical:

“To Catholic film directors and producers we issue a paternal injunction not to allow films to be made which are at variance with the faith and Christian [i.e. Roman Catholic] moral standards. Should this happen – which God forbid – then it is for the Bishops to rebuke them and, if necessary, to impose upon them appropriate sanctions.”

We have already seen how in the United States, the Legion of Decency exercised precisely the kind of power desired by the Roman pope in this paragraph, for decades. The era following the encyclical’s release in 1957 was marked by a number of high-profile, pro-Papist films emanating from Hollywood. This continued till almost the end of the 1960s. Unfortunately for Rome, however, this encyclical came a little too late to have the great effect the Papal hierarchy hoped it would. Certainly it did have a huge effect, but not to the extent it was hoped. And the reason for this, as we have seen and shall yet see, is that the western world, and American Roman Catholicism with it, had changed in those post-war years, rising up against authority and the beliefs and morals of earlier generations, and there was a swing away from authoritarianism, even by young Roman Catholics. For now, let us continue examining this document, for it clearly sets out the papal agenda, even if, when it came to Hollywood, it only had a brief period of real application in the years that followed, as the “Golden Age” came to an end.

Para. 96 reads: “Meanwhile we are constrained, Venerable Brethren, to exhort you paternally to make every effort proportionate to the needs and resources of your respective dioceses to increase and render more effective the number of programmes which deal with Catholic interests.”

And how to achieve this aim? Obviously by increasing the number of Roman Catholics working in the media, who would then control the flow of information, the type of entertainment seen, etc., etc.

Para.97: “Clearly of great assistance here would be the establishing of training centres and courses of study in those countries where Catholics employ the latest radio equipment and have the added advantage that their day to day experience gives them.”

Was this instruction carried out? If the facts from Australia are anything to go by, it most certainly was: there the Roman Catholic institution owned 50% of the largest programming organisation outside of the United States, and through it Rome had an interest in a radio announcers’ school, concert promotions, and the programming of other stations. ⁴⁰⁷

Television, in particular, which was still fairly new when this encyclical was issued, was of particular importance to the Papacy for spreading its propaganda. In para. 113 the encyclical says:

“We paternally exhort those Catholics who are well qualified by their learning, sound doctrine, and knowledge of these arts, and in particular clerics and members of religious orders and congregations, to turn their attention to this new form of art [TV]. Let them work side by side in support of this cause, so that all the benefits which the past and true progress have contributed to the mind’s development may redound in full measure to the advantage of television.”

How successful was Rome at this? The evidence speaks for itself, as TV programmes were very pro-Papist and pushed the Papist agenda.

Of course, when Pius stated that movies were a noble art which could, potentially, be of benefit to mankind, the growing numbers of American Roman Catholic liberals heard his statement as giving permission now for movies to depict “adult” themes. ⁴⁰⁸ These young Papists were not as intensely loyal to the traditional, ultra-conservative Roman “Church” of their parents: unlike earlier generations of American Papists, many of them were now attending universities, where they were coming under all kinds of influences, via literature, art, etc. This has always been Rome’s dilemma in the United States: how to maintain absolute control over its subjects in a country where freedom of speech, freedom of expression, and freedom of access to all kinds of information constantly worked against its purposes. Rome and the USA have always been at odds, for this and many other reasons. The Vatican views the United States as a great prize to be won; but it has never quite been able to use the methods it has employed with such effect in other, less “open” countries. Ironically, the very movie industry which it had used to such great effect in America for decades, was now potentially on the threshold of being one of its greatest threats.

The Legion Outsmarted by the Jesuits; Quigley Cast Aside

Martin Quigley was by now a deeply troubled man. His conservative position on immoral movies had been greatly undermined, even attacked, by the Cuba conference, and by the stance taken on movies by a number of leading liberal Jesuit intellectuals, notably John Courtney Murray, Harold C. Gardiner, John C. Ford, and Gerald Kelly. These men stated that Legion classifications were no more than guidelines for Roman Catholic adults. The Jesuits were very much behind Rome’s new, liberal approach to the movie industry, and Quigley knew it, writing at a later date: “This Jesuit clique, which has dominated the conduct of the Legion office since 1957, is opposed to the condemnation of any motion picture – or any artifact by a Catholic agency – in this ‘pluralistic society.’” ⁴⁰⁹ He also knew that his own previously unassailable position of influence within the Legion was now far from secure. Something had to be done. Quigley felt the best thing to do was to bring a young Jesuit whom he could control into the organisation. He thought this would silence the Jesuit criticism. But he was very wrong. He plainly had no real understanding of Jesuit techniques or intrigue, nor of Jesuit power and loyalty.

The Jesuit priest he chose was Patrick J. Sullivan. He replaced priest Paul Hayes as assistant to priest Little in September 1957. But Sullivan was a Jesuit first and foremost, and would not bow and scrape to Quigley. In fact, he agreed with fellow-Jesuit John Courtney Murray’s belief that Rome could not impose its views on non-Papists. At least, this was what the Jesuits were saying; but they always act to advance Romanism, even when appearing to be more accommodating. Still, to begin with Quigley thought Sullivan was a good appointment. Sullivan told him that he wanted to “sell” the Legion to his brother- Jesuits.

But Sullivan wanted changes at the Legion. And when Miranda Prorsus was released a week after Sullivan came to work at the Legion, the priest saw it as the support he needed to make changes. He was in all likelihood behind the bishops’ new statement on censorship, which declared that “good taste will inevitably narrow the field of what is morally objectionable” in movies.

In November 1957, the Episcopal Committee on Motion Pictures held a meeting to discuss the classification system and the encyclical Miranda Prorsus. It decided to make changes to the Legion’s classifications, and these changes were drafted by Sullivan: the “A2” category would classify films that were acceptable for both adults and adolescents; a new “A3” category was “morally acceptable for adults”, and the Legion could now recommend films it believed were particularly good. The “B” category was for those films which could be morally dangerous for viewers, and the “C” category was for entirely bad and harmful films.

So, for the very first time, Roman Catholics would now actually be encouraged to attend films recommended by the Legion, and adults and adolescents were now permitted far more freedom to choose what they wished to see. The Legion stated that the new “A2” category might now include films that were previously rated “B”; it said that adolescents should not be “excessively protected”; and local priests were told to educate Roman Catholic youth so that they could watch more “mature” films. There was no doubt about it: the liberalisation of Rome’s attitude to Hollywood was now well under way. In this way, as it has ever done, Rome hoped to hold onto its youth.

Another change that was implemented was to greatly weaken the women reviewers of the IFCA, who had been the Legion reviewing staff from as far back as the mid-1930s. These Roman Catholic women were generally more conservative and the new liberalisation required that their influence be diluted: the Legion appointed a board of consultors, consisting of priests and “laymen”, who became very influential. ⁴¹⁰

Quigley was furious at these changes, and realised he had miscalculated in appointing Sullivan, who had “succeeded in imposing a new and different approach to… the Legion’s function”, as he wrote to the archbishop, William A. Scully. He warned Scully that the changes that had been implemented by Sullivan could greatly undermine the influence of the Legion. He also said that Hollywood studios were rejoicing over the changes. In this he was correct. Sullivan, however, was simply carrying out his orders as a Jesuit when he drafted the new classification system, and Scully, as chairman of the ECMP, had approved them all. The American bishops also endorsed them, and had in fact expressed their appreciation of the work of Jesuits Ford and Kelly for contributing towards “a better understanding” of the Legion’s work; i.e. a more liberal approach. ⁴¹¹

Martin Quigley, faithful Papist that he was, was now on the other end of the spectrum from the bishops of Rome with regards to the film industry. No longer was the Legion of Decency’s policy dictated by him. Time had passed him by, his own “Church” had passed him by, and he was cast aside.

Open Season on the Code

One Hollywood mogul after another was now openly defying the Code, so that Variety magazine conceded in 1957, “It’s open season on Hollywood’s Production Code and the set of morality standards appears the target of brickbats from various directions. There have been pro and con about its functions in the past, of course, but rarely has there been such a concentration of expressions of concern about its values.” ⁴¹² With Breen gone and the Code’s administrators lacking his iron will and style, film-makers increasingly just thumbed their noses at the Code – and got away with it. This included the Roman Catholic, Alfred Hitchcock, who deliberately included endings to his movies, To Catch a Thief (1956) and North by Northwest (1959), which left no doubt in the audiences’ minds of what was happening sexually between their lead characters.

Ben-Hur (1959): the “Religious Epic” Where Religion is Neutered

As was the usual case when Hollywood tackled supposedly “Christian” themes, doctrine was tossed aside and the focus was on more worldly themes, the making of “a good story” rather than any real interest in anything higher. This was the case with William Wyler’s 1959 epic, Ben-Hur. The author of the book on which the film was “based”, General Lew Wallace, wrote in a manner so “Romish” that the book was endorsed by Rome and blessed by the pope, Leo XIII. ⁴¹³ But the film was a different kettle of fish: there was no way it was going to “preach” Romanism. The hero, played by Charlton Heston, does not even make an avowal of “the faith” in the film; there is no implied conversion of the hero to “Christianity”. It was a film that pushed no one religious view, and was so ambiguous about such matters that it appealed to people of many religious persuasions, including Roman Catholics, Protestants and Jews. Essentially it was an ecumenical film, but even more than that, it was so ambiguous that it could be called an inter-religious film, at least insofar as it would not offend members of any religion.

And this is precisely why it is so naive and foolish for professing Christians to assume that such films as Ben-Hur are not only good and inoffensive, but even moral and useful! Rather a film that is an honest rendition of a book, even if it then promotes the same false religion that the book does, than a film which is so inoffensive that it is attractive to all (even naive Evangelicals). At least the makers of the former are honest and up-front about its motives, and true Christians will not be taken in by it. The latter type of film, however, is dangerous precisely because it appears so harmless and attractive. The book, Ben-Hur, has a definite religious message, and it is not one which is acceptable to true Christians; the film has no such message, but how many are induced to go and read the book after watching it, and thus are led from one error into the next?

Furthermore, in films like this one Hollywood actually created gods of its own. “The startling thing about the 1959 Ben-Hur, Donald Spoto correctly intuits in his provocative overview of Camerado: Hollywood and the American Man was the transcendental power of the new superstar. As Ben-Hur, Charlton Heston need not cling to Christianity; the miracles of Hollywood technology have elevated his imposing figure ‘to the ranks of a religious savior.’ Spoto perceptively isolates a cosmic shift. In this 1959 Ben-Hur, Heston need not go to Christ because Heston himself has become Hollywood’s new Messiah, a savior created by the twentieth century’s marvelous dream machine. Charlton Heston has been transfigured, in Sporot’s words, into ‘our deus ex machina, all made up and smiling, come to save us with outstretched arm and dazzling, but somewhat spiritless, glance.’” ⁴¹⁴

Christians have therefore a double motive for avoiding such Hollywood epics.

Suddenly Last Summer (1959): Papist Praise for a Horror Story

In 1959 Suddenly Last Summer appeared, a horror story with themes of homosexuality and cannibalism, produced by Sam Spiegel. The PCA told him sexual perversion was still not permitted in films, but he countered that if the PCA withheld a seal, he would appeal to the MPAA board of directors. The PCA accordingly withheld the seal, and Spiegel accordingly appealed. “If there ever had been a picture that seemed ripe for condemnation, this was it.” ⁴¹⁵ And yet, incredibly, the MPAA granted a certificate! Naturally enough, the Legion’s Thomas Little protested to the MPAA, but the Legion’s new board of consultors was far from being as strict as the old IFCAhad been. Although some condemned it, there was no consensus among the consultors. A priest on the board said Suddenly Last Summer was the finest American film he had ever seen, that no adult would be harmed by watching it, and recommended an “A3” rating. Another priest said it was “powerful” and “excellent”, and yet another described it as “magnificent entertainment”, “thoughtful… adult entertainment.” Another consultor told Little it would be “a mistake to condemn a film of this stature.” It was positively reviewed in the influential Romish publication, Our Sunday Visitor. Other Romish publications gave it positive reviews as well.

Finally, the Legion gave the film a Separate Classification, stating it was “judged to be moral in its theme and treatment” but as the subject matter involved sexual perversion it was intended only for “a serious and mature audience.” ⁴¹⁶

Incredibly, while so many Roman Catholic reviewers were praising it, secular ones often condemned it and even heavily criticised the Legion for giving it the classification it did! One Hollywood gossip columnist even said of the Legion: “it doesn’t seem to be functioning any more.” ⁴¹⁷ How things had changed when a film that included sodomy and cannibalism was now being hailed by the Roman Catholic organisation that would once have condemned such filth outright. “The Legion classification and the supporting reception of the film in the Catholic press shocked many Catholics and industry insiders alike, who did not yet fully appreciate the internal changes that were taking hold of Legion operations and the Catholic attitude toward the movies.” ₄₁₈

It was all too much for Martin Quigley. He protested directly to Spellman, who then arranged for a meeting between Quigley and Scully, mediated by James McNulty, bishop of the archdiocese of Paterson, New Jersey. They met in July 1959, and Quigley spoke of the Jesuit conspiracy to control the Legion. In this, of course, he was absolutely right. Nevertheless, he had made the tactical error of appointing a Jesuit, Sullivan, so that when he protested that Sullivan was under the influence of Jesuit intellectuals Murray, Gardiner and Ford, this claim sounded hollow. McNulty’s report not only stated that Quigley’s charges were groundless, but it also sought to damage Quigley’s reputation by accusing him of trying to indoctrinate Sullivan, of threatening Sullivan with removal if he did not toe Quigley’s line, and of being a thorn in the side of the Legion.

Chapter eleven – The 1960s: The best of times, the worst of times for Rome

The Legion of Decency Largely Irrelevant

The 1960s were years of radicalism and liberalisation in all spheres of society. This was the era of “free love”, drugs, the hippies, pop/rock music, anti-authoritarianism, the “civil rights” movement, race riots, “gay liberation”, draft-dodging campus students and campus riots, the younger generation at war with the older one. And in the light of the papal encyclical Miranda Prorsus, Rome had adopted a far more liberal approach to Hollywood, and the Legion of Decency began to reflect this change.

Of course, the Legion’s changed stance was only more liberal in the light of its previous Papist ultra-conservatism. Conservative Romanists viewed it as liberal now, but it was hardly so to the extent that society itself had become liberalised. In fact, the Legion was forced to admit that even most Roman Catholics did not pay any attention to it. In its 1960 annual report it stated that there was “widespread apathy and indifference” among Roman Catholics towards Legion movie classifications. Certainly Americans in general mostly just ignored it as a leftover of a bygone era, even though that era had only just ended. The same was true of the Production Code Administration: Jesuit priest Daniel Lord’s 1930 Code was now viewed by most American moviegoers as an absurdity. They did not want anyone censoring what they could see.

The Legion, however, despite its now more liberal stance, still tried to some extent to stem the rising tide of films with overt sexual and violent content. ⁴¹⁹ But its days were numbered.

Psycho (1960): Gory Realism from a Romish Film-Maker

Roman Catholic film-maker, Alfred Hitchcock, again pushed the boundaries with his movie, Psycho, in 1960. It had fornication, voyeurism, and a graphic, brutal bathroom knife murder, described as “a murderous frenzy without precedent in Hollywood cinema.” ⁴²⁰ Never had such gory realism been depicted on celluloid before. There was no turning back. Hollywood had moved into new territory.

Spartacus (1960): Communist Propaganda

When the movie Spartacus was made, the Legion strongly objected to all the blood and gore in it, as well as the sexuality, nudity, and hints of bisexuality. Cuts were ordered, and when they were made the Legion gave the film an “A3” rating, meaning it was limited to adults. The Legion was also disturbed by the fact that the author of the novel on which the film was based, Howard Fast, had been a member of the Communist Party, and by the fact that scriptwriter Dalton Trumbo was an active member of the Communist Party. Certainly the very message of Spartacus – slaves rising in revolt against their masters – was dear to the hearts of Communists. And certainly the slaves were depicted as great people, whereas the masters were depicted in the opposite light. There can be little doubt that there was a not-too-subtle attempt to push Communist propaganda via this “historical” movie. In this the Legion was correct. However, it was restricted to dealing with the moral content of films rather than their possible propaganda messages. ⁴²¹

La Dolce Vita (1960): Morally Acceptable to Roman Catholics

In 1960 the Italian film, La Dolce Vita, was released, dealing with promiscuity, prostitution, suicide, and homosexuality, among other things. Although director Federico Fellini claimed the film was actually against this kind of hedonistic lifestyle, the fact is that it portrayed these things graphically. The Roman Catholic institution in Italy condemned the film, as did the Italian government itself.

But when the film was submitted to the PCA in 1961, it hardly caused a ripple! Calling it “important, though controversial”, the PCA gave its seal of approval with no cuts having been made. But the Legion took a different view. After all, the Vatican had strongly condemned the movie – which meant it would be extremely difficult for the Legion to then pass it – and also, conservative U.S. Papists were becoming increasingly disturbed by the Legion’s more liberal stance in recent times. Thomas Little knew he had to tread carefully. He wrote to his superiors saying that since the recent court rulings on the issue of movie censorship, the Legion no longer had the power to prevent the film from being shown. Not only that, he said, but any condemnation of the film would not be supported by the public.

The Roman Catholic consultors who evaluated the movie for Little were not in agreement. Some wanted an “A3” rating, including some priests, with some even calling it a “moral” film that would not harm adults. Others, however, condemned it, wanting a “C” rating, with one saying it was Communist propaganda and certainly not decent entertainment. Still others wanted a “B”, or a Special Classification rating. However, as Little wrote to the bishop, James McNulty, “the majority [76.8 percent] of our reviewers and consultors judged La Dolce Vita to be moral in theme and decent in treatment at least for mature audiences.” ⁴²²

Little, knowing he could not stop the film being shown, knowing that many Papists would go and see it anyway, and knowing that the majority of the Papist reviewers found it “moral”, tried to exercise damage control. He negotiated with the film’s distributor, Astor Pictures, not to dub the film into English, to put an 18 age restriction on it, and to be careful with the advertising. In return Little agreed to give the film a Separate Classification.

When it was released, the Legion wrote that it was “a bitter attack upon the debauchery and degradation of a hedonistic society of leisure and abundance”, and that it was “animated throughout by a moral spirit.” This was not true. Even if Fellini’s aim was to attack the hedonism of modem society, he did not have to graphically depict sexual scenes in order to do so! Books condemn hedonism without titillating the readers while doing so, and films could do the same. It was thus not animated by a moral spirit at all, and a furious Martin Quigley knew it. He fired off a letter to McNulty, copied to cardinals Spellman and McIntyre, to close associates in the Vatican itself, and to conservative Roman Catholic pressmen. In it, he said La Dolce Vita was the most immoral and sacrilegious film he had ever seen. He correctly pointed out that the typical moviegoer would see “no sardonic commentary”on modem society; all he would see would be “vivid images of… adultery, fornication, prostitution”, etc. He also strongly condemned the Jesuits for being behind the approval of La Dolce Vita, referring (as mentioned earlier) to a “Jesuit clique” who were “opposed to any condemnation of any motion picture… in this ‘pluralistic society.’” ⁴²³ He said this Jesuit clique was cosying up to the liberal American Civil Liberties Union rather than protecting people from such filth. And he warned that unless action was taken to reverse the path the Legion was now following, the Code and morality in films would soon be a thing of the past. In all of these accusations he was correct. He branded the Legion a “jungle of amateurism” which displayed “phony sophistication and shocking lack of common sense.” ⁴²⁴

McNulty fired back a response: “Mr Quigley, this is unadulterated nonsense.” He said the notion of a Jesuit conspiracy in the Legion was “without foundation.” He was of course utterly incorrect, knowingly or not.

The problem was, however, that Martin Quigley’s strong criticisms sounded more than a little hollow to those who knew that, even if he really did dislike the movie, he had other reasons for speaking out the way he did; financial reasons. For some years prior to this, Quigley Publications began to experience declining revenues, and Quigley began to earn an additional income by working as a consultant to the film-makers who were experiencing difficulties with either the PCA or the Legion. He therefore now had a financial interest in the way the Legion operated. Priest Sullivan was a thorn in Quigley’s side, with the potential to reduce the need for film producers to approach Quigley to help them resolve problems with the Legion.

Indeed, this again merely highlighted the hypocrisy of Quigley. For years he had been accused of double standards, because on the one hand this devout Roman Catholic condemned immoral movies, and yet on the other hand he advertised the movies in his magazines! Back in 1954, for example, the Catholic Times had stated that the film advertisements in Quigley’s publication, the Motion Picture Herald, violated decency, and accused Quigley of being essentially the same as a pimp. New World then said of Quigley that “the champion of decency offends against decency” with his advertising of motion pictures. And the Catholic Transcript ran the headline: “Martin Quigley is Rapped for Running Lurid Movie Ads.” ⁴²⁵

Sadly, this is precisely the kind of hypocritical moral stance which Roman Catholicism engenders in its subjects. Touting itself as the champion of morality, Rome has always had double standards, and been perfectly willing to turn a blind eye when necessary to any violations of its moral code if it will further its own aims. So it was not surprising that Martin Quigley’s own sense of morality was able to justify (at least to himself) that he was doing nothing two-faced. Roman Catholic “morality” has never been biblical morality. And in actual fact, this Roman Catholic notion of “morality” was shown by those ecclesiastics who came to Quigley’s defence and help. One was priest Francis Connell at Catholic University, who agreed with Quigley when the latter defended the advertisements in his publications by saying that his business would go under if he did not accept ads for “B”- and “C”- rated movies, and that if he could not continue his business he would also then be unable to do the good that he had always done within the film industry (a truly Roman Catholic justification if ever there was one!). Another was the cardinal, Spellman, who got priest John T. McClafferty to defend Quigley in letters written to the editors of Catholic Times and New World.

Priest John Devlin, who viewed La Dolce Vita on the orders of McIntyre, the cardinal, agreed with Quigley and told McIntyre that he did not know what standards the Legion was using anymore. He said only the Communists would benefit from the film, and that priests appeared helpless in it. Others went further still, with one magazine stating that the Legion’s response to this film showed clearly that Communists had infiltrated the “Church” of Rome. ⁴²⁶

There were certainly influential Roman Catholic leaders who supported Quigley and condemned the film, but the Roman Catholic press generally favoured the Legion’s position. And despite the lack of English subtitles the film did very well, being seen by far more than the “mature adults” the Legion said would be the only ones it would appeal to. Nor was the age restriction always firmly enforced.

Splendor in the Grass (1961): the Legion Not Dead Yet

The Legion also objected strongly to the movie Splendor in the Grass, the message of which was that if young people cannot have premarital sex, this may lead to a mental breakdown! The Legion still had enough clout to force Warner Brothers to cut a number of scenes and place an age restriction of 16 on it, and then it gave the film a “B” rating, which angered director Elia Kazan. ⁴²⁷

The Code Amended Again

In October 1961 the MPAA altered the Production Code’s stance on sodomy, stating that “[i]n keeping with the culture, the mores and the values of our time, homosexuality and other sexual aberrations may now be treated [in movies] with care, discretion and restraint.” ⁴²⁸ This was an admission that films were going to be increasingly allowed to mirror society. But in truth they would go further: they would actually go beyond even what society found acceptable, pushing the boundaries and thereby lowering the morals of society till they grovelled in the gutter.

Lolita (1962): Quigley Approves, the Legion Condemns

As we have seen, Quigley, the conservative Roman Catholic, was quite the hypocrite. Ele had begun to act as a paid consultant, charging a large fee ($25 000) to read scripts so as to assist movie producers to obtain a seal and to get a favourable rating from the Legion. At about this time the film Lolita was made, about a twelve-year-old nymphomaniac and a middle-aged man. Director Stanley Kubrick hired Quigley to guide him “through the labyrinth of codes and Catholics” ⁴²⁹ so as to get approval for the film! “Thus Quigley, during the same period when he was attacking the Legion over the classification of La Dolce Vita, was toiling as a paid consultant to secure approval for a film about a pedophile who drugs a 12-year-old child in order to have sex with her and then kidnaps her so he can continue to savour her sexual favours! Quigley’s view of what was acceptable moral entertainment for the masses had undergone a radical – and remunerative – transformation.” ⁴³⁰ And his own justification for taking on this job was straight out of the warped Roman Catholic sense of morality: if he did not accept the job, the film would still be made, but without his input to “take this notorious story out of the gutter.” ⁴³¹

The PCA’s Shurlock and Vizzard were stunned at Quigley’s double standard, this man who had for so long accused them of being too lenient in enforcing the Code. The Code had been Quigley’s baby to such an extent, and here he was, helping film producers get their film around it! When Shurlock asked Quigley about this, Quigley replied: “Would you just want to turn the producers loose, to make it their way [since, as he pointed out, the film would be made anyway]? Or would you rather settle for a silk purse from a sow’s ear?” To which the stunned Shurlock replied, “[N]ow you’re talking just like us. This’s what we’ve been saying over the years, and you’ve sneered at us for it…. Now that you’re suddenly on the other side of the fence, it’s all right.” Incensed, Shurlock, in conversation with Vizzard immediately afterwards, referred to Quigley as a “pious [obscenity deleted],” and added: “Well, when he comes to us with that picture, it had better be clean or I’m going to rub his nose in it.” ⁴³² Shurlock was right about Quigley having a mask of piety, a hypocrite chasing after the money. And it was as transparently obvious as could be to many people.

So now the movie industry was treated to an astounding situation: Martin Quigley at odds with Geoffrey Shurlock – with the non-Papist Shurlock being more conservative over Lolita than the Papist Quigley! Shurlock found certain aspects of the film far too explicit, whereas, astoundingly, Quigley did not. He made several suggestions for cuts and changes, some of which the producers paid attention to and some of which they did not. They were reasonably confident, in the light of the recent liberalisation of the Legion, that they would get their film passed. And privately, Shurlock had to reluctantly agree that Quigley had done quite a job (by PCA standards, which were not of course biblical ones!) of cleaning up the film. After some further cuts and alterations to Shurlock’s satisfaction, he issued the seal of approval.

Next, the Legion reviewers viewed the film in order to issue a classification. Once again priests and “laymen” were divided. Some saw it as needing an “A3” rating as it would not harm adults, others believed it should have a “B” rating, but a larger number said it should be condemned. At a subsequent showing, this time to Legion staff, those who saw it were divided again. McNulty, the Romish bishop, cast the determining vote, saying Lolita was immoral and ordering Little to condemn it in strong terms. This he did. Quigley, for his part, pointed out that although the film was far from perfect it should not have been condemned, considering the fact that the Legion had not condemned other very objectionable films in recent times.

So here was the situation: a film about paedophilia being approved by devout Papist Quigley, yet condemned by the Papist Legion of Decency! And yet both Quigley and the Legion were utterly hypocritical!

Finally in April 1962, after further relatively minor alterations to the film, the Legion placed it in the Separate Classification, believing it had been modified sufficiently. But it told Romanists that watching it required “caution” and that it was “restricted to a mature audience.” What utter nonsense. It was pornography, plain and simple. But this was becoming a favourite term for permitting pornography: “mature audiences”. Certainly it shows that the morals of the Roman Catholic institution were as low as anyone else’s. Sullivan admitted, in an interview, that a film like Lolita would have been condemned ten years previously, but that in 1962 audiences were more “mature” and selective, exercising “more judgment”. Besides, he said, adults did not want censorship of the movies. He said that the Romish institution wanted “some type of voluntary classification by the industry and exhibitors”. The industry itself should rate its own movies. ⁴³³

This Jesuit priest had done much to get the Roman Catholic institution in the United States to adopt a more liberal approach to movies with questionable content. He would later, in the mid-1960s, write a new Legion pledge to replace the old one, which had branded movies as “a grave menace to youth, to home life, to country and religion” and called on Papists not to watch movies deemed to be “vile and unwholesome.” Sullivan’s new pledge would urge Papists to promote good movies and work against bad ones “in a responsible and civic-minded manner.” The bishops would vote to adopt the new pledge, a Jesuit creation from start to finish, with Jesuit John Courtney Murray the guiding hand on Jesuit Sullivan’s shoulder. ⁴³⁴

Lolita was certainly not acceptable to many Roman Catholic reviewers, but in general it did well at the box office, reflecting how the morals of American society had sunk.

Boccaccio 70 (1962): “a Legion Rating Means Nothing”

Although studios, independent producers, and foreign moviemakers continued to submit their films to the Legion for review, it hardly seemed necessary anymore: whether or not the Legion gave its stamp of approval to a film made little difference to its success or failure with moviegoers. Why, then, did moviemakers continue to submit their movies to it? Only two reasons, really: they believed a Legion approval would cause more people to see the film, and major theatre circuits still did not like to show movies condemned by the Legion. But in 1962 all this changed radically.

In February of that year producer Carlo Ponti brought out Boccaccio 70, and this Italian production was imported into the USA by distributor Joseph E. Levine of Embassy Pictures. He submitted it to the Legion for approval. The three separate short films that made up the film, Boccaccio 70, contained strongly sexual themes and some nudity. Worse yet, they were directed by Italian Roman Catholics and one of them was an attack on censorship itself. It was all too much for the Legion. The film was shown at art-house theatres in various U.S. cities without having any PCA seal or Legion classification, but Levine wanted it shown by the major movie chains, and felt he needed both PCA and Legion approval for that. The plan was for the Legion to review it, recommend cuts, and then it would go to the PCA for a seal.

Little was not in New York at the time, and Sullivan, after reviewing the film, called for various cuts, insisted that it not be dubbed into English, and demanded an over-18 age restriction. But when Little returned and reviewed the film, he wanted it condemned outright. Levine, however, instead of complying and based on the fact that the film was doing very well in the art-house theatres, signed distribution contracts with major circuits after persuading them that they did not need Legion or PCA approval. This was astounding enough, but for the censors, worse was to come: Little and Sullivan were invited to a dinner conference hosted by the major distribution companies, but instead of the priests winning in the end, this time around Loew’s Theaters informed them that it was “no longer interested in Code seals for films which it books”, and also that “a Legion Condemned rating or no rating at all from the Legion means nothing.” ⁴³⁵ It was a huge blow to the Legion. “Boccaccio 70 was not a smash hit by Hollywood standards, but it did enough business to indicate clearly that most moviegoers by 1962-3 did not much care what the Legion or the PCA thought about a film. This had long been true, but finally it was clear even to those people who ran the movie business. For all intents and purposes the Legion was finished.” ⁴³⁶

Still, the Legion’s priests and bishops found this a very bitter pill to swallow. Once they had been all-powerful in Hollywood; but no longer. They did not go down without a fight. They did their best to get the film industry itself to adopt an age-based classification system; but this was fiercely resisted by Hollywood bosses.

The Code by 1963: “No More Taboos”

Films just continued to batter down the walls of the once-impregnable Code, so much so that by 1963 Shurlock was forced to admit: “There are now no taboos on subject matter. Movies have changed with the changes of civilization.” ⁴³⁷ In truth western civilisation was in moral freefall, and the movies had played an immense part in bringing this about.

The Cardinal (1963): Rome Depicted as the World’s Salvation from Communism

Yet even though this was the era of waning support for the Code and the Legion of Decency, it was, paradoxically, an era of some very pro- Roman Catholic movies as well.

In many movies during this era, and following the release of the papal encyclical examined earlier, Romanism was now portrayed as a powerful force for good in the world, rather than merely as the religion of underdog immigrants as it had been in the past. In particular, in that Cold War era American Romanism was portrayed as being strongly anti-Communist, in such films as The Fugitive (1947), Satan Never Sleeps (1962), and The Cardinal (1963). Almost always, in fact, when religion fought against Communism in the movies, it was the Roman Catholic religion that did so. ⁴³⁸ Not surprisingly, considering Papist/ Jesuit influence in Hollywood.

The Cardinal showed the rise of a priest to the position of cardinal, as the result of a life of devotion. When John F. Kennedy became the United States’ first Papist president in 1960, this kind of Roman Catholic self-assertiveness and international power was reflected in movies made at the time as well. In The Cardinal, the lead character, upon becoming cardinal, says “all men alike are the children of God, endowed by their Creator with the unalienable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That is America’s creed; that is the gospel of the Church.” ⁴³⁹ Thus the film mirrored what was happening in the world at that time: “an international Catholicism that more closely paralleled the growing American global empire” ⁴⁴⁰ of the Kennedy and post-Kennedy era. As author McDannel states in Catholics in the Movies, writing of movie fascination with Rome and the Vatican during the Kennedy era: “Catholics had what Protestants lacked (but desired): a centralized and disciplined authority structure that demanded and provided obedience, a sexuality that could be controlled such that it produced both celibate workers and fertile congregants, a powerful history that reached back two thousand years [or so they incorrectly believed, at any rate] and across continents, and a set of rituals that vigorously engaged all of the senses in order to generate spiritual ecstacy and communal solidarity. Moviemakers fully exploited the profoundly sensual, visual, and aural character of the Catholic story. With dramatic flare they presented cardinals and popes in robes and lace who never sacrificed their masculine power for their sartorial splendor. Clergy had intense friendships with other men, but their relationships never sullied their heterosexual orientation. Indeed, in this imaginary world women were inconsequential. Catholic leaders expressed their influence within the male world of politics.” ⁴⁴¹

It was, therefore, in many ways a good time for Roman Catholicism in the movies, even though the Legion of Decency was on its last legs and films were increasingly immoral. But as McDannel points out, it was most definitely an imaginary world that was being depicted. It was the kind of world Rome desired, the kind that it was as pleased as punch to see presented to both Papist and non-Papist movie audiences for it knew the indoctrinating power of the movies; but it was imaginary. Rome in the 1960s, no less than in any other era, was a cesspool of iniquity. Priests given to fornication and to sodomy were present then as now, Rome’s hand in politics was very far from clean, and even the much-loved Papist president turned out to be a lecherous womaniser. But in the movie theatres, all was rosy with Rome. There were those in Hollywood who were depicting the seven-hilled city and its devoted clerical army as the salvation of the free world from Communism.

Lilies of the Field (1963): an Ecumenical PR Triumph for Rome

In 1963 Lilies of the Field appeared, a film about East German nuns who escaped Communism, a black Baptist wanderer, and Mexican Roman Catholicism, all thrown together on the American frontier. The Papist John F. Kennedy was president, and the Second Vatican Council was in session in Rome, which, it was hoped by many Papists, would usher in a new era of openness and needed change within the Roman Catholic “Church”. Lilies of the Field was thus released in an era when Roman Catholics were being seen as equals to Protestants in the U.S., and when a more tolerant Romanism, more open to Protestantism, was hoped for by many. These themes were embodied in the movie itself. Of course, Kennedy simply showed up the kind of immorality, sexual and political, that Romanism produces in many of its subjects, and Vatican II did not accomplish what many more liberal Romanists hoped it would; but that was still a little in the future. “Out in the Arizona desert, Lilies of the Field carves out a space where ecumenical spiritual growth, new institutional identity, and liturgical experimentation can freely occur… An unlikely coterie of Protestants and Catholics in the Arizona desert works out the tensions of religion, race, and gender with the enthusiasm and exuberance of the early 1960s.” ⁴⁴²

It certainly was ecumenical, in keeping with the spirit of Vatican II, then in progress in Rome. Throughout the movie, that which supposedly is common between Romanism and Protestantism is emphasised, more than the differences. In this way the film helped to break down Protestant barriers to Romanism. In one scene, the nun beats the Baptist at quoting the Bible. Protestants were kn own as the Bible-lovers, the ones who knew the Bible and could quote it extensively – and yet here was a nun quoting it too, and to such effect that the Baptist was beaten. In truth, of course, this was all fiction rather than fact: the vast majority of Romanists are simply not familiar with the Bible and never have been, for to them it is not the sole rule of faith and practice, as it is to Bible Protestants. But the power of a movie to indoctrinate people cannot be over-emphasised, and a scene such as this had an effect far beyond that of any Protestant minister trying to explain that Roman Catholics do not love or know the Scriptures. In the minds of moviegoers a seed had been planted: the thought that the Bible was, after all, the basis of Romanism as well as of Protestantism.

A fallacy, certainly; but one which moviegoers now had in their minds.

And there were plenty of other indications of this supposed Romanist- Protestant commonality. The film shows the Baptist man teaching the German nuns to sing Baptist “tent-meeting” songs with gusto; the Baptist builds a Romish chapel; and yet despite their growing friendship and understanding of one another, he remains a Baptist and they remain Romanists. The lesson being presented: both are “Christians”, albeit of differing traditions. There is no sense whatsoever of either one being false, the other true. What a victory for ecumenism!

The film was a huge success, and the Papist press loved it. It did wonders for Roman Catholics, making them appear to be enlightened and progressive to non-Roman Catholics. Another triumph for Roman ism in Hollywood, and thus in America.

Vatican IPs “Decree on the Means of Social Communication” (1963)

The Second Vatican Council released its “Decree on the Means of Social Communication” (Inter Mirifica) in December 1963, another fundamental document on the subject. It is important to study certain aspects of it, to understand Rome’s attitude to the means of social communication, which continues to define and guide it to this very day.

Section 11 of this document states: “A special responsibility for the proper use of the means of social communication rests on journalists, writers, actors, designers, producers, exhibitors, distributors, operators, sellers, critics – all those, in a word, who are involved in the making and transmission of communications in any way whatever. It is clear that a very great responsibility rests on all of these people in today’s world: they have power to direct mankind along a good path or an evil path by the information they impart and the pressure they exert.”

One can imagine the harlot Rome’s jowls slavering at the prospect of what it could do with such powerful means of mass communication! Very obviously it wanted total control over them, and still does, for by means of radio, TV and film Rome can exert immense influence over multiplied millions. Hence its desire to infiltrate its own people into key positions of power within the media.

Still from Sec. 11: “It will be for them to regulate economic, political and artistic values in a way that will not conflict with the common good. To achieve this result more surely, they will do well to form professional organisations…”

Was this directive carried out in practice? It certainly was. All one has to do is consider the very many professional Roman Catholic organisations which exist for the very purpose of regulating the economic, political and artistic values of their members: for example, the Catholic Stage Guild and the Catholic Writers Guild, both in England, and similar groups worldwide.

In Sec. 13 the following is found: “All the members of the Church should make a concerted effort to ensure that the means of communication are put at the service of the multiple forms of the apostolate without delay and as energetically as possible, where and when they are needed. They should forestall projects likely to prove harmful, especially in those regions where moral and religious progress would require their intervention more urgently.”

This paragraph plainly reveals the Romish hierarchy’s view of where the loyalties of those working in these fields should lie. They are to use their positions and the mass media to serve Rome! – “without delay and as energetically as possible”. But more than that, they are to actually ‘ forestall” (dictionary: intercept; cut off; hinder; obstruct) projects “likely to prove harmful”. By this is meant, film, TV or radio projects likely to prove harmful to the Roman Catholic “Church Should we be surprised, then, that Roman Catholicism, in the years after this document was released, was often portrayed in such good light in movies and on television? No, we should not be surprised at all. Rome’s agents, “energetically” working within the film and TV industries, saw to that.

Sec. 14 states: “The production and screening of films which provide wholesome entertainment and are worthwhile culturally and artistically should be promoted and effectively guaranteed, especially films destined for the young. This is best achieved by supporting and co-ordinating productions and projects by serious producers and distributors, by marking the launching of worthwhile films with favourable criticism or the awarding of prizes, by supporting or coordinating cinemas managed by Catholics and men of integrity.”

Sec. 14 continues: “Likewise, decent radio and television programmes should be effectively supported, especially those suited to the family. Ample encouragement should be given to Catholic transmissions which invite listeners and viewers to share in the life of the Church and which convey religious truths. Catholic stations should be established where it is opportune.”

Of course, true Christians would be wholeheartedly in support of films, radio and TV programmes which provide wholesome, decent entertainment. But what must always be understood is that Rome means something different when she uses words like these. She means, by “decent” or “wholesome entertainment”, films, radio and TV programmes which promote Roman Catholicism! Those which (in the words of this section of the document) “invite listeners and viewers to share in the life of the [Romish] Church and which convey religious [i.e. Roman Catholic] truths”. For to her way of viewing things, there can be nothing more wholesome or decent than this.

The following is a very valuable commentary from an author in New Zealand on why, despite the presence of Roman Catholics in positions of high influence in the mass media at the time when he wrote (1976), extreme violence on children’s programmes shown on TV in New Zealand did not illicit any real condemnation:

“An illustration of the Catholic Action interpretation of ‘decent radio and television programmes’ is given by a short article which appeared in the ‘Evening Post’ of 26-8-76 and which stated that ‘fourteen of the fifteen most violent American television programmes are at present being shown in New Zealand at prime television viewing times when elder children are able to watch.’ There are good reasons for this. With prolonged exposure to violence in the mass media, e.g. television, the younger generation are conditioned into accepting violence as ‘normality’ and their senses of perception become dulled. Consequently, if terrorist groups such as the Australian section of the Croatian Catholic ‘Ustashi’ – ‘Croatian Nationalists’ being half of the truth – decided to extend their training activities into New Zealand, then the non-Catholic population in particular, will be unable to grasp the sinister implications. It is interesting that our self-appointed guardian of community standards, one time Catholic nun Patricia Bartlett, is silent in regard to the continual violence in our TV programmes. Evidently it is in accordance with her ‘Christian standpoint.”’ ⁴⁴³

What this author wrote of the situation in New Zealand in 1976 could so easily have been written of almost any country in the western world at that time – and ever since. Rome utters very pious-sounding statements about the need for “decent” films and TV programmes, etc.; and yet, even in places where there has been strong Roman Catholic infiltration of the mass media, violence in children’s movies and TV programmes has always continued unchecked.

Again from Sec. 14 of the Vatican II document: “The noble and ancient art of the theatre has been widely popularised by the means of social communication. One should take steps to ensure that it contributes to the human and moral formation of its audience.”

This paragraph takes one back to the Jesuits and their use of the theatre in centuries past, as examined earlier in this book. To Rome, the theatre was only “noble” insofar as it advanced the cause of Roman Catholicism. To Rome, film, TV and radio are merely the modem versions of the theatre of old – and in this she is correct. These modem forms of communication have, as she puts it here, “popularised” the ancient theatre. As for ensuring that these things contribute to “the human and moral formation of’ those being entertained by them, Rome means, quite simply, the formation of the audience according to Roman Catholic doctrine and morals, nothing more and nothing less. She well knows the huge potential of the mass media to sway vast audiences in her favour. As the Jesuits once used the stage, so now they sought to use movies, TV and radio programmes for precisely the same purpose: indoctrination and manipulation. And yet the masses have always been too blind to see it.

Sec. 15 states: “Priests, religious and laity should be trained at once to meet the needs described above. They should acquire the competence needed to use these media for the apostolate…. To this end, schools, institutes or faculties must be provided in sufficient number, where journalists, writers for films, radio and television, and anyone else concerned, may receive a complete formation, imbued with the Christian spirit and especially with the Church’s social teaching. Actors should also be instructed and helped so that their gifts too can benefit society. Lastly, literary critics and critics of films, radio, television and the rest should be carefully prepared so that they will be fully competent in their respective spheres and will be trained and encouraged to give due consideration to morality in their critiques.”

Rome was certainly not bothering to hide its intentions! As far as she was concerned, all Romanists working in the mass media were to “use these media for the apostolate”. This was re-emphasised in Sec. 17 which states: “For the main aim of all these [Papist newspapers, films, radio and TV programmes, etc.] is to propagate and defend the truth [i.e. the “truth” according to Rome] and to secure the permeation of society by Christian [i.e. Papist] values.” And certainly such schools, faculties, etc., were established in various countries, their purpose being to chum out faithful Roman Catholic servants of their pope to work in film, radio and TV, and tilt these Romeward to the very best of their ability. For example, by 1975 it could be reported in an Australian newspaper that the Sydney radio station 2SM (“SM” standing for “St Mary’s”), which was owned by the Roman Catholic institution, had become so powerful that: “It owns 50% of… the largest programming organisation outside the U.S.A., and through it has an interest in a radio announcers’ school, concert promotions and the programming of other stations”. ⁴⁴⁴

Kiss Me Stupid (1964): Hammering the Nails into the PCA Casket

It was very evident that priests Sullivan and Little were now presiding over a far more liberalised Legion; and Shurlock at the PCA was not, as he said in 1963, going to be “holier than the pope” and fail to give a PCA seal to a film the Legion accepted. And so, when Kiss me Stupid was shown to the PCA and the Legion in 1964, the producers did not foresee any major problems, even though the film dealt blatantly and favourably with marital infidelity and prostitution. Shurlock said he would pass the film. His words were: “If dogs want to return to their vomit, I’m not going to stop them.” Jack Vizzard said Shurlock’s announcement was akin to “the sound of hammers on casket nails.” ⁴⁴⁵

Priest Little at the Legion was not so accommodating, finding much that was offensive in the film. The studio reluctantly agreed to make some changes, but these did not go far enough in Little’s opinion. When United Artists studio dug in its heels, the Legion condemned the film, calling it “morally repulsive” with “crude and suggestive dialogue” and “a leering treatment of marital and extra-marital sex”. And then the Legion expressed shock that such a film could have been granted a seal by the PCA, with Little saying, “It is difficult to understand how such approval is not the final betrayal of the trust which has been placed by so many in the organized industry’s self-regulation.” Martin Quigley stated that Kiss Me Stupid meant that the Code was now history, and “it could be blown away by a gentle zephyr.” ⁴⁴⁶

The film did not do well at the box office anyway. But even so, the Code was now, for all practical purposes, a relic of history. The hammers had driven the nails into the casket.

The Legion of Decency Changes Its Name

Martin Quigley died in 1964. By 1965 the Roman Catholic priests and bishops in charge of the Legion were well aware that the organisation was simply unacceptable to most Roman Catholics, who no longer cared much for it at all and viewed it as nothing but a censorship body. And so, in an attempt to still retain some influence, the bishops came up with a plan: they would change the Legion’s name. In November 1965 it was renamed the National Catholic Office for Motion Pictures (NCOMP). Time magazine commended the Legion for the name change, referring to the old name as “arrogant and muscular”. But it was to be expected that a statement would be issued declaring that the new name did not mean that the Roman Catholic institution no longer cared about film decency; and indeed, such a statement was made by the chairman of the Episcopal Committee, John J. Krol, archbishop of Philadelphia. ⁴⁴⁷ Thereafter it was still often referred to as “the Legion”, and it still existed for the purpose of censoring movies it found objectionable by trying to get them altered. But its teeth were pulled.

Joseph Breen died in 1965, a few days after Krol announced the Legion’s change of name. And state censorship boards were dying out as well. Furthermore, as we have seen, this was also an era of changes within the Roman Catholic institution itself, including changes in its attitude to the movies.

A Rash of “Nun Movies”, Notably The Sound of Music (1965)

Various Roman Catholic or pro-Roman Catholic films, some of which were highly successful and with far-reaching influence, were made during this era as well.

“Nun movies” were particularly popular at this time. In films such as Heaven Knows, Mr. Alison (1957), The Nun’s Story (1959), The Sound of Music (1965), The Trouble with Angels (1966), Where Angels Go, Trouble Follows (1968), and Change of Habit (1969), nuns were portrayed as real human beings, real women, without being ridiculed. But there was more to Roman Catholic movies than nuns, even when they played a prominent part.

The ever-popular movie, The Sound of Music, the most commercially-successful depiction of nuns in the history of cinema, came out in 1965, and was used to show that Roman Catholicism had opposed Nazism, for the nuns rescue a family from the Nazis. ⁴⁴⁸ It was described this way: “the film is a merry chase across the Alps, full of ‘Edelweiss,’ ‘The Sound of Music,’ and ‘My Favourite Things.’ The von Trapps climb every mountain while buffoonish Nazis bumble around like hapless stooges and errant schoolboys. The whole German high command seems little match for a few giggly nuns who steal the alternator and battery cables from their jeeps and then run to the mother superior to confess their mischief.” ⁴⁴⁹ The cold hard truth was very different, as has been stated previously in this book: the Papal institution had supported Nazism, from its pope down to priests and nuns! But Hollywood was useful to indoctrinate people away from this reality, and to present a far “nicer” Roman Catholic “Church” to the world.

Of course, as seen previously, even in the final year of World War Two the trend had been set by The Bells of St. Mary s, starring Bing Crosby and Ingrid Bergman. Nun movies were big business in the late 50s and the 60s. This was a time in America where nuns were seen everywhere, running Roman Catholic schools and hospitals, etc., etc. It was good business sense for Hollywood to make films about them at a time when many Americans had constant contact with them in everyday life. But in addition, it kept Romanism in the forefront of movie audiences’ minds. ⁴⁵⁰

Paulist Priests Start Making Their Own Films

In the 1960s an order of Roman Catholic priests, the Paulist “Fathers”, established their very own film and TV production company. Known as Paulist Pictures, it went from strength to strength, and in 1989 made the movie Romero, about the murdered archbishop in El Salvador, Oscar Romero. It was distributed by a major Hollywood studio and shown in theatres across America. ⁴⁵¹

The Pawnbroker (1965): the Legion Tottering on the Edge of Its Grave

By the mid-1960s one moral issue after another had been challenged by Hollywood; but the bishops of the U.S. Roman Catholic institution decided to draw a line in the sand when it came to nudity. They ordered Little and Sullivan of the NCOMP (the old Legion) to condemn all movies containing nudity. Hypocritically, the bishops in a statement declared that “nudity is not immoral and has long been recognized as a legitimate subject in painting and sculpture”, but that it was unacceptable in movies! ⁴⁵² Either something is immoral or it is not. Nudity is certainly immoral, biblically, whether in art or in movies. But the Romish bishops have always had their own set of moral standards, which are not those of the Bible, the Word of God.

Usually, if the Legion objected, nude scenes were still removed by the moviemakers. But this changed in 1965, when Sidney Lumet’s The Pawnbroker was released in the USA, and scenes of nudity were deliberately left in the film. The movie was denied a seal by the PCA’s Geoffrey Shurlock, but the producer, Ely Landau, appealed to the MPAA board, which eventually gave the seal to the film after Landau slightly cut the length of the scenes involving nudity. The film was released, and when the Legion reviewed it a few weeks afterwards its reviewers were divided, some approving of it and others condemning it. Little did not believe the film was obscene, but said it had to be condemned because of the nudity – obeying the instructions from his superiors. Yet this was possibly the mildest condemnation of a film by the Legion in its history, according to Variety magazine. ⁴⁵³ The Legion knew that its authority and influence were almost over.

When the film opened, shockingly, a number of “Protestant” reviewers praised it and had no problem with the nudity! ⁴⁵⁴ Roman Catholics were divided over it, and over the Legion’s attitude to it. “There is no place for the ‘Legion’ type of censorship,” stated the editorial of Film Heritage, a Roman Catholic-edited film journal. It called for the Legion to abolish the Condemned rating as it was a “brutalizing form of pressure.” ⁴⁵⁵ Certainly pro-Legion reviewer William Mooring was correct when he wrote that the Code had been reduced to “a mere scrap of paper.” ⁴⁵⁶

The truth of the matter was that the Legion’s condemnation of The Pawnbroker was a further nail in its own coffin. American Roman Catholic audiences, having imbibed the American spirit of “freedom of expression”, no longer wanted the Legion to censor what they could see, and they turned out in large numbers to see the film. Besides, Rome itself was now clearly more broad-minded when it came to scenes previously condemned as “immoral” in movies. This sent conflicting messages to the Papist population. And then too, because the film was about a Jewish Holocaust survivor, and because it was kn own that the “Church” of Rome had not stood up to Nazi aggression against the Jews and had even, in fact, colluded with Hitler, Rome’s condemnation of the film was seen by many to be yet further evidence of its anti-Semitism, ft was plain to see that the Legion was tottering on the edge of its own grave.

Vatican II and Movies

The Second Vatican Council was held from 1962 to 1965, one of its purposes being to “modernise” certain aspects of Roman Catholicism to make it more appealing to the modem age. But in doing so, it actually lost much of its former glory and mystique in the eyes of millions of Romanists. Latin was rejected in favour of the vernacular, priests and nuns became more “user-friendly”, with nuns in particular often casting off their austere dress code and appearing in public as “regular girls”, Papist rituals were downplayed to make Romanism more appealing to Protestants in the ecumenical age, etc. But as a natural consequence, as Romanism in the world lost much of what had made it distinct from other “churches”, it also lost much of its distinctiveness in the movies. Not only that, but now that censorship was virtually dead, moviemakers were free to make movies that attacked Roman Catholic beliefs if they liked. And many of them liked – very much so.

As for priest Little himself, he changed with the changes occurring as a result of Vatican II. As has happened to countless other men through the ages, he told Jack Vizzard that in his younger years things appeared as “stark blacks and whites”, but with age “issues seemed less simple and more complex, and assumed various shades of gray.” After the change of the Legion’s name, he said the Legion had developed a reputation for being a “stubborn, antiquarian, unrealistic defender of Catholic movie goers”, and that this was not how it should function in the aftermath of Vatican II. ⁴⁵⁷ In truth, Roman Catholics had changed, and the Papal institution itself now wanted to “move with the times”. Rome speaks haughtily of “defending eternal morals”, but is ever ready to embrace the shifting sands of the times and adjust its “morality” accordingly. The true moral law of God is eternal, and does not change; and true Christians do not suit their morality to the times they are living in. But Rome will do anything to keep its members.

Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1965): Priestly Morals in the Gutter with Everyone Else’s

When it was announced that a film version of the Broadway play, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? would be made, the Legion once again came out with guns blazing, because it was laced with some of the most filthy language and overt sexual dialogue to which audiences had ever been subjected. When Geoffrey Shurlock read the script in October 1965, he told Warner Brothers that a PCA seal would only be given once all profanity and sexual dialogue had been cut. The reason Warner Brothers wanted a seal and Legion approval as well, even though they knew films were now doing very well commercially without them, was that this particular film had been a big-budget one for the studio, and if Warner wanted to make a profit it was felt that the approval of the PCA and the Legion were still needed. The studio stated that it would make the film an “adults only” one, and that it would submit it to the NCOMP (the Legion) ahead of the MPAA appeal.

The film was shot, however, with the language pretty much intact, and the PCA, after reviewing it in May 1966, did not give it the seal. Shurlock, however, told Warner to appeal his decision to the MPAA board, which was done.

As yet another indication of how much the Legion had changed from the old days, although there was no consensus on the part of the consultors who reviewed it, a sizeable majority voted against condemning the film.

Those who favoured it, including some (celibate?) priests, described it as valid adult entertainment, despite its foul language and sexual dialogue! It was clear that the morals of many priests and Papists were no different from those of society around them. Warner gave the assurance that no one under 18 unless accompanied by a parent would be allowed to buy a ticket, and the film was classified “A4” by the Legion (adults only). In June 1966 the MPAA board met to rule on the film, and a seal was granted.

“However, when Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton hit the screen screaming and tearing at each other with a hateful vengeance [in Who .V Afraid of Virginia Woolf?] it was obvious that the movies had been changed forever. No longer were they going to be reigned [sic] in by codes.” ⁴⁵⁸ Quigley’s son, Martin Quigley, Jr., declared in the Motion Picture Herald that the Code was now dead. ⁴⁵⁹ The supreme irony, however, was this: “[Roman Catholic] Church pressure had created the PCA in 1934, and, thirty-two years later, the [Roman Catholic] church played a major role in hastening its demise”, when the Legion granted an “A4” rating to this movie.

“The decision to award Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? an A-IV rating touched off the biggest outpouring of protest letters in the history of the Legion and NCOMP.” ⁴⁶⁰ This just showed that despite the liberalisation within much of the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic institution, there was still a huge bedrock of conservative Roman Catholics who were utterly opposed to the new direction being taken. The NCOMP was referred to as the “NCOMPetents” by one group of angry Romanists. Martin Quigley, Jr. wrote to Spellman, the cardinal, asking him why it was that such things as blasphemy, profanity, and obscenity were now acceptable to the “Church” when displayed in movies. Sullivan the Jesuit was kept busy replying to over a thousand letters about the film. In writing to a bishop, he said that despite the fact the film was controversial it attempted to make “a moral statement about our times consistent with a Christian viewpoint on life.” What an astounding statement! This aptly encapsulated the liberal Romanist notion of “morality”, so far removed from the Word of God. That such a film could be justified, even partially, as being “consistent with a Christian viewpoint of life” speaks volumes about the vile, false “Christianity” of Roman Catholicism. It also shows how the Jesuits had changed course, changed tactics, and swung the “Church” to the left when it came to films.

But then Sullivan went even further, showing how deeply he had himself imbibed liberal Romanism and jettisoned the conservative Romanism of the pre-Vatican II days: he wrote that Pius XII’s encyclical, Miranda Prorsus, had opened the way for a more “tolerant”, open- minded view of movies, and stated that “we cannot intrude upon what is alone their [adult Roman Catholics’] right and obligation, namely, the exercise of individual responsibility in conscience.” ⁴⁶¹ This may have reflected the general American (and even western) attitude to “freedom of expression” and “freedom of conscience”, but it must be remembered, firstly, that it is not the truly Christian one, for true Christians do not seek to be entertained by filth (thus showing, yet again, the unchristian nature of Romanism); and secondly, it shows the base hypocrisy of Rome, which has always been against liberty of conscience and freedom of expression, and yet – when it suits its purposes – it speaks in favour of the very things it opposes! Vatican II and its aftermath often produced statements like this from the lips of Roman Catholics, so as to attract more people to the “Church” and to hold on to those who had imbibed such notions from the America they lived in.

Darling (1965): the Legion Sinks Still Further

The astounding about-face of the Legion (the NCOMP) was seen again when the 1965 British film, Darling, was shown in America. Although it was about a woman who leaves her husband, has various affairs, participates in an orgy, appears nude, has an abortion, etc., the NCOMP, after getting a few seconds of nudity cut from the film, awarded it Best Picture of 1965, a film of “artistic vision and expression”! The old Legion was clearly nothing like it had once been. And Romish publications reviewed it very positively as well. ⁴⁶² There were protests from many Romanists, however, showing again that the “Church” hierarchy was moving faster than many in the pews.

The Code Replaced by CARA: Censorship Now Truly Dead

In 1966 Jack Valenti became president of the MPAA. He was an Italian Roman Catholic. But he also loathed censorship of any kind, from any source whatsoever, and he planned to destroy the Code. He said, “It was plain that the old system of self-regulation, begun with the formation of the MPAA in 1922, had broken down. From the very first day of my own succession to the MPAA President’s office, I had sniffed the Production Code constructed by the Hays Office. There was about this stem, forbidding catalogue of ‘Dos and Don’ts’ the odious smell of censorship, I determined to junk it at the first opportune moment.” ⁴⁶³

And junk it he did. In September 1966 Valenti’s new Code came in. It was not merely a revision of the previous Code, but amounted to a brand new one. “Expunging the last vestiges of Quigley-Lord-Breen moral absolutism, the new document stressed opposition to ‘censorship and classification by law’ and delegated the parents of America as the final ‘arbiters of family conduct.’… The official MPAA press release explained, ‘this revised code is designed to keep in closer harmony with the mores, the culture, and the moral sense and the expectations of our society.’” ⁴⁶⁴ It certainly was, for society had changed, and not for the better. And now that the floodgates were opened, Hollywood would cause it to sink even faster into a vortex of moral relativism and degraded filth.

Instead of regulations, the new policy was to issue ratings: classi fications of films according to their content. And so it was that, in November 1968, the Production Code was replaced by a rating system developed by the Motion Picture Association of America. It was called the Code and Rating Administration (CARA). Geoffrey Shurlock of the PCA retired, to be replaced by Eugene Dougherty, a Roman Catholic. And priest Little retired from the NCOMP, to be replaced by priest Sullivan.

The original CARA ratings were as follows: “G” (Suggested for General Audiences); “M” (Suggested for Mature Audiences); “R” (Restricted – no persons under 16 unless accompanied by a parent or guardian); and “X” (Persons under 16 Not Admitted). Krol, the archbishop, was in favour of the new age classification system, and he sounded like priest Sullivan (quoted above) and even like a committed American when he declared that the Roman Catholic institution was committed to the U.S. Bill of Rights, “no part of which is more important to the American people than that freedom of utterance which includes artistic expression.” ⁴⁶⁵ This Popish archbishop’s supposed fondness for the Bill of Rights was a sham. Rome has never been in favour of American freedoms, and has opposed and warred against them from the very beginning. American freedoms have always stood in the way of Rome’s authoritarian expansionist ambitions. So a statement like this was made for reasons of expedience, to fool the people, to make it seem as if the “Church” of Rome was pro-American, and thereby to increase its own power in the United States.

As the years went by, the CARA ratings system would be altered. But consider this: “CARA is a secret society, guided only by the gut instincts and inchoate feelings of a membership whose names, qualifications, and grade-point scale are a mystery to all save the inner sanctum of the MPAA – a true star chamber.” ⁴⁶⁶ It is in fact so secretive that Kirby Dick, director of a documentary entitled This Movie Is Not Yet Rated, which came out in 2006, actually hired private detectives to learn the identities of the board members!

Are true Christians able to trust the ratings system? Absolutely not! These ratings should never be used by believers as their guide. It is the height of foolishness when naive parents look at a movie’s rating and say, “Oh, this one will be great for the children – it says ‘All.’” Christians should never, ever entrust a faceless, nameless, essentially secret society to tell them that a particular movie is safe for their children! Christians are to raise their children according to the Word of God – not according to the world. They must expect the world to have a very different understanding of what is wholesome family entertainment! The world’s ideas of morality, right and wrong, family, entertainment and decency are not the same as the Christian believer’s. The world is not governed by the Word of God.

In effect, with the replacement of the Code by the ratings system, censorship was now dead. Anew era had dawned for the movie industry. It would not be an easy one for the Roman Catholic institution. Rome would not have things all her way as had pretty much been the case throughout Hollywood’s “Golden Age”.

“The code was dead, censorship was dead, and the cultural war that had raged between the Catholic church and the movie industry was, at least temporarily, over.” ⁴⁶⁷

The NCOMP Continues to Liberalise

The NCOMP was hardly recognisable, now, as the Legion of the past, and Romish media support for movies which once would have been condemned outright was so enthusiastic that it can only be described as a total about-face. “Subjects that in the past had aroused the church’s ire were no longer an issue” ⁴⁶⁸ – including such subjects as foul language, homosexuality, abortion, etc. Even the Legion’s old automatic opposition to any nudity at all was greatly relaxed now. And even when Romanism itself was shown in a somewhat poor light in a film, this was not automatically condemned by the NCOMP. Furthermore, priests or nuns having sexual affairs was no longer a subject off-limits either! These were astounding times.

The Shoes of the Fisherman (1968): Promoting a Socialistic Romanism and Foreshadowing John Paul II

A film that only makes sense in the light of the post-Vatican II “Church” was The Shoes of the Fisherman. In this film, a Popish cleric, Kiril Lakota, is ransomed from the Gulag Archipelago, taken to Rome, and is in the conclave when the pope of Rome dies suddenly. The film’s hero gets elected as the first non-Italian pontiff in four centuries. In these aspects, the movie (unknowingly, of course) anticipated the 1978 election of just such a non-Italian pope, Karol Wojtyla from Poland (who almost uncannily shared a name sounding very similar to that of the film’s character), who became John Paul II. Furthermore, in the film, in a summit meeting with the Soviet Union Communist premier and the Chinese Communist leader, this pope averts a nuclear war, caused by a famine, between the two Communist states by pledging to give the vast resources of the Roman Catholic “Church” – its land, its buildings and art treasures – to alleviate hunger. The film was clearly a promotion of a radical new, Socialistic brand of Romanism which in the wake of Vatican II was sweeping through the Romish institution. Although the real non-Italian pope, John Paul II, elected ten years after this film was released, never did anything quite so radically and Socialistically left-wing, he certainly was a “people’s pope” who held firmly to his own brand of Catholic-Communism. ⁴⁶⁹

Rosemary’s Baby (1968): Marking the Beginning of Hollywood’s Satanic Season

This horror film of demon possession, Roman Polanski’s screen version of an Ira Levin novel, described by one as “a highly serious lapsed- Catholic fable”, ⁴⁷⁰ centres on Rosemary, a young Irish-American ex- Roman Catholic girl who nevertheless cannot escape being haunted by images from her Roman Catholic childhood. She becomes impregnated by the devil during a Satanic black mass.

It is significant that in the Hollywood of the post-Code era, Roman Catholic girls were so often the focus of interest from Satan. There are a number of reasons for this, notably that Romanism’s teaching on sex, sexuality, marriage, etc., has always been distorted, closely associated with confessionals, priestly absolution, and feelings of deep guilt and shame. In the popular mind and thus in Hollywood, Roman Catholic girls have so often been divided into either pious anti-sex maidens or morally loose harlots who rebel against the restraints of their religion, knowing they can always just go to confession and put it all right.

In the black mass, during a realistic dream, Rosemary is tied down to the altar by Satanists, all of whom are Roman Catholics (including John and Jackie Kennedy), and Satan impregnates her. The impregnation by the devil is not a dream, but real. She is comforted by the pope of Rome himself, who forgives her, and she kisses his ring.

Asked why all the dream figures during her impregnation by the devil were Romanists, Roman Polanski said that this was because Rosemary was an ex-Romanist, and her associations in such circumstances would be people who represent married Roman Catholicism to her. But this explanation is hardly the whole of it: clearly, this film was a frontal assault on the religion of Rome. In the film, the cover of Time magazine which stated, “God is Dead!” is very prominent; and clearly the film itself was a strong statement to that effect. It was a film in which Satan was made out to be victorious.

It is chilling indeed that Roman Polanski had wanted his own wife, Sharon Tate, to play the part of Rosemary (it was eventually played by Mia Farrow); and Tate reportedly was the one who came up with the idea for the scene in which Rosemary is raped and impregnated. Not that long afterwards, on August 9, 1969, when Sharon Tate was eight and a half months pregnant, she and her unborn baby were brutally murdered by Susan Atkins and Tex Watson, two disciples of Charles Manson. Screenwriter Wojciech Frykowski was at Sharon Tate’s home at the time and was also murdered, and when he asked Tex Watson who he was and what he was doing there, Watson replied, “I’m the devil, and I’m here to do the devil’s business.” ⁴⁷¹ Satan is all too horrifyingly real.

This was, truly, the beginning of Hollywood’s assault on Roman Catholicism via the medium of horror films in which Satan emerges victorious. The late 1960s, and the decade of the 1970s, was a time of increasing interest in witchcraft, Satanism, black magic, and all things occultic, especially among the disillusioned youth of the “flower power” generation. Partly, Hollywood simply plugged into this fascination with all things evil and dark, but partly, Hollywood itself led the way into it, as it threw off the constraints of the Papist- controlled Production Code years and went into attack mode against all things Papist. And in the process, it was also assaulting morality, decency, and the truth of the Gospel which Romanism had perverted for so long, but which was associated in the popular mind with the Romish religion.

The Legion Limps On

The NCOMP soldiered on, under priest Sullivan, for some years more, a mere shadow of its former self. When it condemned certain films, very often the Papist press ignored it and recommended what the Legion had condemned.

In 1970 the NCOMP, together with the National C ouncil of Churches (NCC), was well aware that Hollywood was no longer paying any attention to their concerns. In a joint statement, they said theatres were not enforcing the age restrictions on movies; movies containing sex and violence were being classified as “G” (all ages admitted) and “GP” (all ages admitted, parental guidance suggested); etc. But the MPAA did nothing, and so in 1971 the NCOMP and NCC withdrew their support for the MPAA’s rating system. ⁴⁷² But the truth was, “No one in the industry seemed to care. At a time when more than half of all U.S. Catholic women reported practicing birth control, a much more serious sin in the eyes of the church than attending a condemned film, it was hard to believe that the laity was paying much attention to NCOMP’s evaluations. Where once the threat of a Legion condemnation could bring the movie moguls to heel, news that NCOMP had condemned 20 percent of the films it reviewed in 1971 caused hardly a ripple within the industry.” ⁴⁷³

It was an even greater blow to the NCOMP that “Church” leaders and so many Roman Catholics in general were simply ignoring it. The faculty and students of a Jesuit college, Creighton University, invited the producer of a movie that had been condemned by the NCOMP to screen it on campus; and the film critic for Our Sunday Visitor, an influential Romish publication, placed two movies in his 1971 list of the ten best films which had been condemned by the NCOMP! ⁴⁷⁴

The End of Irish Roman Catholic Domination in Hollywood

Irish Papists had always been viewed by Anglo-Saxon Protestants as lazy, given to drunkenness, and fanatically devoted to the Roman Catholic “Church” – a stereotype which, nevertheless, in general terms contained quite a bit of truth. But the power of Hollywood helped greatly to change this perception, for as has been shown in this book, Irish-American Roman Catholics were very involved in the movie industry from its earliest years. And by the mid-twentieth century they had managed to swing public opinion in their favour via Hollywood movies that portrayed them very positively, movies such as Boys Town, Going My Way, and a number of others. In fact, Irish-American Roman Catholics were the movie industry’s favourite ethnic group from the late 1930s through to the 1950s. Although Jews owned the movie studios, there were important Irish-American directors, actors and actresses during this period; and in addition it was Irish-American Roman Catholics who made and enforced the Motion Picture Production Code, as was seen, the enforcing being backed by the powerful Legion of Decency, which was under Irish-American control. The Jewish studio owners kn ew on which side their bread was buttered, for American cities, where moviemakers earned the most money, were heavily Roman Catholic, and if they did not toe the line when it came to Roman Catholic standards of morality, the Legion could organise boycotts that could ruin a film’s success financially.

But in addition to Irish Papist dominance of Hollywood, there was another reason why those who made the movies (even when they were predominantly Jewish) were usually very happy to make use of Irish- American Romanists as characters in their movies. This was because, throughout the first half of the twentieth century, Irish-Americans were in a special position as far as immigrants were concerned: they were not yet fully accepted into American society, but they were more accepted than other immigrant communities, being English-speaking and less “different” than other immigrants; they had been in the United States longer than most other immigrants; and they were recognised by other, newer immigrant communities (such as Italian-Americans and Polish-Americans, also both Roman Catholic in religion) as the leaders of all immigrants. This was not by accident: Irish-Americans had deliberately positioned themselves as leaders via their militant, proud brand of American Romanism, which proved very attractive to the newer Romish immigrants – Poles, Italians and French – who thus formed with the Irish a larger American Roman Catholic group, yet always with the Irish in charge. And as the twentieth century progressed Irish-Americans ascended the social ladder, becoming very powerful in many aspects of American life, including politically.

Even Jewish-Americans recognised this leadership role of the Irish: “Hollywood made over forty films pairing Irish Catholics and Jews between 1910 and the early 1930s, for example, and almost all of them taught the same lesson: the easiest way for Jews or any other new immigrant people to become Americanized was to marry, enter into partnership with, or even adopt an Irish Catholic.” ⁴⁷⁵

These, then, are the factors behind the dominance of Irish-American Papists in Hollywood during this era. But it all changed in the 1960s. When the Motion Picture Production Code was dropped, and the Legion of Decency lost its influence, the huge power of Irish-American Romanism in Hollywood came to an end. The 1960s were also a time of massive social change in the United States, as indeed throughout the world, and a new generation of restless, directionless young people, stirred up by deliberate Communist propaganda in their music, ⁴⁷⁶ strung out on drugs and sold out on “free love”, turned against the authority structures of their parents, the government and the “church”. These youngsters included large numbers of Irish-Americans, who turned against the religion and the restraints of their parents’ and grandparents’ generations. Prominent Irish-American writers of that era wrote much against what had gone before. And here it was: the root of all that was wrong with Irish-Americanism, according to these young writers, was the Roman Catholic “Church”. “For almost all members of the new generation of Irish American Catholic writers, the Catholic church lay at the root of all the repression, hypocritical pieties, deadened thought, and narrow ethnocentrism that plagued Irish Catholic America.” ⁴⁷⁷

The tragedy is that they were right, to an extent even greater than they knew. No matter how long it takes, there is always a reaction against repression and oppression. The French Revolution was just such a reaction against centuries of domination and oppression by the Papal institution in France; and the 1960s youth rebellion was another one. And just as the French Revolution went to shocking excesses, so did the 1960s counter-culture rebellion. Revolting against the oppression, the stifling of intellectual thought, the hatred, the racism of Roman Catholicism and other forms of false “Christianity”, the youth of that generation dived headlong into sexual promiscuity, drugs, perverse music, and Communist philosophy and thought. With the ignorance of youth, they were pawns in the hands of the Marxists and they did not even know it. Their hatred for “institutional religion” and all forms of control made them cannon fodder for the Communist revolutionaries quietly going about their business behind the scenes.

Hollywood was not slow to jump on the bandwagon. Indeed, it can be argued – successfully – that to a very great extent Hollywood was used, particularly by Jewish Communists, to spearhead this youth rebellion and thereby promote Communist ideology across young America. Hollywood had changed: the Papist-controlled Production Code was gone, and new men were running the show.

Chapter twelve – The 1970s: Rome under attack, but fights back

Up until now Hollywood had been viewed, by the Papal hierarchy, as a great and powerful tool to sway the masses in Rome’s direction, but now all that had changed. What was Rome to do? How would she fight back? Could she even fight back?

Italian Papist Influence Replaces Irish Papist Influence in Hollywood

Another ethnic immigrant group now rose to prominence in Hollywood in the 1970s, replacing Irish-American Roman Catholic dominance: Italian-American Roman Catholic influence was now on top. There are many reasons for this massive change, not least among them the fact that Italian-Americans were perceived as being more emotional, more suspicious of authority, and thus more representative of what young Americans were feeling and expressing in the counter-culture decades of the 1960s and 1970s. The Mafia, the Mob, the Brotherhood, the Black Hand, the Cosa Nostra, the Underground, etc. – these all became favourite Hollywood themes, for they never failed to attract audiences who seemed to have an insatiable appetite for films about such things. And Italian gangsterism in America was always inextricably tied up with Italian Roman Catholicism. In Hollywood’s Little Italy, “Behind every plaster-of-paris statue of the Madonna there lurked a Sicilian hitman intent on his vendetta… every household shrine contained at least one votive candle burning for a mafiosi…. Virtually any Italian gangster of note could count on several lavish film biographies and a television series or two. A1 Capone, Joe Valachi, Lucky Luciano, and Joe Columbo became full-fledged media superstars.” ⁴⁷⁸

By this time, the Roman Catholicism of a place like New York was a very strange mix. Actually, it was hardly a mix at all, considering that the two main elements of it did not blend all that well. The situation was this: a Romish “clergy” dominated by Irish-Americans, and a Romish “laity” dominated by Italian-Americans. And Hollywood loved this dichotomy between what was perceived as Irish Romanist puritanism and dogmatism, and Italian Romanist sensuality and wayward sexual behaviour.

Certainly, the Irish Romanist immigrants of the past had come to dominate the priestly positions of the American Roman Catholic “Church”, and had taught abstinence before marriage, purity within marriage, and sexual self-denial for those who entered the priesthood or the convent – even if in practice they knew such things were so often not adhered to, and even if in practice they themselves were far from morally pure (as the scandal of tens of thousands of sexual predator-priests abusing children, which broke in the 1990s and gained such global momentum afterwards, has proved beyond doubt). ⁴⁷⁹ Italian Romanist immigrants, however, were not as rigid, and far more openly sensuous. “To Italians, Irish Catholicism seemed to be severe, doctrinaire, unemotional, and conservative; to the Irish, Italian Catholics were excessively superstitious, overly influenced by folk customs, fatalistic, almost pagan,” wrote one chronicler. ⁴⁸⁰

And all of this Italian Romanism was encapsulated in four movies of the 1970s in particular, all of which were about Italian-Americans: The Godfather (1972), The Godfather: Part II (1974), Rocky (1976), and Saturday Night Fever (1977).

And along with the rise of Italian-American Papists in Hollywood films and the fall of Irish-American Papist dominance, Irish-American Papists began to be portrayed in the movies and on TV as corrupt, racist, given to drunkenness, and hypocritically religious. This is how they were portrayed in such films as Joe (1970), Serpico (1973), Ragtime (1981), The Pope of Greenwich Village (1984), and L.A. Confidential (1997); and in such TV shows as Homicide: Life on the Street (1993- 1999), The Fighting Fitzgeralds (2001), etc.

The pendulum had swung back: once again, Irish-American Papists were being viewed as they had been before Hollywood had done so much to give them a make-over.

Another Important Vatican Document

A very important document was released by the Vatican’s Pontifical Council for the Instruments of Social Communication in January 1971, entitled “The Pastoral Instruction on the Means of Social Communication” (Communio et Progressio). Let us study some aspects of this document.

Section 26 states: “If public opinion is to emerge in the proper manner, it is absolutely essential that there be freedom to express ideas and attitudes.” This sentence is designed to mislead the uninformed, to make them think that the “Church” of Rome is in favour of freedom of expression and ideas. It has never been in favour of these or any other freedoms, as its long history amply demonstrates with all the evidence one could desire. And in fact, this section immediately continues as follows: “In accordance with the express teaching of the second Vatican Council it is necessary unequivocally to declare that freedom of speech for individuals and groups must be permitted so long as the common good and public morality be not endangered.” Ah! This gives the game away, but sadly not to the masses of uninformed, who would see nothing sinister in this sentence, coming as it does immediately after the one about freedom of expression and ideas. Many would read this one and thi nk to themselves, “Yes, this is true; freedom of speech cannot be granted if it harms the common good and public morality.” But what does Rome mean by “the common good”? Commenting on this very section of the Vatican document, author D.J. Beswick correctly explains the Papistical meaning behind these words:

“We have seen that the requirement of not conflicting with the common good is equivalent to acting in accordance with the instructions and directions of the Roman Catholic hierarchy. It is thus easy to see how such freedom of speech is to be permitted ‘so long as the common good and public morality be not endangered’. In practical terms, what this means is that freedom of speech is to be permitted so long as there is no public criticism of the Catholic Church or Catholic social policy, or in other words one can criticise anything or anyone provided one doesn’t tread on Catholic toes.” ⁴⁸¹

Thus Rome sought to control freedom of speech and freedom of expression, by allowing these things as long as Roman Catholicism or any of its works was not criticised through the mass media. Of course, in practice Rome was only partially successful in achieving this goal; but the point is that this is Rome’s stated goal, and she will work constantly for the day when she can totally manipulate and control the mass media to her advantage all over the world.

Sec. 29 is very revealing: “The process of promoting what is sometimes called a ‘propaganda campaign’, with a view to influencing public opinion, is justified only when it serves the truth, when its objectives and methods accord with the dignity of man, and when it promotes causes that are in the public interest. These causes may concern either individuals or groups, one’s own country or the world at large.”

Rome, of course, had been relentlessly pushing her own “propaganda campaign” via TV and the movies for decades when this was written, and she still is. This paragraph was an attempt to justify this. Considering the fact that Rome believes herself to be the sole propagator of the truth, and the sole and true defender of it, when she states that a propaganda campaign must “serve the truth” to be justified, this simply means the propaganda campaign must serve the interests of the Roman Catholic institution! As far as she is concerned, “causes that are in the public interest” are causes that are in Rome’s interest; for she believes the entire world must submit to her authority.

Following on from this clever Jesuitical reasoning, which the general public would never be able to see through, Sec. 30 states: “Some types of propaganda are inadmissable. These include those that harm the public interest or allow of no public reply. Any propaganda should be rejected which deliberately misrepresents the real situation, or distorts men’s minds with half truths, selective reporting or serious omissions, and which diminishes man’s legitimate freedom of decision.”

Terms do not mean what the dictionary may say they mean; they mean whatever those using them choose for them to mean. In this paragraph, Rome shows its antipathy towards any “propaganda” that is not its own propaganda (which she justified using in Sec. 29, as seen above). It is only Roman Catholic propaganda which, as far as Rome is concerned, ‘serves the truth” and is “in the public interest”; therefore, any viewpoint which differs from her own is seen to be “propaganda… which deliberately misrepresents the real situation, or distorts men’s minds with half truths, selective reporting or serious omissions.” The fact that Roman Catholics in the mass media deliberately misrepresent the real situation, and distort men’s minds with half truths, selective reporting and omissions is fine as far as Rome is concerned, because, as it has stated, Roman Catholic propaganda “serves the truth” and “promotes causes in the public interest.” As Beswick commented, “The Atheist-Communists use the same circular reasoning.” He wrote in addition: “if large scale Communist propaganda represents ‘Communist brainwashing’, then what does large scale Catholic propaganda represent? We have seen that the promoting of a propaganda campaign ‘with a view to influencing public opinion, is justified only when it serves the truth’, but this tells us nothing, because all propaganda campaigns, whether carried out by Atheist Communists, Roman Catholics or some other ideology, are claimed to serve the truth and promote causes that are in the public interest.” ⁴⁸²

Sec. 42 states: “But the right to information is not limitless. It has to be reconciled with other existing rights…. There is the right of secrecy which obtains if necessity or professional duty or the common good itself requires it. Indeed, whenever the public good is at stake, discretion and discrimination and careful judgment should be used in the preparation of news.”

So: when receiving news via any Roman Catholic or pro-Romanist news source (newspapers, radio, television), one can never be certain one is receiving the whole story. Take, for instance, the centuries- old sexual abuse of children by Romish priests. It had been going on for hundreds and hundreds of years before it became an international scandal in the 1990s and the 2000s. Was it ever fully or properly reported on by Roman Catholic media sources prior to that? No. Reason: Rome did not judge such news as being “in the interests of the public good”. Rather, it saw such information as requiring “discretion and discrimination and careful judgment”, for “the public good was at stake”. But by the “public good”, Rome means whatever is good for Rome!

“Thus we see that secrecy is to be used when the ‘common good’ requires it, and since Catholic Action is working for the ‘common good’, then secrecy is to be used when the machinations of Catholic Action require it. The complete lack of public awareness of Catholic Action shows that this directive is faithfully applied.” ⁴⁸³

Now for a very revealing paragraph. Sec. 106 states: “As represent atives of the Church, Bishops, priests, religious and laity are increasingly asked to write in the press, or appear on radio and television, or to collaborate in filming. They are warmly urged to undertake this work, which has consequences that are far more important than is usually imagined.”

In obedience to this directive, priests were seen to be acting as advisors for Hollywood movies, even the most diabolical, gruesome and sexually explicit, if it was believed they would advance the cause of Roman Catholicism thereby. Some even became actors themselves. This will be well demonstrated a little further on in this book, when we examine the movie, The Exorcist.

Sec. 145 reads as follows: “Catholic associations for the cinema should collaborate with their counterparts in the other media in endeavours to plan, produce, distribute and exhibit films imbued with religious principles. With discrimination, they should also use for religious teaching all the new developments in this field which make inexpensive productions possible. These include gramophone records, audio and video-tape recorders, video-cassettes and all the other machines that record and play back either sound or static or moving images.”

Of course, vast strides have been made in these fields since this was written; but just as the Roman Catholic institution made great use of these now old-fashioned forms of equipment, so today it makes great use of the modem successors of those old records, tape recorders, etc.

Pieces of Dreams (1970): Hollywood Attacks Priestly Celibacy

In the post-Vatican II world and in the midst of the iniquitous sexual revolution and anything-goes philosophy of the 1960s, which swept up an entire generation of disillusioned youth throughout the western world, literally thousands of priests left the “Church” of Rome, unable to accept or promote Rome’s teachings on abortion, contraception, divorce, homosexuality, papal infallibility, etc. For them, the world had moved on and the “Church” had been left behind, stuck in an antiquated morality that as far as they were concerned was out of touch with the realities of the modem world. In particular, these young priests rejected priestly celibacy as old-fashioned and unnecessary.

Hollywood, of course, was not slow to take up these themes, producing movies which inevitably showed priests having affairs (often with nuns) and then leaving their “Church”. This is precisely what occurs in Pieces of Dreams.

The theme was very real. These things were happening all the time. But of course they had always happened, throughout the centuries. The only difference was that in the decade of the 1960s and afterwards, it was out in the open far more, and thousands of ex-priests were not ashamed to admit it.

M*A*S*H (1970): the Roman Catholic Religion Ridiculed

Ring Lardner received an Oscar for the screenplay for M*A*S*H. A quarter of a century before, he had refused to testify before the House Committee on Un-American Activities regarding his possible affiliation to the Communist Party, and now he was rewarded for a film which was not only a criticism of America’s involvement in wars but also an outright attack on religion, in particular the Roman Catholic religion. Robert Altman, the director, was a Roman Catholic, but even so M*A*S*H was “the first major American movie openly to ridicule belief in God – not phony belief; real belief’, according to reviewer Roger Greenspun of the New York Times , ⁴⁸⁴ Clearly Altman was a very disillusioned Romanist. Romish chaplains were depicted as fools, Romish sacraments were mocked, and sexual sin was glorified. Bible- reading, praying characters were ridiculed. Sex, in fact, replaced religion in the film. Sex, in essence, was the religion, just as it was the religion of multitudes of young people of that era.

The Godfather (1972): Rome’s Mafia Connections Shown

Hollywood’s attitude to Rome had now changed dramatically. With no pro-Roman Catholic Production Code to live up to, directors and producers were free to make any movies they liked, and to attack any and all religion – including the Romish religion – freely. And they did so with a vengeance, depicting such themes as intrigue, murder, corruption, sex and much more as being closely connected with the Roman Catholic “Church”.

In 1972 The Godfather was released, to be followed by The Godfather: Part II in 1974. These films became icons for devoted moviegoers. In them, Romanism and the organised Italian Mafia criminal underworld in America are constantly interwoven and juxtaposed, with the crimes committed in the film being linked with solemn Romish rituals. These films have been interpreted as follows: “From wedding to baptism in The Godfather, from first communion to a final prayer at the hour of death in Godfather II, organized religion and organized crime reveal themselves as two faces of a single, blood-stained coin.” “Catholicism is revealed as another racket, another set of opportunities to gain advantage by lying to yourself and to others, another hand-kissing hierarchy of absolute power”. ⁴⁸⁵ It seems a huge stretch to believe that it may only have been the intention of the movie’s maker to interweave Romanism because the characters in the movie were Italians and thus Romanism was an integral part of their lives, and not for any sinister purpose of portraying the Romish religion as evil in itself. Certainly the movies’ director, Francis Ford Coppola, a Roman Catholic, is on record as having said, “I decided to include some Catholic rituals in the movie, which are part of my Catholic heritage…. I had never seen a film that captured the essence of what it was like to be an Italian American.” ⁴⁸⁶ But he was not being totally forthright in saying this. The fact is that Romanism was depicted as being integrally connected with evil Italian Mafia figures – as indeed, in the real world, it is. The Italian priests are depicted as being unconcerned with how their Italian parishioners live, and only concerned with the external, empty rituals of the “Church”. As long as the parishioners attend the rituals, the priests are satisfied. They ask for no more, and the gangsters continue to flourish and commit terrible crimes, while remaining in good standing in the bosom of the “Church” in which they have lived their whole lives.

Mean Streets (1972): a Dark Depiction of Popish Guilt

Another movie showing the interaction between Italian-American Roman Catholicism and Italian-American crime, this film was the work of Martin Scorsese, a Roman Catholic from Little Italy in New York who was also an ex-seminarian and therefore very familiar with the priesthood. It has been said of his films that they are “disturbingly sexual, embarrassingly personal, overpoweringly violent, and intensely religious.” ⁴⁸⁷

The film centres around an Italian-American Roman Catholic man involved with the Mafia, and his guilt and desire for forgiveness and comfort from his “Church”, which he just cannot find. All he experiences from his “Church” is more guilt, not peace or forgiveness. This of course is the reality for millions upon millions of Roman Catholics worldwide: their “Church” entraps them in a seemingly never-ending cycle of guilt and confession, but this does not bring peace to any who are truly troubled by their sins. Sadly, Scorsese obviously knew this only too well. Yet most of these Roman Catholics remain in their “Church” because it is all they know, constantly hoping for the very thing – forgiveness of sins – which they can never truly find there, for it is a false church and proclaims a false way of salvation.

Last Tango in Paris (1973): No Widespread Roman Catholic Outrage

As the 1970s progressed it was as plain as day that the morals of American Roman Catholics had sunk to new levels, with vile, immoral movies being praised in Roman Catholic publications. For example, in 1973 Last Tango in Paris was released, a film containing scenes of nudity, vicious and degrading sex, masturbation and murder; and yet NCOMP reviewers were not in agreement about the film, with one priest recommending an “A4” rating, and another reviewer calling the film a “stunning and overwhelming experience.” Furthermore, Roman Catholic publications were far from condemnatory. “Catholic opinion in Commonweal, America, and the Listener reflected the radical change in America toward movies of this sort. There was no sense of moral outrage, no demand for a national boycott by Catholics.” ⁴⁸⁸

Brother Sun, Sister Moon (1973): a Flower-Child Francis

This film, about the life of the Roman Catholic “saint”, Francis of Assisi, was made by Roman Catholic Franco Zeferelli. But it depicted Francis as a virtual flower-child, doubtless to attract the hippie generation. ⁴⁸⁹

Godspell and Jesus Christ Superstar (1973): Hollywood Declares Open Season on the Son of God

Now that there was no Jesuit-authored Production Code, nor any Roman Catholic Production Code administrators breathing down their necks, leftist Hollywood producers declared open season on both true Christianity and false “Christianity”, and even on the Person of the Lord Jesus Christ Himself. In Hollywood movies of the time, Christ was attacked, mocked, ridiculed. He was not shown as divine, only as human – sometimes very human: a wandering hippie, a cubic “free love”, anything-goes caricature, His disciples mere groupies of the sort that were following the rock stars of the time. Godspell and Jesus Christ Superstar were the most flagrant examples of this, but they were not the only ones.

But Romanism was not a spent force in Hollywood. Not by any means. And Jesuit involvement in the movie industry continued. This is amply demonstrated by The Exorcist.

The Exorcist (1973): a Jesuit Horror Film

This film not only pushed the boundaries of decency even further, sinking to new lows in the horror film genre, but it also did something more. “ The Exorcist is not merely a horror film; it is a Catholic horror film. And, more specifically, it is a Jesuit horror film.” ⁴⁹⁰

Indeed so. But how could this be?

The film came out in 1973. Its writer and producer was William Peter Blatty, a Roman Catholic American of Lebanese descent. He had been a student at Georgetown University, the oldest Roman Catholic university in America and, specifically, a Jesuit university. He had considered becoming a Jesuit priest himself. His mother had recently died and he had many questions about life after death, and wanted to make a film examining these. While at Georgetown he had read about a Roman Catholic exorcism, and decided to make a film about it. The demon possession he read about concerned a 14-year-old Lutheran boy in Maryland who had experienced poltergeist phenomena in his room after playing with the Ouija board. The family’s Lutheran pastor could do nothing for him, telling them to go and see a Roman Catholic priest as “the Catholics kn ow about things like this.” This they did, and the boy was eventually supposedly delivered after Jesuit priests performed a month of exorcisms. He was baptized as a Roman Catholic during this time. And in 1950 one of the Jesuits who had been involved addressed Georgetown University where Blatty was a student. ⁴⁹¹ It had a profound effect on him.

He remained fascinated with exorcisms, and after his mother died (and encouraged by Jesuit priest Thomas V. Bermingham, who later played the president of Georgetown University in the film) Blatty went into seclusion in 1969 and wrote a novel called The Exorcist. It became a bestseller, and then was turned into a movie.

Thus the film’s writer/producer was a Jesuit-educated Papist; the film’s director, on the other hand, was William Friedkin, an agnostic Jew! Here we see yet another Papist/Jewish collaboration on a Hollywood movie. From its very earliest years Hollywood had been under the influence of Papists and Jews, and even now, despite the Production Code having been long removed, that collaboration still at times continued.

It is a film about a girl whose mother comes to the Jesuits’ Georgetown University – Blatty’s university, which features prominently in the movie in various ways. In the film, when the young girl begins to behave in a violent and obscene manner, showing signs of demon possession, her mother asks a young Jesuit priest-psychiatrist, who has begun to question his faith after his mother’s death, to perform an exorcism. He, along with another priest-exorcist, perform the exorcism, the girl is no longer possessed, but both priests die. This ending, although defended by Friedkin the Jewish director, was very unsatisfactory for Blatty, the Papist writer-producer, because the film gave the appearance that evil had been victorious, which was not what he wanted to convey.

Nevertheless, it did convey other things Blatty wanted to say. For example, Jesuits have been willing to die for their religion throughout their history, and many of them have. The death of the two Jesuit exorcists, then, was almost to be expected (in the film) in the sense that they were “heroic” priests willing to lay down their own lives for the sake of freeing the young girl from the demon. The movie’s main priest shouts out to the devil, “Take me! Come into me!” This the devil does, and the priest dies a violent death; yet his death is seen as a sacrifice of love for the soul of the girl. This is why Blatty gave the name Damien Karras to the priest in the movie: “Damien” was the name of a third-century “saint” who was brutally killed, and it was also the name of a nineteenth-century Romish priest who died of leprosy while ministering to lepers on a Hawaiian island; and the surname “Karras”, Blatty explained, evoked the Latin word caritas, or “charitable love.” ⁴⁹²

Even priest Karras’ doubts about his faith, and his physical wrestling with the devil in the movie, are straight out of the Jesuit textbook, The Spiritual Exercises, written by the Jesuit founder Ignatius de Loyola. Loyola wrote, “it is characteristic of the evil spirit to harass with anxiety, to afflict with sadness, to raise obstacles backed by fallacious reasonings that disturb the soul”; and, “The action of the evil spirit upon such souls is violent, noisy, and disturbing.” ⁴⁹³

By having the Jesuit Karras call out to the demon to possess him instead of the girl, and then having him die as a demon-possessed man, Blatty claimed (in the Jesuit magazine, America, in Lebruary 1974) that the priest acted out of love, and by sacrificing his own life in this way he defeated the devil. However, director Lriedkin filmed the priest’s violent end in such a way as to make it uncertain what the priest’s ultimate fate would be. Those watching the film were left to make up their own minds as to whether or not the priest had actually succeeded in defeating the devil.

No true Christian would say such a thing to a devil, of course; nor can a true Christian ever be demon-possessed.

Not only was Blatty a Jesuit-educated Roman Catholic, but real Jesuit priests were used as consultants for the movie, and even acted in the film. Jesuit priest William O’Malley played the part of Jesuit priest Dyer, and Jesuit priest Thomas Bermingham played the president of Georgetown University. These men, claiming to be “men of God”, “other Christs” (as priests of Rome do), were happy to be part of a film with vile language, extreme violence and perverted sex! This truly shows the nature of Roman Catholicism. They were able to overlook these things, for they knew that it promoted the power of Romanism, which was all that mattered to them. In becoming actors in this film, and consultants for it, these Jesuits were simply obeying the directive given in Section 106 of Rome’s “Pastoral Instruction on the Means of Social Communication” ( Communio et Progressio), issued just two years before in 1971, which (as we have seen) stated: “As representatives of the Church, Bishops, priests, religious and laity are increasingly asked to write in the press, or appear on radio and television, or to collaborate in filming. They are warmly urged to undertake this work, which has consequences that are far more important than is usually imagined.” Just how important such consequences would be for Rome when The Exorcist was released, will soon be seen.

In order to achieve as much realism as possible from the actors, Friedkin went to extreme lengths on set to make this horror film. Fie and his crew would fire off guns at times, simply for the purpose of making the actors tense and jumpy. Complex rigging caused real pain to some of the actors and their screams were genuine. Friedkin even slapped Jesuit priest O’Malley through the face while the cameras rolled, so as to get real pain registered on his face. At times the set was made very cold, down to 10 degrees below zero, so that the actors really felt cold and their breath was frozen, to demonstrate how the demon sucked the warmth out of the air. And on top of everything there were very real disasters that occurred on set, such as an interior set burning down. Rumours started to circulate that the production was cursed, rumours which Friedkin was happy to encourage. All of these things made everyone very edgy, leading to Jesuit priest Bermingham “blessing” the set. ⁴⁹⁴

Even though Friedkin deliberately tried to create a tense atmosphere, real pain, etc., we have no doubt that demonic forces were at work behind the scenes of this movie.

It was a huge success when released, with long queues of people waiting to see it and security guards to prevent rioting. Audiences were deeply shocked by its horrifyingly graphic nature. In addition to being full of violence, degraded sexual practices and obscene language, it contained scenes of urination and vomiting, and of course, graphic portrayals of demon possession. Mass hysteria ensued: some people threw up while watching it, some passed out, some ran in terror for the exits, some cried uncontrollably, and some believed they had become demon-possessed while watching it. There is no reason to doubt that they really had, in some cases. Nurses were present when it opened in New York to assist in the chaos. In Los Angeles, one theatre manager estimated that at each screening there was an average of four people fainting, six vomiting, and many running out of the theatre in panic. There were reports of heart attacks and even a miscarriage as people viewed it. People were admitted to hospitals countrywide after viewing it. An English boy apparently died from an epileptic fit the day after seeing the film; a German boy shot himself in the head; a teenager killed a nine-year-old girl and said he did it while possessed; a man killed his wife with his bare hands after he believed he had become possessed. In fact, everywhere there were people claiming that either they or their children were possessed. ⁴⁹⁵ Demon possession, as the Bible shows, is a very real phenomenon, and no doubt this horror film was an instrument of the devil in many cases of real demon possession at the time.

The film’s “strange effect on adolescent girls” caused the British Board of Film Classification to refuse to permit recordings of it to be distributed in Britain until 1999. Yes, truly there was a dark power at work behind the scenes.

But just as the film’s vile content had not stopped Jesuit priests from acting in it, it did not stop certain Jesuits from praising it either. For example, Jesuit priest Robert Boyle spoke well of it for its portrayal of the Jesuit community, among other things, in the Jesuit magazine America . ⁴⁹⁶

This willingness of Jesuits to act in the film, and to praise it, is not at all surprising when one understands the unofficial Jesuit motto that “the end justifies the means”, and the strong Jesuit belief in the power of theatre (and film) to influence people along Jesuit lines. In making this film, Blatty gave the world nothing less than “Jesuit theatre.” ⁴⁹⁷

What The Exorcist did for Roman Catholicism was phenomenal. As one film critic, Pauline Kael of the New Yorker, said, it was “the biggest recruiting poster the Catholic Church has had since the su nn ier days of Going My Way and The Bells of St. Maty s. ” For it “says that the Catholic Church is the true faith, feared by the Devil, and that its rituals can exorcise demons.” ⁴⁹⁸ Precisely. Just as that Lutheran pastor had directed a family in his flock to go to a priest of Rome for help concerning a case of demon possession, so now, after the film’s release, non-Papists began to increasingly look to the priests of Rome to help them with exorcisms. As a result of The Exorcist, people of various religious persuasions became convinced that if ever an exorcism was needed, a priest of Rome needed to be called in. This faith in priest- exorcists was reflected in other movies as well: for example, in The Amityville Horror (1979), in which a family calls in their parish priest to exorcise their home. Truly, this Jesuit horror movie had increased the power and prestige of the Romish priesthood immensely.

“For an America soaked in ‘God is Dead’ promulgations, The Exorcist was a startling revelation, an everlasting no to secular humanism, a homage to the demonic and the angelic, an epic poem of Catholicism.” ⁴⁹⁹

“Long before William Peter Blatty read about the 1949 exorcism in Maryland, he was being schooled by Jesuits. Blatty – perhaps unwittingly – articulated in his novel and film themes that he had been taught during his eight years of Jesuit education, which was noticed by Jesuits like Robert Boyle. The Exorcist… [can be viewed] as an expression… of a complicated Jesuit spirituality.” ⁵⁰⁰ This is correct. As we have shown elsewhere in this book, the Jesuits almost from their very inception were well aware of the power of theatre to move audiences, and they wrote and produced many plays. Then when film was invented, they continued using their methods to the same purpose. It will be remembered that centuries ago, Jesuits were in the forefront of elaborate stage productions that dazzled the audiences. And this Jesuit strategy is seen clearly in The Exorcist. “The explicit imagery that gives The Exorcist much of its power grew from the same Jesuit heritage.” ⁵⁰¹

William Peter Blatty had, probably unknowingly, served Satan well. The Jesuits, who for centuries had been at the forefront of education and the theatre and later the movie industry precisely for the purpose of moulding the world in their own image as far as possible, had shaped and then directed Blatty to play a major part in advancing the Jesuit/ Papist cause. A vile horror movie had done wonders for the Roman Catholic “Church”.

Interestingly, by the time The Exorcist was filmed and released, Blatty claimed he was no longer a practising Roman Catholic. But he did not call himself an “ex-Catholic”, rather merely a “Christian.” He once said that there is actually no such thing as an “ex-Roman Catholic”, for the Roman Catholic religion is “like a woman you’ve had children by; she’s always in your blood.” ⁵⁰² Indeed, even if he was no longer a practising Papist (and with Jesuits and their pupils one can simply never be sure of this), Blatty’s movie was still an extremely Papist one, serving the interests of the Vatican very well. The Jesuit- educated Blatty created a pro-Jesuit movie that did wonders for the Order. The Jesuits’ fingerprints were all over it.

And yet…although it was certainly their intention to give the world a pro-Papist, pro-Jesuit film, and for many this was exactly what it was and it did wonders for Rome, for many others it had the opposite effect. For these others it was nothing but “a real horror show devoid of both God and humanity”, ⁵⁰³ for it depicted a weak God and very weak priests opposing a very powerful devil, a Roman Catholic “Church” which used primitive rituals, miraculous medals, holy water, ceremony rather than anything really genuine. “Warner Brothers had the biggest hit of the Christmas season not by celebrating an infant God of love, but by offering a horror masterpiece that wallowed in curses, blasphemies, desecrations, spirit-rappings, levitations, sexual perversion, hysteria, evil spirits, frustration, doubt, and despair. Audiences were coming not to be uplifted, but to be ‘grossed out.”’ ⁵⁰⁴ There is much truth in this. For many, it was a pro-Roman Catholic recruitment film; for many others, it was an attack on Roman Catholicism, a denial of its supposed power and sanctity. Much of this did not please Blatty. He disagreed with director Friedkin over the ending where the priest appears to perhaps have been defeated by Satan. And he disagreed with Friedkin about other scenes which ended up being deleted from the film, scenes which Blatty felt were crucial to explaining the theology behind the film. But Friedkin wanted action only, not pauses for theological explanations. To this degree the Jesuits did not have it all their way with the filming. Besides, the film was so graphically horrific that, quite frankly, it is doubtful whether any inclusion of spoken Romanist theology in an attempt to explain the film and give it an overtly Roman Catholic purpose would have succeeded at all. It was so full of horror imagery – blood-covered crucifixes, vomit, filthy language, and above all, degraded sexual practices – that any overt Roman Catholic “message” would have failed. One critic branded it nothing but a “religious pom film.” ⁵⁰⁵

But as it turned out, years later William Peter Blatty got the ending to the film that he had always wanted. As stated previously, he had always been dissatisfied with the ending, for it seemed to indicate that evil had triumphed. He wanted the film to end in what he considered to be an uplifting way. In 2000 he and Friedkin re-edited it, added eleven minutes of new footage, and re-released it, advertising it as “The Version You’ve Never Seen.” “In the 2000 version, Regan [the young girl] not only recognizes the symbolism of Father Dyer’s Roman collar with an affectionate kiss, she smiles and waves at him as the car drives away. She has undergone some kind of transformation. Rather than giving Karras’ medal to Father Dyer as she does in the original, Chris MacNeil [the mother] keeps it. Blatty explained that this gesture meant that ‘she is now open to faith.’” ⁵⁰⁶ Furthermore, the movie now ends with priest Dyer meeting the Jewish detective and walking off arm in arm; and the last words heard in the film are, “God is most great.”

Pro-Papist American TV Shows of the 1970s

Certain American TV shows were of particular value to Rome at this time. One such was The Archie Bunker Show, a very popular comedy series. Carroll O’Connor, the Irish-American who played the lead character, received the “St. Genesius Award” in Rome, which was periodically presented to outstanding Roman Catholic actors. ⁵⁰⁷

Rome’s Worldwide Influence Over the Mass Media by the Mid-1970s

The massive influence of Roman Catholicism in American broad casting by the first half of the 1970s is shown by the number of Roman Catholic radio and TV programmes, some of which had been broadcast for decades, and most of which were propagated through the Department of Communications of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops, and the United States Catholic Conference. In 1974 the Catholic Almanac listed the following Romish radio programmes: Christian in Action, a weekly programme heard on over 50 radio stations; Christopher Radio Programme, a weekly programme heard on 937 stations; Christopher “Thought for Today ”, a daily programme on over 2600 stations; Crossroads, a weekly programme on almost 325 stations and produced by the Passionist “Fathers” and “Brothers”; Guideline, a weekly programme heard on approximately 90 stations; and Sacred Heart Programme, five 15-minute programmes and one half-hour programme produced weekly by the Jesuits. And it listed the following Roman Catholic TV programmes: Sacred Heart Programme, a weekly programme produced by the Jesuits; Directions, a weekly programme on over 100 stations; Look Up and Live, on approximately 120 stations; and Religious Specials, the Roman Catholic portions of which were telecast on approximately 175 stations. ⁵⁰⁸

But it was not just in the United States that Roman Catholicism exerted a huge influence in the mass media by the first half of the 1970s. In Britain, Roman Catholics systematically infiltrated key positions in broadcasting and other areas of the mass media. The 1974 edition of the Official Catholic Directory of England and Wales gave the names and addresses of 26 Popish priests attached to the BBC as local radio advisors; 12 priests attached to the independent TV companies; four Roman Catholic representatives (two bishops, a priest and a “layman”) on the Central Religious Advisory Committee of the BBC and ITA; the priest who was Roman Catholic assistant to the Head of Religious Broadcasting for the BBC; the priest who was Roman Catholic assistant for religious broadcasting for North England, Midland and Wales; the priest who was the Roman Catholic representative on the religious advisory board of the Independent Broadcasting Authority; and the director and board of trustees, most of whom were bishops, of the Catholic Radio and Television Centre in Middlesex. ⁵⁰⁹

And if this was the number of priests involved in the British broadcasting system, one can only imagine the number of Roman Catholic employees distributed throughout the system as well.

The same kind of Papist infiltration took place in New Zealand. It was so obvious that in the mid-1970s Radio New Zealand was kn own colloquially, to the senior non-Romanist broadcasting officials, as “Radio Vatican”; and so was the NZBC before it. Most key positions were held by Papists. ⁵¹⁰ In fact, according to a senior non-Papist broadcasting official in 1975, 82% of all NZBC employees were Papists, and the programming section consisted entirely of Papists. ⁵¹¹ This in a country where Papists at the time constituted only 17% of the population.

According to the New Zealand Tablet of May 19, 1976, the Catholic Women’s League, and Roman Catholic schools, were seeking to actively promote involvement in the media, especially television, “to promote Christian and human values.” ⁵¹²

Truly it is accurate to say of the mid-1970s that: “If one takes a gen eralised view of material presented in our mass media, there are indications of a systematic Roman Catholic influence in the mass media throughout the western world”; and, “throughout the western world the control of the flow of information in the mass media, is fundamentally a Catholic Action phenomenon.” ⁵¹³

The movement known as Catholic Action was one of the primary sinister influences behind the scenes, to bring this about. Although only a minority of Roman Catholics ever belonged to Catholic Action, around 10%, it was nevertheless extremely powerful, exerting a disproportionate influence over society wherever it was active. How true this comment from New Zealand: “in the case of New Zealand this figure [10% of Roman Catholics] accounts for 50,000 people. Now if, for the sake of argument, there happened to be 50,000 Atheist- Communist Actionists in New Zealand engaged in activities such as the programming of broadcasting (giving a subtle Communist slant to news and current affairs etc.)… or if this much was even suspected – then the thinking non-Communist would be highly concerned at the implications.” ⁵¹⁴ Why, then, were non-Roman Catholics not con cerned at the militant nature of Catholic Action and other Popish movements, and their infiltration of key areas of society, and why are they not concerned still? Tragically, it is because Protestants and others no longer know the truth about Romanism and its plans for world domination; plans which are more insidious, and ultimately more dangerous, than the world domination plans of international Communism or international Islam.

“The Roman Catholic lawyer and writer, the late Edmond Paris, has shown that when an organised movement such as Catholic Action controls the media it also controls the affairs of the country.” ⁵¹⁵

The Omen (1976) and Its Sequels: Romanism Portrayed as Weak, Useless “Christianity”

These horror films – The Omen (1976), Damien – Omen II (1978), and The Final Conflict – Omen III ( 1981)- depicted the triumph of satanic forces over Roman Catholic priests and ritual. They depicted Rome’s priests as fools and comics, well-meaning but unable to stop the forces of darkness.

The Omen was adapted from a Gothic novel by David Seltzer, a book which was about a time when “democracy was fading, mind impairing drugs had become a way of life… God was dead.” It was about the time of the coming of Antichrist, and mankind could do nothing to prevent it. And Roman Catholicism was portrayed as Christianity, utterly powerless, a religion of superstition, one moreover full of priests and nuns who were actually secret Satanists. The foster family of the Antichrist in the film is portrayed as a lapsed Roman Catholic family. Romanism is everywhere in the film – but always in a negative light, a religion of ineffectual ritual and superstition.

In Damien – Omen II, this attack on Romanism and its priesthood is intensified. And in The Final Conflict – Omen III, the demon actually mocks and sodomises a statue of Rome’s “christ”. Again in this film, Rome’s priests are defeated one after another. And yet in the end, supposedly, “Christ” wins. It is a hollow victory, however, considering that in all three films there are hours of celluloid depicting Satan’s victories and power.

Rocky (1976) and its Sequels: Romanism Once Again Holds Its Head Up

This movie, and its sequels, centred around a character called Rocky Balboa, a Papist Italian-American boxer, played by Sylvester Stallone, an Italian-American actor who became one of the most famous and one of the richest actors in Hollywood history.

Although the films are about a white heavyweight boxer who beats black boxers (and in the wake of the boxing successes of Mohammed Ali this went down well with white audiences), it was also a film in which Romanism played quite a part, albeit usually in the background rather than up-front. But it was always there: whether represented by an image of “Christ” behind the ring in a boxing club, or Rocky asking a priest to bless him, or holding a vigil at a Romish shrine, having a Romish wedding, or praying in a Romish hospital chapel. He may seduce the girl before marriage, he may be a boxer from the other side of the tracks, he may not be a very good Romanist, but at heart he is still a Romanist; that is the point. He is an Italian, and therefore he is a Romanist. It is part of who he is. It has been said that “Rocky’s intrinsic humanity and his wholehearted love for marriage, his wife, and his kids afford a moving witness to Roman Catholicism’s emphasis on the sanctity of the family,” ⁵¹⁶ and this may be true to the extent that Rome has always emphasised these things in its teaching; and of course this would have been a huge boost for Romanism at a time when Hollywood had declared open season on the “Church”. But let us not kid ourselves here: Romanism’s much-vaunted “emphasis on the sanctity of the family” has been, through the centuries, nullified by its own immoral practices: enforced celibacy for priests contrary to the institution of marriage, leading to all the filthy sexual immoralities of which so many multiplied thousands of them have been guilty; sex before marriage; philandering husbands all too often easily “absolved” by going to confession; nuns shut up in convents and denied the joys of married life; children and women forced to confess sexual sins to a bachelor priest; children abused by priests; and so much more.

Besides, for all its supposed promotion of the sanctity of Romish marriage, the films are full of brutal violence in the name of sport, filthy language, etc. But these things do not seem to overly concern priests and people within the “Church” of Rome.

Nevertheless, “Few contemporary film portraits of Catholics celebrate such stirring accomplishments [as “Italian pride, Catholic marriage, and the family circle”]…. Most contemporary portraits of ethnic Catholicism are dark portraits of stunted lives, compulsive guilt, and abiding despair.” ⁵¹⁷ This was written in 1984, and was correct, as we have seen: after the demise of the PCA and the Legion, Hollywood declared war on the Roman Catholic religion. It was a vicious backlash, a reaction against those decades in which Romanism had been Hollywood’s religion by force, and film-makers (mostly Jewish) had been compelled to kowtow to Rome’s stranglehold on the industry, even though they well knew that the saccharine image of Romanism so often depicted in the movies of the era was far from the grim reality. Now, with all that in the past, they were wreaking their revenge. But the Rocky movies were, for Rome, a welcome lull in the battle.

Lipstick (1976): an Attack on the False Sanctity of Romish Establishments

In this film the Roman Catholic “Church” once again comes in for a beating. It is about a rapist who is a music teacher at a Romish girls’ school, and who is supported by nuns who cannot believe that he is guilty of what he has been accused of – and yet he is. And there were other films, too, along similar lines, which came out over the next few years.

Saturday Night Fever (1977): an Anti-Roman Catholic Disco Movie

After the Production Code days were over, Hollywood, in its all-out attack on Roman Catholicism, focused most often on Rome’s attitude to sexual matters. This was seen very plainly in Saturday Night Fever, an immensely popular musical centred on an Italian immigrant family in New York. One son is a priest, the other (played by John Travolta) is a teen idol and disco star. The father is an unemployed though hard working Italian immigrant who has seen better days. The mother is a devout Roman Catholic who takes refuge from the reality of her life in her religion and wishes her wayward son was a priest like his brother.

The priest-brother renounces the priesthood when he realises that he was a priest only because this is what his parents wanted for him. And the girls in the film are Roman Catholic girls with very loose morals. Italian Roman Catholic culture has so often inculcated the great double standard of sexual morality: that the men must try to seduce the girls, but the girls must either remain virgins or become whores. There is no middle ground: they must either be very loose, or very virtuous.

Tony, the wayward son, tries on his ex-priest brother’s priestly garment. “In a daring image, the most striking anti-Catholic metaphor in the whole Hollywood catechism, Tony imagines himself strangled by the vestments of the old creed. The scene, a pantomime, details the central idea about Catholicism and sexuality in contemporary film – Catholicism is a ‘hangup’ that kills. Catholicism, this image asserts, strangles the young with outworn ideas, stifles desires, and makes growth, happiness, and autonomy impossible. In cinema’s new cosmology of sexuality, Roman Catholicism is the dark star, the death principle, a somber creed steeped in thanatos and crippling guilt.” ⁵¹⁸ Unfortunately, with Romanism equated with Christianity in Hollywood after so many decades, such powerful criticism, and rejection, of Romanism in a film was also a powerful criticism and rejection of Christianity. And this is how millions took it, when they watched films such as this. An entire generation of young people were influenced against Christianity because of what they saw in the cinema. It was a vicious assault which very few true Christians recognised as such then, or have recognised since.

The Amityville Horror (1979): Depicting Demonic Victory Over Rome’s Priests

In this horror film, the clear victors are demons, not the Roman Catholic institution. It revolves around a haunted house purchased by a Methodist man and his Roman Catholic family, and the horrors they experience while living there. A nun who attempts to enter the house is forced by demons to flee, vomiting as she does so. The priest who tries to confront the devil is trapped in the house and overpowered by the demons, and even back in his own rectory continues to experience demonic attacks. He is just no match for the devil, as is made abundantly clear, and ends up, blinded and in despair, being taken care of by another priest.

In the film there is also a lengthy theological debate between this priest and two others, who try to dissuade him from attempting the exorcism and tell him that to proceed would be to disobey his superiors. He is described as a modernist priest who felt that the Second Vatican Council of the 1960s did not go far enough; and he pleads with them that the “Church” is his home and his strength, and both he and the family he is trying to help need the “Church” very much. But the other priests recommend nothing more than a vacation for him. In the words of two researchers, these scenes in the film “suggest a sinister segment of Hollywood’s treatment of Catholics in the sixties and seventies. The combination of massive change in the Church and massive turmoil in the country set the stage for old demons which the new Church seemingly couldn’t control. The Age of Kennedy and the tragic aftermath of Camelot shifted the focus to the evil assassin’s magically accurate bullet and the devil’s dark powers.” ⁵¹⁹ It is true that Hollywood had turned against the Roman Catholic institution, to a very large extent, in the post-Code years; but against this must be set the other undeniable fact, that for decades Hollywood had been dominated, even controlled, by Romanism, as has been amply documented here. And as we have said before, there is always a reaction to such oppressive control by this evil religious institution. The reaction ends up being as evil as the religious institution it is reacting against (witness the French Revolution), but as terrible as this is, it is not at all surprising. Rome, by its sinister stranglehold on Hollywood for all those decades, sowed the seeds for the virulently anti-Romanist films which took such pleasure in mocking everything Roman Catholicism stood for in the years that followed the demise of its domination.

The Wanderers (1979): Another Critique of Roman Catholicism

This was yet another film depicting Italian-American life, in which sexual themes abound and the attitude of the Roman Catholic institution to sex is mocked.

The Runner Stumbles (1979): Yet Another Critique of Roman Catholicism

This was the film version of a Broadway drama of the same name, and another assault on Romanism. The priest in the film, played by Dick Van Dyke, and the nun, played by Kathleen Quinlan, not having found what they sought in their “vocations”despite trying very hard, fall in love; but the priest’s devout housekeeper murders the nun, believing she was demon-possessed to seduce the priest. The priest leaves the priesthood, and at the nun’s graveside he cries out to God, “What kind of God are you? I loved her. I loved her. I don’t have the Church anymore. What do you want from me?” ⁵²⁰ Romanism is depicted in this film as a failure, unable to satisfy the deepest longings of the heart (which is true). Such a film could never have been produced in Hollywood’s “Golden Age” when Joe Breen presided over the industry; but now, even though Roman Catholicism was still a powerful force to be reckoned with in the movie industry, it was by no means all- powerful. It could now be freely criticised, attacked, ridiculed in films, and it frequently was. And unfortunately many people, in seeing such films, equating Romanism with Christianity, were not only encouraged to forsake Romanism but to close their eyes even to true Christianity.

The devil had done his work well: through both pro-Papist and anti- Papist films, he was deceiving multitudes.

Chapter thirteen – The 1980s: The movie assault on Romanism continues

The Legion Dies with Hardly a Whimper

By 1980 the NCOMP, the once all-powerful Legion of Decency, was finished. Hardly any Roman Catholics were in favour of it anymore, and even the bishops saw no reason for its continued existence. Conservative Roman Catholics had long since given up on it, once it had become liberal, and liberal Roman Catholics just saw no point to it. And so it was that Jesuit priest Patrick J. Sullivan announced that the NCOMP would not be publishing any more reviews after September 1980. “What had started with such a fury in 1934 died in 1980 with hardly a whimper of protest.” ⁵²¹

For decades Rome had, through the Legion, exerted a massive influence over Hollywood. Film-makers were too afraid to cross it, for it threatened to condemn any film it did not like, and so they readily bowed and scraped to it, making the cuts and alterations which it demanded so as to bring every film into line with what Rome wanted. It was much, much more than a Roman Catholic rating organisation; it was a powerful censoring body. Sullivan lamented the loss of Legion power in its heyday with these words: “As everyone knows, Catholics had ‘clout’ in those days and because of that clout, motion pictures were a family entertainment.” ⁵²² He was right about Roman Catholic clout: it had been immensely powerful. But as time went by that clout over Hollywood was eroded.

Not only did Roman Catholics, in large numbers, ignore Legion fulminations against movies from the very inception of the Legion itself, but in time Jesuit intellectuals, reading the signs of the times in society and realising that Rome’s attitude to the movies would have to change if it wanted to keep its hold on its own people, exerted their powerful influence over the Legion and swung it away from its original stance to a more liberalised, “tolerant” one. ft became a battle between the older, more traditionalist Roman Catholics, epitomised by Martin Quigley, and the newer, liberal Roman Catholics, led by Jesuits such as John Courtney Murray and Patrick J. Sullivan. And the Jesuits won. But their victory was not theirs alone: Roman Catholics in general simply refused to follow the dictates of the Legion, and flocked to see the very movies it condemned. ⁵²³ America’s moral values, if values they could be called, had permeated American Romanism. This was something the hierarchy of Rome came to realise, and to understand that it would have to “go with the flow” in order to hold on to American Roman Catholics.

How Protestant “Fundamentalism” Replaced the Legion of Decency

Some years after the NCOMP died, American Protestant organisations came to the fore as the new watchdogs of the movie industry. One was the American Family Association. Another, and by far the most well known and most influential, was the Christian Film and Television Commission, headed by Ted Baehr. Baehr’s organisation had many similarities with the old Legion of Decency. For example, it asked those who supported it to take an oath of decency; and it issued Movieguide, which it touted as being a “family [it originally said “biblical”] guide to movies and entertainment.” Like the old Legion, Baehr also sought to persuade movie and TV executives to adopt regulations that were very much like that old Jesuit creation, the Production Code. ⁵²⁴

Also, Baehr created a movie classification system. But he classified movies not just according to their morality, but also their artistic merits. This naturally created many problems and hypocritical stances for him, when a movie was rated highly for its artistic merit but condemned for its moral tone. As we pointed out in the Introduction to this book, there is something extremely hypocritical about certain men, professing to be Christians, setting themselves up as movie reviewers, carefully watching all kinds of immoral movies themselves, and then turning around and warning other professing Christians not to watch those movies as they are morally objectionable! If a movie should be shunned by Christians, then it should be shunned by “Christian reviewers” as well. They do not occupy a higher plane than other men, able to resist the temptations others face. There is simply no excuse for going to watch morally objectionable films, not even so as to be able to tell others not to do so!

A pastor does not say to his flock, “Stay here while I go into that brothel to see what it’s like, and then I can let you know whether you should go in or not.” What is good for the goose is good for the gander.

That Baehr was very influenced by the old Production Code, and by the work of the Legion, was obvious. And despite having a very undeserved reputation as something of a Protestant fundamentalist, he was more than willing to seek the assistance of Roman Catholics for his work, thereby showing his true ecumenical colours. In 1992, for example, he asked Romish cardinal, Roger Mahony, to work with him in seeking to get the industry to set up a regulatory system, as in the past. Mahony, initially sympathetic to the idea, changed his mind when it was criticised by Hollywood leaders. He decided that he preferred the idea of Hollywood producers voluntarily cutting back on the amount of sex and violence in their films. And he stated that it was not for him to dictate which films Roman Catholics could see and which they could not, but that this must be left to their own consciences. A very American-sounding response, though far from biblical and, furthermore, very hypocritical too, given Rome’s antipathy towards Americanism and towards the idea of its subjects following their own consciences in anything else.

And so a most extraordinary situation had developed: that of Roman Catholics sounding like liberal, amoral upholders of individual liberty of conscience, and Protestant ‘fundamentalists ” sounding like old- style, authoritarian Roman Catholic priests!

Don’t Go in the House (1980): Hollywood Keeps Up Its War Against Romanism

In this Gothic tragedy, once again Romanism comes in for a beating. An Italian Roman Catholic man leaves his wife for other women, and she, a devout Romanist but unstable, believes that their son Donny must have the demons of lust burned out of him, so she holds his arms over her kitchen stove and severely burns him. Donny becomes a twisted soul, sexually abusing and torturing women with a blowtorch. When he goes to steal “holy water” from a Roman Catholic “church”, the priest is ineffectual in helping the demon-possessed Donny, who later uses his blowtorch on the priest, symbol of a “Church” which is powerless to help him.

True Confessions (1981): Irish-American Romanists Depicted as Depraved

True Confessions is a film about a policeman investigating prominent Roman Catholic “laymen” for the brutal rape and murder of a young girl. In addition, the cop’s brother is an Irish-American monsignor, the chancellor of the archdiocese of Los Angeles, and involved in corruption with the Roman Catholics under investigation. The scandal that erupts destroys the priestly brother.

This movie deliberately and ruthlessly attacks and pulls down the kind of Irish-American Romanism portrayed in the much older Going My Way. Instead of the happy-go-lucky lightness of Going My Way, True Confessions is full of Irish-American Roman Catholic corruption and perversion – and indeed Hollywood was definitely now portraying Irish-Americans this way. It was not the huge commercial success that Going My Way had been, but that is not the point: the film reflected “a revolution in the representation of Irish Catholic America on film and in television since the 1960s…. Depicted for thirty or forty years as pictures of innocence, guardians of morality, and/or exemplars of patriotism in movies like Going My Way, Irish American Catholics were now showing up largely as cynical cops, corrupt politicians, nationalist zealots, or hypocritical priests.” And, “because Irish Americans have long dominated and continue to dominate the Catholic church in America, True Confessions stands at a critical point in movie representations of the American Catholic church.” ⁵²⁵

The movie was based on a book by John Gregory Dunne, who also wrote the screenplay. Dunne was an Irish-American Romanist himself, who believed that Irish America could only properly be understood through its religion. In this he was correct, for Roman Catholicism has dominated and defined Irish-Americans through the decades. He believed that the Roman Catholic institution “is the root of Irish American corruption and repression.” ⁵²⁶ And he pulled no punches in getting this message across in the movie. Andrew Greeley, a Roman Catholic, said angrily of the movie that the “Irish characters in it, civil and ecclesiastical, are without exception, venal, corrupt, obsessed, sick, hypocritical and disgusting.” ⁵²⁷ The Roman Catholic hierarchy in the United States must have been fuming! How times had changed for them.

Not only does the film deal with corruption in the Roman Catholic “Church”, but also with sexual sin. For example, a monsignor is found dead and naked in a brothel; the married Roman Catholic men in the film all have girlfriends or prostitutes on the side; etc. The film shows supposedly “respectable” Roman Catholics involved in all kinds of sexual sins.

Of course, many Roman Catholics did not want to admit it when the film was made and many do not want to admit it now, but the sad truth is that the Roman Catholic institution, in the United States no less than anywhere else, is indeed deeply involved in these very sins and crimes, and always has been. ⁵²⁸ The evidence has always been there, through the centuries, a vast accumulation of evidence, but tragically most Roman Catholics have chosen to ignore it or pretend it is not true, and their ecclesiastical leaders have done their best to brush it under an increasingly lumpy carpet. It was only in the late 1990s and early 2000s, when the scandal broke worldwide about the vast scale of priestly sexual abuse of children, that finally there was large-scale Roman Catholic admission that, after all, their “Church” was a cesspool of sexual iniquity. Most continue to remain Roman Catholics, however.

Thus, what the film depicted about the corruption and immorality within the Papal institution was not inaccurate. Not at all. This does not mean the film is a decent one for Christians to watch, of course; they do not need to go to vile Hollywood to learn the truth about Roman Catholicism. But these things are brought out here merely to show that Hollywood was now happy to openly attack Roman Catholicism – the very religion that had once been dubbed Hollywood’s religion. Again, Rome’s own wickedness, hypocrisy, oppression, etc., had led to a reaction, a backlash; and it was a violent one.

It is true that the main priest-character in the film eventually is free of all the filth he had once been embroiled in, ending his days as a simple country priest. As one critic said, “Implicit in the film’s conception is that there is a pure Catholicism tucked away somewhere waiting for [the priest] to return to it.” ⁵²⁹ But this does not take away from the film’s over-riding emphasis on the sleazy, hypocritical nature of American Roman Catholicism. It simply reveals (if it reveals anything at all) that Dunne, who had been raised Romanist, still hoped that out there somewhere, there was a “decent” Roman Catholicism. But as far as he was concerned, the Romish institution in the United States was, overwhelmingly, a cesspool. And this is what he sought to bring out in the story.

Absence of Malice (1981): Another Dark Portrait of Romanism

As quoted previously, “Most contemporary portraits of ethnic Catholicism are dark portraits of stunted lives, compulsive guilt, and abiding despair” ⁵³⁰ (this from a 1984 publication). And this film was certainly no exception: it was about an Irish-American Roman Catholic man and a disgraced Roman Catholic woman who commits suicide.

The Verdict (1982): Yet Another Celluloid Assault on Romanism

In this film, a drunken Irish-American Romanist attorney takes on a Roman Catholic hospital, a prejudiced Irish-American Romanist judge, and the Romish archdiocese of Boston. The film depicts Romanists in a very poor light: “its clergymen are modem day Machiavellis shunting down corridors of power and sequestered in limousines”. The bishop in the film is unscrupulous, caring nothing at all about people but an awful lot about money, and knowing how to use it to his advantage by bribery and buying people off. Of course, this is not an inaccurate portrayal at all. This is precisely how the hierarchy of the “Church” of Rome operates. This does not, however, make the film a decent film which true Christians should see – not at all; the truth about the Roman Catholic institution is fully documented in print, and such truth never needs to be learned from a fictional story in a movie containing filthy language and other unacceptable material for a true Christian.

Amityville II: the Possession (1982): Another Horror Film Assault on Roman Catholicism

This film was perhaps the best-known imitation of The Exorcist. The family at the centre of the film consisted of an Italian-American brute, his devout Papist wife, and their children who hate him. Once again depraved sex, including incest, features prominently in the film, and the message that comes through is that Roman Catholic girls are often the loosest, morally, of any, and yet riddled with deep guilt at all times.

This theme is typical of Hollywood in the post-Code, post-Legion years, when Romanism became fair game in movies. Sadly, there is much truth in the stereotypes, in the sense that Romanism inculcates deep guilt in its adherents, even while it encourages a lax morality via its confessionals, its supposed celibate priesthood which so many Papists know is nothing but a joke, etc. In Amityville II there is incest and confession to a priest, but no peace is experienced by the guilty one as a result.

The priest who tries to help the family experiences poltergeist activity and bloody hallucinations, and ends up failing to help them at all. They are killed, he views himself as responsible for their deaths, and determines to exorcise the demon, even against the advice of his religious superiors. In the end he himself voluntarily becomes possessed (just like the priest in The Exorcist). This gives the impression that Satan is the victorious one in the film. Indeed, Satan mocks the priest for acting on his own, without the support of his “Church” and disobeying it. The message conveyed by all this is that the “Church” did not protect the priest at all, just as he did not protect the dead family.

Evilspeak (1982): Still Another Anti-Roman Catholic Horror Movie

In this film, an overweight, unpopular cadet, teased mercilessly by his Roman Catholic friends, gets his revenge by unleashing demons which devour them, the Papist chaplain, and others. And in its final scene, pigs from hell run amok through a Romish chapel, desecrating its images, the confessional box, and the tabernacle (where Rome’s mass- wafer is kept). The message being sent to the audience is that “God” (the Roman Catholic god) is powerless even to prevent the desecration of his own holy places.

The Monsignor (1982): Priestly Corruption Portrayed

In this movie, Christopher Reeve played the part of a Romish priest who was a thief and a murderer and who gave Mafia money to the Vatican. He rises to the very top of the Roman Catholic hierarchy in the Vatican, precisely because of his wicked lifestyle. His bishop mentor advises him to use his faith, brains, and sexual abilities “discreetly.” And this he does, bringing money into the Vatican from the black market, letting a gangster friend wager Vatican money in the world currency market, and seducing a Carmelite postulant.

There really are such priests and always have been (and plenty of them!), and there is a link between the Mafia and the “Church” of Rome and always has been; ⁵³¹ but this was not the kind of image of the Roman Catholic “Church” that the Vatican wanted to see portrayed.

Agnes of God (1985): a Murdering Nun

Things just got worse and worse. In the 1985 film Agnes of God a nun kills her baby. In actual fact, nuns throughout history have at times killed babies, often the offspring of illicit affairs between priests and nuns. This is well documented in literature, with firsthand testimonies from nuns themselves, among others. ⁵³² But Rome certainly did not want such facts brought to light by the far more powerful modem medium of film!

The Last Temptation of Christ (1988): Blasphemy Made by an Italian Roman Catholic

In 1988 The Last Temptation of Christ came out, a film that deeply offended and angered both Roman Catholics and Protestants because it speculated about Jesus’ supposed fantasies, including sexual ones. They picketed outside movie theatres and boycotted the film in their thousands, and there were even threats of violence made. And yet the film was made by an Italian-American Roman Catholic named Martin Scorsese!

The United States Catholic Conference declared the film to be morally objectionable, but, remembering the old Legion protests which so often had had the opposite effect to that desired, it did not actually ask the Roman Catholic faithful to join the protests.

Scorsese had been raised Papist and at one time had considered becoming a priest. In 1972 he read a novel by Nikos Kazantzakis, written in 1953, and was so taken with the story that he bought the motion picture rights. Scorsese was later to say, “I’ve always wanted to do a spiritual movie but religion gets in the way.” As far as he was concerned, The Last Temptation of Christ sought to “tear away all the old Hollywood films… and create a Jesus you could talk to and get to know.” ⁵³³ Astoundingly, Protestants and Romanists who were so offended with this film would, a mere sixteen years later, welcome Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ with open arms. And yet The Passion (as will be seen) was as unbiblical as The Last Temptation, though in a different way. It was also even more sickeningly violent. How quickly the masses can be manipulated to change!

Conclusion

And so the 1980s ended with Hollywood having cast off the shackles of the once-virtually-almighty Roman Catholic control of the industry, and to a very large extent having declared open season on all things Roman Catholic. Hollywood, from its beginning, was a way for depraved men to express their depravity through a new art from, just as men have done through other art forms through the centuries. Then along came the American Roman Catholic institution, seeking, as it always does, to control every aspect of society and channel everything to its own ends; and thus it came about that two devil-inspired expressions of man’s depravity clashed. One was that depravity which expresses itself via an art form, giving vent to all kinds of immorality by flaunting it on the screen; and the other was that depravity which expresses itself via religion. Let the reader understand very well at this point: both were of Satan. He makes use of any and all means he can to ensnare men’s souls. He knows that some are ensnared by immorality, debauchery, etc., while others are ensnared by false religion.

For decades, religious depravity was dominant over Hollywood. During this time, films were very often cleaner, morally, than they would otherwise have been; but at the same time they promoted a false version of “Christianity”, and thus a spiritual filthiness that is just as destructive to the souls of men as physical filthiness, and often even more so. How many millions of people, attending the movies during that “Golden Age” (so-called) of Hollywood when Rome swept out much of the immorality that the moviemakers would have so loved to retain, were subtly led into a spiritual bondage just as powerful as any physical bondage to lusts of the flesh? There can be absolutely no doubt that Hollywood during this period played an i mm ense part in breaking down Protestants’ resistance to Romanism, changing their attitudes towards all things Roman Catholic, and softening them up for the ecumenical movement which burst on the religious world in the 1960s.

But not only that: because Rome’s own notions of morality are not based on the Bible, this meant that although movies during this period were morally cleaner than they would have been, they were certainly (for the most part) far from the moral standards of the Holy Scriptures. Yet because a supposedly “Christian” censorship system was in place for all those years and the public knew it, they came to believe that Rome’s notions of morality were one and the same with the Bible’s. And in this way the morals of Protestant moviegoers underwent a subtle but very decided shift. Through the powerful medium of film, they began to accept and adopt Rome’s morality for themselves, without even realising it.

And the results are all too evident today. Generations of Protestant moviegoers were indoctrinated in Roman Catholic morality; they have learned their morality from the movies instead of from the Bible. And this has resulted in two things. First, while Romish censorship dominated Hollywood, there was a decided slackening of moral standards throughout the western world, including among Protestants. The point is that although movies of this era were more moral than they would have been if Rome’s censorship had not been applied, they were not moral enough. They were moral according to Rome’s lights, but not biblically moral. They promoted much that earlier generations of Protestants would never have allowed; such as more revealing clothing, “dating” by young people, worldly music, dancing, other forms of worldly entertainment, and much more. Pastors of what would once have been called Bible-believing churches began to permit things which would never before have been permitted, and no longer did they preach against these things. Parents, professing to be Christians, allowed their children to have liberties which went beyond what was biblically justifiable. Churches began to change their outreach programmes for young people, lowering their standards and coming to embrace the utterly unbiblical concept of “entertainment evangelism” to “reach the lost in a way they understand” and to “show them that Christians can have fun too.”

And the second thing this has resulted in has been that when, finally, Roman Catholic censorship of the movie industry came to an end, moviegoers, already softened up to lower moral standards and having become avid moviegoers, readily began to embrace the now- raunchier movies that Hollywood began to spue out. The damage had been done in the decades of Romish censorship: morals had dropped, a hunger for ever-more explicit entertainment had been created, and once the sluice gates were opened there was no shocked retreat by Protestant moviegoers as a whole; rather there was an embracing of the ever-lower standards which very soon became commonplace in movies. And this has continued ever since, so that the vast majority of professing Protestants today comfortably attend even the vilest movies regularly, and relax in front of their TV screens to watch the same filth there. They see nothing wrong with it. They cannot imagine ever not doing what they are doing. It is just a regular part of their lives, and one which they will not give up. They are spiritually blind, unregenerate, worshipping before this entertainment idol with all their hearts.

Thus by the end of the 1980s, Roman Catholic control over Hollywood was over. But then something extraordinary began to happen.

Chapter fourteen – From the twentieth into the twenty-first century

Hollywood Not Entirely Anti-Roman Catholic by the Late 1990s

In the previous chapter we saw that by the end of the 1980s Hollywood had not only cast off all remaining vestiges of Roman Catholic censorship, but had become decidedly anti-Roman Catholic in a great many of the movies that were produced. Nevertheless, it would not be accurate to say that Hollywood had completely rid itself of Roman Catholic influence.

According to a priest of Rome who spent most of his priestly life in Hollywood, by late 1998 the entertainment industry was not anti- Roman Catholic. Priest Bud Kieser, a former TV personality, movie producer, author, and founder of a Roman Catholic entertainment award, said of Hollywood: “They like us. They don’t like our position on birth control. They don’t like our position on abortion. They don’t like our position on women priests. But generally they like us. They like us for sticking with the poor, and honestly serving the poor. A major number of studios in Los Angeles have given very significant money to Cardinal [Roger] Mahony [of Los Angeles], for his inner-city scholarship fund. Significant money.” ⁵³⁴

What he said about studios giving money to Rome was true. Rupert Murdoch, the influential media mogul and a Roman Catholic, in 2000 donated $10 million towards the construction of a new Roman Catholic cathedral in Los Angeles. Murdoch had wide holdings in the movie, TV and publishing industries, including Fox Television, 20th Century Fox Films, the London Times and New York Post, Harper Collins and Zondervan publishing houses. And even though his movie and TV productions were immoral, Romish cardinal Roger Mahony readily accepted his donation, and in January 1998 made Murdoch and his wife members of the Pontifical Order of St. Gregory the Great. This knighthood is bestowed on behalf of the pope of Rome, and is supposed to be given to persons of “unblemished character” who have “promoted the interest of society, the [Roman Catholic] Church and the Holy See.” ⁵³⁵ Evidently, then, Murdoch and his wife had done just that.

What had begun to happen by this stage (the late 1990s) was that things were again changing. Roman Catholicism had dominated Holly wood during its “Golden Age”; then liberals and Marxists had risen to a position of dominance for some decades, so that by the end of the 1980s Rome’s power over Hollywood had been severely curtailed. But by the late 1990s an extraordinary thing was occurring: liberal/leftist Hollywood and Roman Catholicism, although certainly not actually merging, were beginning to find common ground in certain spheres. And this extended into the decade of the 2000s.

Yes: in Hollywood as virtually everywhere else, the Roman Catholic institution and the liberal/leftists, and even Marxists, were finding they had things in common. As priest Kieser said, the latter found much to admire in the former’s social programmes, even while rejecting its doctrines and its stances on particular issues. And this was in line with the Jesuit/Papist strategy ever since the years leading up to the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s. The entire Roman Catholic institution swung heavily to the left from then onwards, even promoting its own brand of Communism known as liberation theology, and pushing a pro poor agenda that was very appealing to liberals and Reds, regardless of what they thought of Rome’s position on other things. Common ground was found in leftist “social justice” causes, and this began to show itself even in Hollywood. Not completely, it is true; but plainly the earlier animosity was nowhere near as great.

And in a very short space of time, leftist-dominated Hollywood began to take a different approach to making movies of a religious nature. Let us examine this change.

“Spirituality” Makes a Comeback in Hollywood

According to Hollywood insiders Jack and Pat Shea, by 2001 a renewed interest in “spirituality” was sweeping through Hollywood. ⁵³⁶

The Sheas, a Roman Catholic writer/director couple, said that recent movies and TV programmes marked a return to the discussion of spiritual themes. “People are definitely more interested in spirituality these days,” said Jack Shea, who was president of the Directors Guild of America. According to his wife Pat, the head of Catholics in Media Association, this was shown by the success of such TV series as The West Wing and Touched by an Angel. She said, “We [Hollywood] got so secularised and were so afraid of saying anything about religion. Now, it’s all right to say you’re religious.”

So: first there was Roman Catholic censorship; then, in reaction to that and also in line with the times, there was the period of virulently anti-religious movies issuing from Hollywood, even specifically anti-Roman Catholic; and then, once that anti-religious reaction had begun to run out of steam and also as society entered a phase (again in reaction to the anti-religious phase) of embracing all kinds of New Age teachings, Roman Catholic mysticism, and other strange new religious experiences, Hollywood woke up to the fact that “there’s gold in them thar hills”- the hills of religion.

For a few years the Sheas had been meeting with Romish arch bishop, John Foley, president of the Pontifical Council for Social Communications, as well as other Papist officials, in talks with entertainment representatives. Jack Shea said that producers and writers were becoming increasingly interested in the Roman Catholic “Church’s” attitude towards media, and were becoming increasingly aware that the “Church” of Rome was not “into condemnation” of the media.

Note what was happening in Hollywood: yes, “spirituality” was again gaining ground, but what was this? Roman Catholic mystic spirituality, and (although it was not stated by the Sheas) other forms of religious spirituality as well, notably of an eastern nature. But why was this? Hollywood was not suddenly being converted to Romanism. This was not a return to the Hollywood which was under the iron heel of the Papist-controlled PCA and the Romish Legion of Decency. But Hollywood producers and others had again become aware of the money-making value of producing films and TV series that catered to religious people. Not truly Christian people, but religious people. This did not by any means show a Damascus-road-like conversion occurring in Hollywood! As always, it was about money. This was even admitted by Pat Shea in the interview, when she said: “We also have to remind the Church that we [Hollywood] are a commercial entity, that it’s a business. It’s walking that fine line between the entertainment aspect of what we do and the responsibility of our influence on our audience.”

The Sheas pointed out the huge influence of the Roman Catholic “Church” on the arts through the centuries. Jack Shea said the “Church” should “continue to be involved in movies and television and all entertainment, because that’s how you reach people. That’s the language of the people now.” And Pat Shea said the “presence of Church people [in the industry] brings to mind our tremendous influence in our society – not only American society, but our products are shown all over the world.”

Indeed so. And so the tension continued between the desires of the immensely powerful “Church” of Rome, and the desires of liberal/ leftist Hollywood. For decades, Rome was dominant; then the liberals/ leftists/Reds rose to dominance. Rome changed tactics with the times, but never lost its desire to rule over the dream factories of Hollywood. It continued to exert a strong, behind-the-scenes influence, and always hoped and worked for more.

Let us examine what transpired in the first decade or so of the twenty- first century, for even though this reveals the ongoing tug-of-war between Roman Catholicism and liberal/leftism in Hollywood, it also reveals a rapprochement between the two, a finding of some common ground where they could co-operate, incredible as this was. And this common ground was so often found in the most unlikely of places.

The Harry Potter Phenomenon

Beginning with the first film adaptation of the Harry Potter series of books in 2001, each book was turned into a blockbuster movie. Countless volumes were written about this series, and it is not the present author’s intention to go into detail on the occultic nature of these books and films aimed at children, as this would go beyond the purpose of the present book. That they aggressively promoted witchcraft and other aspects of the occult has been thoroughly documented by many researchers. There can be absolutely no doubt of the great spiritual danger the stories pose to children. They provide young minds and hearts with an indoctrination into witchcraft, and their influence has been incalculable. ⁵³⁷

As has been shown in this book, over the decades Hollywood went from being an industry heavily under Roman Catholic influence to being an industry in which Roman Catholicism was frequently attacked and ridiculed (albeit Roman Catholic/Jesuit influence was still present), and at the same time the true Christian faith was attacked and ridiculed as well. It is not at all surprising, then, given the radical leftist/liberal and Communistic influence in Hollywood, that the Harry Potter books were viewed as an astoundingly useful tool, once made into movies, for promoting their agenda and corrupting the minds and hearts of children.

But even so, despite the overt witchcraft and paganism of the Harry Potter movies, institutions and individuals claiming to be “Christian” had fallen so far by then, had departed so far from biblical truth, that the Potter stories were actually praised by such neo-Evangelical magazines as World and Christianity Today, and by individual neo- Evangelicals and outright heretics such as Charles Colson, ⁵³⁸ Rick Warren, ⁵³⁹ etc. The Anglican “Church” (which is no more deserving of the name than Romanism) even published a guide advising people how to use Harry Potter to spread the “Christian” message! A former archbishop of Canterbury, George Carey, described the story as “great fun” and a serious examination of good and evil. ⁵⁴⁰

The films were also praised by Romish leaders. Rome has always been adept at turning even the most unlikely things to its advantage. In the not-so-distant past it would have strongly condemned films such as Harry Potter outright; but now it was taking a different approach. Aware that huge numbers of Roman Catholics would flock to see the films anyway, Romish priests sought to find something – anything – “good” in the films, latched onto these, and then spun a bizarre yam about how even these dark, occultic, witchcraft-saturated films could be used to somehow do good! Unbelievable? One would think so. But here is the proof:

Michael Bernier, a Romish priest in Westfield, Massachusetts, USA, described himself as a “Pottermaniac”, and in 2007 he said that “Christians” (i.e. Papists) should not fear this devotion to a boy wizard. “On the surface level it does sound suspect and does raise red flags,” he said. But he stated that the magic in the stories was not sorcery, and went on to say, astoundingly: “There’s a great deal of Christian imagery and symbolism in the books. And I think it answers, at least in parts, a longing that we have for Christ”. ⁵⁴¹ What utter blindness! To see “Christian imagery and symbolism” in books about a wizard! And as for answering any longing people have for Christ, one can say with certainty that J.K. Rowling, the books’ author, was expressing no such longing whatsoever when she wrote them. But this has ever been Rome’s way: to take what people already accept and believe, and then “baptize” it, putting the best Popish spin on it that they can. This is what Rome did with the pagan holidays of ancient times, with the sacred sites of ancient paganism, with the pagan temples, with pagan gods and demigods, and with so much else. ⁵⁴²

Bernier added that he hoped readers would embrace the “goodness” of the books and the enjoyment of reading: “They’re wonderfully written books that appeal to kids and adults. They’re easy to read and they’re entertaining.”

Before he became pope of Rome, when he was still a cardinal, Joseph Ratzinger (who became Benedict XVI) was the head of the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (the old Inquisition); and as such, he responded to a book written about the dangers of the Harry Potter stories by sending a note to the author, thanking her for her book and saying that if the accusations were true then they would be of grave concern. Priest Bernier claimed that as a result of this, many people wrongly believed that Benedict XVI “came out against the Harry Potter books.” He said, “Pope Benedict has not said anything actually about the Harry Potter books themselves. I don’t kn ow if he’s even read them.”

Whatever Ratzinger’s views of the stories, it was plain that by 2009 and the release of the next film in the series, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, the Vatican was full of praise for it. It said the film made the age-old debate over good versus evil crystal clear. The Vatican newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano, said that this film was the best adaptation of the books to date. Although it criticised author Rowling for leaving out any explicit “reference to the transcendent” in her stories, it said the latest instalment nevertheless made it clear that good should overcome evil “and that sometimes this requires costs and sacrifice”. ⁵⁴³ So the Vatican was willing to overlook the occultic nature of the films in order to dredge up some nebulous moral about the overcoming of evil by good.

In 2011, when the final film instalment in the series, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2, was released, the review in L ’Osservatore Romano stated that although it might be too scary for young viewers, it championed the values of friendship and sacrifice! “As for the content,” one reviewer wrote in the paper, “evil is never presented as fascinating or attractive in the saga, but the values of friendship and of sacrifice are highlighted. In a unique and long story of formation, through painful passages of dealing with death and loss, the hero and his companions mature from the lightheartedness of infancy to the complex reality of adulthood.” ⁵⁴⁴

How far the Roman Catholic institution had come! – from once upon a time, via the Breen Office and the Legion of Decency, condemning anything remotely un-Papist and demanding changes, to now actually looking for and praising vague references to such things as friendship and sacrifice in an occultic movie! But this of course was perfectly in line with the changed Jesuit tactics which we have noted in this book. Putting a finger in the wind and noting the way the world was going, including the Roman Catholic world, the Jesuits did what they have always done: they loosened the rigid moral standards of previous times so as to retain a hold on the people.

The reviewer continued, writing that young people who had grown with Potter and his friends “certainly have understood that magic is only a narrative pretext useful in the battle against an unrealistic search for immortality.” Considering that even many adults would have to read that sentence twice to understand what the reviewer was saying, it is utterly ridiculous to believe that children viewed the Potter stories in this light! Millions of them were absorbed into the magic of the series, believed in the power of magic and sorcery as a result, and had a deep indoctrination into witchcraft and the occult.

Another reviewer in the same edition of the Vatican newspaper stated that the Potter saga championed values that “Christians” (i.e. Papists) and others share, and provided opportunities for “Christian” parents to talk to their children about how those values are presented in a special way in the Bible. Thus, once again, we see Rome’s method: sifting through the occultic evil of the story to supposedly extract the odd “value” which all people share. And this sinful approach was followed by many “Evangelicals” as well. Instead of going to the source of all truth, the Bible, they preferred to let their children learn “values” from a film about witchcraft, and then attempted to somehow get the children to take an interest in the Bible afterwards! Blind, lost souls, ignorant of the Gospel and strangers to Christ the Lord.

This reviewer then wrote: “Harry Potter, although he never declared himself a Christian, calls on the dark magician to mend his ways, repent for what he has done and recognise the primacy of love over everything so he will not be damned for eternity.” This Roman Catholic reviewer failed to understand that someone like Harry Potter was as lost, as damned to eternity for his sins, as the dark magician he was fighting against! This is because he, like all Papists, was himself a lost man, ignorant of the Gospel of Christ. To him, someone like Harry Potter was “good”, even though not a Christian, and thus (by implication) not going to be damned like the dark magician was. This is supposed salvation by one’s own works, which is the belief of Rome. But it is not the teaching of God’s Word, the Bible.

He also wrote that this film demonstrated that “from the pure of heart like the young Harry, ready to die for his friends”, come big lessons! Truly, this was one branch of Satan’s kingdom (Romanism) praising another branch of Satan’s kingdom (the occult)! The Lord Jesus Christ spoke of the pure in heart, but someone like Harry Potter (if he existed) would not be among them. The “pure in heart” (Matt. 5:8) are those who have purified their hearts by faith in the Lord Jesus Christ (Acts 15:9), and no others.

What was going on? Simply put: Rome was following the tactics it had begun to use as the Jesuits moved away from supporting outright, top- down Roman Catholic censorship via the Breen Office and the Legion of Decency, and instead sought to influence movies more subtly, praising whatever they could about them, finding “morals” even when there were none, even working on the sets as advisors. They had come to believe that this was the only way forward for Rome: it could no longer prevent its people from attending the movies, so it might as well adopt the tactic of “if you can’t beat them, join them”. In typical Jesuit fashion, by appearing to their people to be progressive and modem and in no way fun-spoiling fuddy-duddies, they felt this would be the way to maintain their hold on their flocks. “Don’t condemn and forbid, rather praise where you can and issue weak cautions about whatever is simply too objectionable” – this in a nutshell was their tactic ever since they jettisoned the Breen Office. “Become all things to all men”, the Jesuit motto that is nothing but a distortion of the biblical teaching, lay at the heart of this tactic of theirs. Merge Romanism with the world as far as possible. In the early centuries of the Christian era, Rome, in order to keep the loyalties of the masses of pagans whom it baptized and declared to be “Christians”, retained their pagan temples and even their pagan gods, but gave them the names of “Christ”, “Mary”, the “saints”, etc., thereby keeping the masses happy and (bottom line) keeping the money flowing in. And today, centuries later, the same tactic is followed: the masses want their entertainment, so (the Jesuits have reasoned) far better to let them have it, but maintain a semblance of spiritual “oversight” by issuing cautions, telling the people to “be careful” while enjoying the films, and praising whatever they can.

The Lord of the Rings (2001): a “Fundamentally Roman Catholic” Movie

The film adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien’s fantasy book, The Lord of the Rings, was released in 2001. And according to Tom Shippey, one of the world’s leading authorities on Tolkien and a scholar of early English language and literature at the Jesuit-run St Louis University (amazing how frequently the Jesuits crop up, is it not?), the story told in The Lord of the Rings is “fundamentally Catholic”. ⁵⁴⁵ Yet, he added, “On the face of it – it isn’t. The characters appear to have no religion at all. They are living in a historical limbo, a pre-Christian time. But they have an inkling of the revelation that is to come. They are like the philosophers in Dante’s Inferno, who are before Christ and are found in the first circle of hell.”

Shippey went on to point out that “The Inklings” was the name of the writers’ group that Tolkien belonged to with his friend, C.S. Lewis, who was an Anglican. Lewis, while a member of the Inklings, wrote The Chronicles of Narnia.

Tolkien was raised as a Roman Catholic. His mother converted to Romanism when Tolkien was a child. When she died he was raised by a priest of Rome, and remained a devout Romanist all his life. Yet he was perfectly willing to write the Ring series of books, which Shippey described as “alternative history.” He said: “Tolkien left gaps fitted to the Old Testament – at the start of Tolkien’s pre-history the people first come into the world fleeing from what seems to be the Garden of Eden.” Tolkien “studied the literature of pre-Christian to conversion times”, and taught the Edda, which was an Icelandic story of pre-Christian Norse beliefs. He also formed a club, called the “Coalbiters”, for the study and propagation of Norse mythology. ⁵⁴⁶

This Roman Catholic, then, loved to study and propagate paganism, and the film adaptation of his book was a yet further propaganda push for ancient heathenism – yet heathenism which Rome was willing to accept as being in some way pro-Papist. In truth, The Lord of the Rings could be taken as a summary of Jesuitism’s post-Code approach to movies: to find some way to use even blatantly paganistic films to promote Roman Catholicism, no matter how indirectly and tenuously.

It all fitted very well with Rome’s post-Vatican II approach to converting the world to Roman Catholicism: the interfaith movement, finding common ground with pagan religions, heathen beliefs of all kinds, merging Roman Catholicism with various heathenish religious practices and outlooks, so as to appeal to as wide a segment of society as possible.

The Passion of the Christ (2004): Showing Up the Enmity Between Roman Catholic and Liberal/Leftist Hollywood

Despite this new era of uneasy truces and of seeking common ground, Hollywood’s liberal/leftist/Marxist crowd were horrified when a top Hollywood actor/director went too far and made a blatantly pro-Roman Catholic movie, without compromising with the Hollywood leftists or toning the religious message down.

In 2004 actor/director Mel Gibson, a devout traditionalist Roman Catholic, released The Passion of the Christ. It became a phenomenal success at the box office, grossing $370.3 million in the U.S. by the end of its first year, and $611.9 million worldwide; but it was ridiculed and effectively boycotted by liberal/leftist Hollywood and by the liberal/ leftist press. Gibson, in fact, financed the making of the movie himself because the major movie studios would not touch it. In addition they turned on Gibson, portraying him as a “strange” Roman Catholic who did not accept the authority of the current Roman pope, or the use of English in the Roman mass. Warnings started to be issued that the film was anti-Semitic, a charge Gibson vociferously denied. Given the leftist/liberal/Red Jewish control of most of Hollywood, and its hatred of anything it considered “Christian”, this level of antagonism was not at all surprising.

Much of what is written below is excerpted and adapted from an article written by the present author at the time when the film was released, entitled “The Passion of the Christ”: Outreach for Antichrist , ⁵⁴⁷ Additional material has been added.

Before the movie’s official release Gibson began to tour the country, showing a preview to groups of Roman Catholics and conservative Protestants. He showed the trailer to the National Association of Evangelicals in Colorado Springs, Colorado, and to 350 Jesuits at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, California. Speaking to a reporter, Gibson joked that he was nervous about how the Jesuits would respond to it: “We’re Catholics, right? We’re scared of the Jesuits. Every good Catholic is,” he said. ⁵⁴⁸

In 2003, before the film opened, the marketing director of Gibson’s Icon Productions hired A. Larry Ross Communications (ALRC) to promote the film among professing Christians. Ross had for years been the director of media and public relations for Billy Graham. ALRC did its work well: its massive promotional work among “Evangelicals” paid off. By the time the film opened it had already received a huge amount of free publicity – publicity which had bypassed mainstream Hollywood almost entirely.

Such was the utter spiritual blindness of so-called “Evangelicals” that many churches reserved entire movie theatres for themselves, with some even holding services in the movie theatre after the movie was screened! Ted Haggard, president of the National Association of Evangelicals in the USA, said the film would inspire believers for decades or even centuries. ⁵⁴⁹ Billy Graham strongly endorsed it – a man who also endorsed the Roman pontiff, John Paul II, accepting it when the man holding the position which for centuries Protestants have recognised as that of the biblical Antichrist, called him his brother. ⁵⁵⁰ Jack Graham, president of the Southern Baptist Convention in the USA, endorsed it. James Dobson, that promoter of psychoheresy, endorsed it. ⁵⁵¹ So did many others the world over. As the Lord Jesus said, “They be blind leaders of the blind. And if the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch” (Matt. 15:14).

Gibson said during previews of the film, “The Holy Ghost was working through me on this film. I was just directing traffic.” And: “I think that the Holy Ghost is real. I believe that he’s looking favorably on this film. And he wanted to help. I could always use a little help.” ⁵⁵² His pious claims notwithstanding, his foul language showed up his real colours – but the “Evangelicals” were willing to turn a deaf ear to it. In an interview, he said of some Roman Catholic and Jewish scholars who sent him a report detailing what they held to be inaccuracies in the film: “They always [expletive deleted] around with it, you know?” And: “Judas is always some kind of friend of some freedom fighter named Barabbas, you know what I mean? It’s [expletive deleted]. It’s revisionist [expletive deleted]. And that’s what these academics are into.”

And the acceptance of this film by “Evangelicals” illustrates what we have stated earlier – that by the time the film appeared, so many, who claimed (falsely) to be Christians, saw nothing much wrong with Hollywood. It was not that many years before when Evangelical pastors regularly preached against ungodly movies, and members of their churches were not permitted to watch them if they wanted to remain as members. But as the tide of wickedness rose higher and higher, the voices boldly preaching against it grew fewer and fewer. The professing “Church” was engulfed by the world. The world entered the professing “Church”, and the “Church” justified this by saying it needed to be “relevant”, to “keep up with the times”, etc. Professing “Christians” started attending ungodly movies, as well as soaking up the filth of Hollywood in their own homes via their TV sets, and later via videos and then DVDs. And the pastors did nothing. In fact, for the most part they were as guilty as their flocks. Such things as holiness and separation from the world were now considered quaint left-overs of an earlier era. For multitudes hypocritically calling themselves “Christians”, the TV guide became more important than the Bible, and they knew the names and histories of their favourite movie “stars” better than the heroes of the faith. Television brought the cesspool of Hollywood right into the home at the touch of a button, and the majority of those who named the name of Christ did not care. They happily indulged in it all, and looked with disdain on those lone voices in the wilderness who dared to lift up their voices against such wickedness. Yet the Word of God speaks plainly: “I will set no wicked thing before mine eyes” (Psa. 101:3); “whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things” (Phil.4:8).

The fact that a movie like The Passion, made by such a man as Mel Gibson, could be so acceptable to the “Evangelical” world, was a terrible indictment upon the men filling “Evangelical” pulpits. A huge measure of the blame for the blubbering acceptance of this film by the so-called “Evangelical” world had to be laid squarely at the feet of the so-called “pastors”, the men who disgraced the pulpits of “Evangelical” churches. The pews follow the pulpits. When the shepherds go astray, how swiftly the sheep follow. How solemn that word in Jas.3:1: “My brethren, be not many masters, knowing that we shall receive the greater condemnation [margin: judgment]

That multitudes of professing “Evangelicals” flocked in their droves to watch this movie revealed the utter spiritual blindness that hung, like a thick cloud, over the professing “Christian” world; and it revealed the shocking spiritual bankruptcy of the vast majority of men standing behind pulpits. Gibson’s production company, quick to seize the opportunity to make ever more money from the film, marketed the film as “perhaps the best outreach opportunity in 2000 years” – and the “Evangelical” world fell for this slick marketing hype hook, line and sinker.

How possibly could a man like Mel Gibson make a sound biblical movie? Even apart from the fact that he was a traditionalist Roman Catholic, he had starred in violent, brutal, gory movies, full of foul language and sexual immorality. How then could he turn his defiled hands to so solemn a subject as the crucifixion of the Lord of Glory (even apart from the fact that no sinful, mortal man can ever properly depict the Lord Christ in a film), and handle such a theme with reverence, holy awe, holy fear, and with his eye to the glory of God? It was impossible. The Bible was written by holy men of God, as they were moved by the Holy Ghost; and it is holy men of God, men called by the Holy Ghost, who are to teach and expound it to souls. The men of the world cannot teach the true Christian the true meaning of any portion of God’s holy Word, and no Christian should ever go to the worldly for such instruction. What, then, were so-called “Evangelicals” doing, flocking to be taught the (supposed) meaning of the crucifixion by a wicked, immoral, idolatrous man like Gibson? And what were they doing, taking the work of such a man and attempting to use it for evangelism? They were blind, mad, those who “eat and drink with the [spiritually] drunken” (Matt.24:49). Like drunk men, they could not discern the truth, for indeed they were strangers to it.

The reason this film was so acceptable to so many who professed (falsely) to be Christians, was because Hollywood was so acceptable to them. Hollywood, with all its violence, adultery, fornication, sodomy, foul language, etc., etc. This was an extremely violent movie, and not that many years before most people would not have been willing to watch a movie with such extreme brutality; but years of constant, daily exposure to Hollywood “blood and gore” had desensitised people to such things, to the point where the average moviegoer had become quite used to it, saw little or nothing wrong with it, and in fact all too often actually craved it. Like the ancient Romans in the amphitheatres, who had an insatiable bloodlust and watched with relish the agonies of Christians being tom to pieces by wild animals, moviegoers crave ever more “reality” in movies, and Hollywood is all too ready to provide it. The Bible reveals the total depravity of all mankind; and certainly this depravity is revealed in the so-called “entertainment” industry.

This was a film described by Time magazine as “crimson carnage from the moment Jesus is condemned, half an hour into the 127-min. film.” ⁵⁵³ It went on to say that it was a film for “cast-iron stomachs; people who can stand to be grossed out as they are edified.” It stated that Mel Gibson had invented “a new genre – the religious splatter-art film”. It was a “relentless, near pornographic feast of flayed flesh.

Gibson gives us Christ’s blood, not in a Communion cup, but by the gallon. Blood spraying from Jesus’ shackled body; blood sluicing to the Cross’s foot.” It was so violent that in some places cinemas actually provided “sick bags” for the audience! And yet despite such horrifying violence, many professing “Christians”, no less than those who made no such profession (thus showing that in reality there is no difference between them!), with an apparently insatiable appetite for movie violence and gore, and seeing no harm in it, were now able to go and satisfy their bloodlust by watching it in a supposedly “Christian” context – thereby supposedly “sanctifying” it. How true the following comment: “The ghoulish relish of hordes of professing Christians for the violence of this film is in stark contrast with the attitude of the followers of Christ who witnessed His crucifixion – ‘And all his acquaintance, and the women that followed him from Galilee, stood afar off, beholding these things’ (Luke 23:49). They could not bear the sight of His sufferings up close but displayed the natural reaction of abhorrence at the sight of a loved one’s sufferings and so ‘stood afar off’.” ⁵⁵⁴

Mel Gibson was raised a Roman Catholic, and considered himself to be a Roman Catholic traditionalist. He loved the Latin mass, the central blasphemy of the Romish religion. He had a priest of Rome on the movie’s set, who offered mass and heard the confessions of anyone who wished to confess. When asked in an interview if someone could be saved apart from the Roman Catholic “Church”, Gibson gave the centuries-old Romish answer: “There is no salvation for those outside the Church”. ⁵⁵⁵ And yet this devout, fanatical Romanist, spouting official Romish doctrine, was hailed as a true Christian by blind “Evangelicals” the world over!

So as far as Gibson was concerned, the film’s purpose was to show the supposed connection between the cross and the Romish blasphemy of the so-called “sacrifice of the mass”. This is exactly what Rome has always claimed: “The sacrifice of Christ and the sacrifice of the Eucharist are one single sacrifice: ‘This divine sacrifice which is celebrated in the Mass, the same Christ who offered himself once in a bloody manner on the altar of the cross is contained and is offered in an unbloody manner. ”’ ⁵⁵⁶ This is an outright denial of the once-only, all-sufficient sacrifice of the Lord Jesus Christ on the cross for the sins of His people. The Lord’s words on the cross, “It is finished” (Jn. 19:30), are not understood by any Romanist; for they believe that in the mass, the sacrifice of Christ is re-enacted, day after day and year after year, hundreds of thousands of times around the world. Romanists do not understand Christ’s words to be referring to the fact that His great work was finished, and never to be repeated in any form or sense. How then, how possibly, could a movie about the crucifixion made by a devout Romanist ever be biblically accurate? And yet “Evangelical” pastors reserved entire movie theatres to show this film to their flocks!

Jim Caviezel, who pretended to play “Jesus” in the film, was a devout Roman Catholic who used the rosary, attended the mass regularly, and went to confession. During the filming, he and Gibson went daily to mass together, with Caviezel saying, “I need that to play this guy” (a true Christian would not refer to his Lord and Saviour so irreverently as “this guy”), and he went to confession regularly, saying, “I didn’t want Lucifer to have any control over the performance” (little did he know that Satan controlled the entire performance from beginning to end). He carried what he believed was a piece of the true cross on his person at all times, as well as relics of various Roman Catholic “saints”. This was a man, however, who, for all his “devoutness”, had previously starred in movies filled with profanity, violence, sex, etc. And this was the man whose face became the image in the minds of millions of people the world over whenever they thought of Christ!

And what did Caviezel himself say about the film? “This film is something that I believe was made by Mary for her Son.” ⁵⁵⁷

Caviezel stated that many in the film crew converted to Roman Catholicism. And yet “Evangelicals” hailed it as a wonderful evangelistic tool! It led poor souls into the clutches of the Papal Antichrist – and they praised it as leading souls to Christ.

For all true Bible Protestants, the fact that this was a Roman Catholic movie was reason enough to utterly reject it. But the age is one in which so many, claiming to be Christians, see nothing much wrong with Roman Catholicism. The diabolical ecumenical movement has done the devil’s work very well. It was not that long ago when pastors regularly preached against Roman Catholicism, calling it what it is: the Mother of Harlots and Abominations of the earth (Rev. 17:5).

No members of their churches were permitted to have any spiritual fellowship with Papists (2 Cor.6:14-18; Rev. 18:4,5). But this had all changed.

Modem “Evangelicals” were willing to forsake almost all biblical standards, and to adopt the Jesuit motto that “the end justifies the means.” If, to their minds, “souls were saved” by watching the movie, or “Christians were edified”, or “Christians had their faith deepened”, then the end justified the means. They professed to be “Bible-believers”, and very loudly and proudly said, “We believe nothing but what the Bible teaches!” But this was a lie. The reality is that they believed many things that were not taught in the Bible – and they rejected many things that were taught in it.

Also, contrary to what so many “Evangelicals” seemed to think, the film was not based solely on the Gospel accounts of Christ’s crucifixion. Gibson also based it, to a large extent, on the visions of two Roman Catholic nun-mystics, Anne Catherine Emmerich and Mary of Agreda. Emmerich claimed to have seen visions of the sufferings, death and resurrection of Christ, and these were recorded in her book, entitled The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ. It is easy to see where Gibson got the title for his movie! As for Mary of Agreda, she wrote a book entitled The Divine History and Life of the Virgin Mother of God as Manifested to Maty of Agreda. Of Emmerich’s visions, Gibson openly admitted: “She supplied me with stuff I never would have thought of.” ⁵⁵⁸ If this was really a movie based on the Gospel accounts, why did Gibson need to “thi nk of’ anything? All that is needed is in the Scriptures. But of course Rome has never believed that. Those two nuns did not believe it. That was why they readily added their own “stuff’, and why Gibson readily swallowed it.

The film subtly gives the impression that it was actually Mary who offered Christ as a sacrifice, not God the Father. “‘The Passion of the Christ’ leaves us with a vision of the sacrifice of Christ that is only dolorous [dolorous: full of grief; sad; sorrowful; doleful; dismal] and which puts into sharp relief the Roman Catholic notion not only of the importance of Christ’s agony, but that of Mary in ‘offering her Son’. In an interview with Zenit, the Roman Catholic News Service, Father Thomas Rosica … illustrated how ‘The Passion of the Christ’, in keeping with Roman Catholic theology, uses extra-biblical content to massively exaggerate the role of Mary…. ‘The Mother of the Lord is inviting each of us to share her grief and behold her Son.’ This use of extra-biblical material, emphasis on physical suffering, exaggeration of the role of Mary, and explicitly Roman Catholic theology should not surprise us, however, as these are all hallmarks of the primary inspiration for this movie: [Anne Catherine Emmerich’s] The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ .” ⁵⁵⁹

Then too, there are non-biblical “flashbacks” to Jesus’ childhood with Mary (again promoting Romanism, the cult of Mary). As for Satan, he is depicted as “an androgynous creature, a Gollum with weird sex appeal, who slithers through the crowd, working mischief.” ⁵⁶⁰

The film is thus an heretical mixture of aspects taken from the Gospel accounts, Roman Catholic mysticism, Mel Gibson’s own thoughts, unjustifiable poetic licence, and Roman Catholic doctrine.

What were some of the fruits of this film?

Something extraordinary, something diabolically evil, was witnessed in all this: this film pushed the devil’s ecumenical movement forward! For decades, Rome had been doing all in its power to woo the so-called “Evangelicals” into its embrace; and it was having much success. But this movie pushed “Evangelicals’ even further into the arms of “Mother Rome”. “Evangelicals” hailed Mel Gibson as a “born-again Catholic Christian”, an outright oxymoron, for no Roman Catholic is a true Christian. When the Lord saves an adherent of this false religion, Lie does not leave him in that error and heresy. Lie draws him out, just as Lie does for any member of any false religion whom He saves. If Gibson had been truly converted to Christ, he would have repented of his sins, which would include repenting of acting in and making his past movies, and he would have forsaken Romanism. “Ye shall know them by their fruits” (Matt.7:16).

The Passion was a giant leap forward for the ecumenical movement. It promoted Roman Catholicism on a huge scale among “Evangelicals”. “Mel Gibson’s movie savages the Word of God for the benefit of an accursed church with an accursed gospel…. We are at yet another turning point in the history of the Church.” ⁵⁶¹ Ex priest Richard Bennett stated: “The Evangelical church’s acceptance of Gibson’s movie gives shocking – maybe apocalyptic – insight into the state of popular Christianity today. Will history reveal this day as the time when Evangelicalism, on a popular level, merged with the Roman Catholic Church?” ⁵⁶² Certainly it greatly promoted the merger so desired by ecumenicals. The wall of separation between Roman Catholicism and “Evangelicalism” had been crumbling for decades, and this film was another, very powerful assault on that wall, causing it to crumble even further.

It burned into the minds of millions a graphic image of “Christ” that is utterly false. For millions of people, the face of Jim Caviezel became the face of Christ, as surely as multiplied millions for many centuries have had an image of Christ in their minds that was formed by gazing at statues, or paintings. After watching the film the arch-ecumenist, Billy Graham, said: “Every time I preach or speak about the cross, the things I saw on the screen will be on my heart and mind.” ⁵⁶³ He merely voiced what millions felt. But this is all idolatry. “Take ye therefore good heed unto yourselves; for ye saw no manner of similitude on the day that the Lord spake unto you in Horeb out of the midst of the fire: lest ye corrupt yourselves, and make you a graven image, the similitude of any figure, the likeness of male or female” (Deut.4:15,16).

In the aftermath of The Passion, Mel Gibson was hailed by naive and foolish Charismatics, Pentecostals, and neo-Evangelicals as a wonderful Christian man. They ignored the fact that he was a Romanist, held to the usual heretical and blasphemous Romish doctrines, and had made an extremely pro-Papist movie. And yet as time went by, in addition to his Romanism Gibson demonstrated, by his sinful conduct, just what an unregenerate man he was. Among other things, he divorced his wife, to whom he had been married for over thirty years, and lived with his girlfriend, with whom he had a daughter – all after he had made The Passion. And in 2006 he was pulled over for speeding, and found to be drunk. He swore loudly at the arresting officers, and let loose with various anti-Semitic remarks, including making the accusation that Jews were “responsible for all the wars in the world”. ⁵⁶⁴ But the “Evangelical” world by and large did not care: Gibson was their hero.

The Passion of the Christ did wonders for Roman Catholicism, and shocked Hollywood. It revealed that even after many years of anti- religious liberal/leftist/Marxist propaganda via films, or at the least of very watered-down, effeminate, mystical references to “religion” on occasion, there were still millions of moviegoers who were devoutly religious (not Christian but religious), and who were willing to support overtly religious movies. And so the battle continued between religion and secularism, and indeed between conservative Romanism unwilling to compromise and “progressive’ V liberal Romanism in Jesuit hands, willing to compromise with the non-Romish world so as to get its way by other means.

Yes, Hollywood was shocked at first. Its agenda of opposing any thing too blatantly religious, too overtly “Christian” (according to its false understanding of “Christianity”), was threatened by the runaway success of The Passion. Hollywood was serving the idols of secular humanism, Marxism, eastern mysticism, and New Age spirituality. But now Hollywood’s love for another idol kicked in: the idol of Mammon. There was big money to be made by catering to the religious tastes of Roman Catholics and Protestants. These groups had not faded away, despite the relentless assault by liberals, leftists, Marxists, secular humanists and others in Hollywood and other influential parts of society. Ideological idols were all very well – being evangelists for the liberal/leftist/Marxist cause and all that – but at the end of the day Hollywood bigwigs still bowed before the idol of Mammon above all others. It was time to start milking the religious masses.

Disney was first to jump on the bandwagon:

The Chronicles of Narnia (2005): Occult Fantasy of a Closet Roman Catholic

The following is excerpted and adapted from an article written by the present author at the time when the film version of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe first appeared. The article was entitled “The Chronicles of Narnia”: Occult Fantasy of a Closet Roman Catholic. ⁵⁶⁵ There are also some excerpts from another of the author’s articles, entitled “ Faith-Based ” Films or Hollywood Heresy? ⁵⁶⁶

C. S. Lewis’ world-famous series of fantasy novels, The Chronicles of Narnia, were long praised as “Christian allegory” in many ecclesiastical circles. Lewis himself has been described in many of these circles as “the greatest Christian writer of the twentieth century.” And in 2005 the first book in the series, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, was made into a blockbuster movie by Disney, the first of a series of movies to be based on the Narnia novels. The big question is: why?

For decades, Hollywood had ignored the millions of professing “Christians” as a market. It promoted everything that Christianity opposes: violence, profanity, sexual sin of all kinds, nudity, drunken ness, and a whole host of other sins. It had gone out of its way to mock Christians, to portray Protestant ministers as wild-eyed, dangerous fanatics, to ridicule the Bible, to attack everything held dear by Christians. But while this was going on, something was happening in the “Christian” camp. The times were changing, and millions of people who claimed to be “born-again Christians” were no longer as antagonistic towards Hollywood as earlier generations had been. The men in the pulpits no longer thundered against the movies, and the people in the pews were regularly attending the movie theatres, and soaking up the same filth that everyone else was enjoying. The vast majority of those now naming the name of Christ were in fact not truly born again at all! They were merely disciples of the new, popular, easy-believism, “call yourself a Christian but be part of the world too” doctrine that had been sweeping through churches for years. A false “gospel”, indeed, but one that was, and is, believed to be the true Gospel by millions today.

Nevertheless, despite their acceptance of so much Hollywood filth, many of these professing “Christians” still drew the line at attending movies that were just too depraved, even for them. And they kept their children away from them as well. Yet they were very willing to flock to watch a movie with a supposedly “Christian” theme. After all, they called themselves Christians! Hollywood, however, was not paying attention.

Until The Passion of the Christ, that is.

As we have seen, when Mel Gibson’s movie hit the screens it was a runaway success, and Hollywood was stunned. The masses of unregenerate worldlings who nevertheless called themselves “Christians” flocked to see it, and doubtless made Mel Gibson laugh all the way to the bank. And suddenly Hollywood sat up and took notice. Here was a very lucrative niche market indeed! One which Hollywood had been ignoring!

“The Passion really surprised Hollywood,” said John Buckeridge, the editor of Christianity Magazine (certainly not recommended for any true Christian!). Christianity Magazine ran a cover story on how churches could link into Narnia’s release to promote a “Christian” message. ⁵⁶⁷ “Everyone thought it would bomb,” he said. “What they didn’t realise was that there is an audience for a film with a Christian message.” Passing by his inference that The Passion was Christian, he was correct in saying that the movie surprised Hollywood, and made the moviemakers realise that there was a vast untapped niche market out there. “Disney recognises the marketplace. In Hollywood, money talks,” added Buckeridge. Very true! But this did not seem to concern him in the least, nor did he appear to note the obvious paradox of saying that Mammon is the god of Hollywood, and yet supporting Hollywood for making a movie (The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe) with what he claimed was a “Christian” message! Jesus said, “No man can serve two masters…Ye cannot serve God and mammon” (Matt. 6:24). By Buckeridge’s own admission, Hollywood served Mammon. It could not, then, be serving God. And yet he recommended that churches make use of Narnia! “This could be as successful as The Passion of the Christ in triggering dialogue. There is a Christian parable in there,” he said.

And indeed, “churches” worked themselves up into a froth of excitement, convinced that this movie represented the greatest evangelistic opportunity since the previous year’s The Passion of the Christ. But as with that unscriptural Roman Catholic splatter-movie, so with this one: it just showed how biblically illiterate and doctrinally confused vast numbers of churches were. The truth about Narnia, and Lewis himself, is far, far darker than most “Evangelicals” would know, or, sadly, understand.

Millions of “Evangelicals” (along with Roman Catholics, Anglicans, Methodists, Pentecostals, Charismatics, etc.) had for many years claimed that The Chronicles of Narnia were wonderful “Christian allegories”, and they continued to do so once the movie was made. Russ Bravo, development director for Christian Publishing and Outreach, said: “There are clear Christian parallels you can draw from the storyline” of the Narnia books. As noted above, John Buckeridge, editor of Christianity Magazine, said: “There is a Christian parable in there”. ⁵⁶⁸ And the neo-Evangelical, ecumenical Christianity Today magazine, when recommending the Narnia series, said: “In Aslan [the lion in the stories], Christ is made tangible, knowable, real”; and: “Christ came not to put an end to myth but to take all that is most essential in the myth up into himself and make it real.” ⁵⁶⁹ What utter nonsense!

Here is something really sinister indeed: the Narnia books are sold not only in Christian bookstores, but in occult bookstores as well, and are recommended by the promoters of the occult game, “Dungeons and Dragons”! ⁵⁷⁰ Astounding: a series of books, written by a man professing to be a “Christian”, and hailed by many professing “Christians” as “Christian allegory”, yet the message of which is such that occultists are happy to sell them. Churches rushed to support the movie, encouraging their flocks to see it, and yet as those professing “Christians” sat there watching it they were doubtless rubbing shoulders with witches, Satanists, and other occultists in the audience who were deriving their own “message” from it. The professing children of light, sitting next to the children of darkness, watching the movie together, and both leaving the movie theatre satisfied, the one group convinced they had just seen a wonderful “Christian allegory”, the other group knowing that they had just seen an occult fantasy!

For this is precisely what the Narnia stories are all about: occultism, heathen mythology, magic. Lewis borrowed elements from the Bible, but he draped the stories in heathen mythology and outright occultism. He concocted a hybrid religious teaching, in line with his own deep fascination with heathen mythology, magic and occultism.

Many of the Narnia characters are in fact gods and demons from pagan mythology! Aslan is the god-like lion who is seen as Christ in the stories; and yet in heathen mythology this lion represents the sun. In The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, Aslan is said to be “coming and going”; to have “golden” eyes, face and fur; to have “warm breath”; to scatter golden beams of light; to be big and bright; etc. And according to the Dictionary of Mythology, Folklore and Symbols, by Gertrude Jobes, the sun is seen as a lion, golden in colour; with its breath symbolising the sun’s rays; etc. In addition, the ancient sun- worshippers believed that the sun died as it reached its southernmost point, bringing winter. It was “reborn”, or resurrected, when it returned northward, bringing spring. In the Narnia series, when Aslan returned to Narnia, it became spring; and after dying at night, he was resurrected in the early morning! ⁵⁷¹

In another book in the series, Prince Caspian, the heathen god Bacchus appears, along with “wild girls.” They dance a wild “magic dance” in a “grove” (a place of heathen worship, Exod. 34:13; 1 Kings 15:13; 16:33; etc.) on “Midsummer night”, having been seated in a “wide circle around a fire”, with various kinds of wine available, and “wheaten cakes”. Lewis was simply copying the heathen doctrines surrounding Bacchus. For in paganism, Bacchus was the god of wine; he attracted women to him, who danced and were possessed with occult powers; Midsummer eve is a witches’ festival held on June 24; there is dancing, feasting, cakes and wine!

Throughout the Narnia books, Lewis writes about dryads, nymphs, satyrs, fauns, etc. The Cromwell Handbook of Classical Mythology> classifies these as demons. His books also deal with such occult practices as alchemy, clairvoyance, astrology, crystal gazing, necromancy, magic, talismans, etc. The Lord forbids such occult practices in many parts of His Word, e.g. Deut. 18:9-14; Gal. 5:20; Isa. 8:19,20; Acts 7:42,43.

Who was C. S. Lewis (1898 – 1963)? He was a writer, critic, professor of English literature, a man who held senior positions at Cambridge and Oxford universities, and he is praised (incorrectly) as a “Christian apologist.” The ecumenical neo-Evangelical, J. I. Packer, called him “our patron saint” (an interesting choice of title, considering that it is Romanists, and not Evangelicals, who have “patron saints”). ⁵⁷² According to the far-from-Evangelical Christianity Today magazine, Lewis “has come to be the Aquinas, the Augustine, and the Aesop of contemporary Evangelicalism” (an interesting choice of “heroes”, considering that Aquinas was a Roman Catholic apologist, Augustine was an early “Catholic” in doctrine, and Aesop, although he taught many moral truths with his stories, was a heathen). ⁵⁷³ But despite the fact that Lewis’ books on “Christian” apologetics rank him, in the minds of many – Romanist, Anglican, liberal, “Evangelical” – as one of the most brilliant defenders of Christianity in the twentieth century, the facts tell a very different story indeed. It is enough of a danger sign to know that he is so admired by Roman Catholics, Protestants, conservatives and liberals – quite obviously then, he was not a sound theologian, but “broad-based” and ecumenical; but there is certainly plenty of evidence to show just what kind of a “Christian apologist” he really was.

From a very young age, Lewis was attracted to occult fantasy and fiction; for example, Norse and Celtic mythology, magic, etc. He was to immerse himself in Norse mythology. By the age of 12 he was “hooked” on fantasy, elves, etc. And he himself said that he came to the very frontiers of hallucination. His favourite literature in his early years included E. Nesbit’s occult fantasy works. Twenty-five years after he claimed to have become a Christian (he was clearly never truly converted) he said that he still read these with delight. And this ungodly mixture of light and darkness, of a little truth mixed with magic, myth, etc., comes out in his various writings. ⁵⁷⁴ He also immersed himself in the writing of the atheist and early science fiction author, H. G. Wells. At school, he attended a high Anglo-Catholic “church”; but he gradually dropped what he thought was his “Christianity” in favour of occultism, particularly the Norse mythologies.

At the age of 27 he met J. R. R. Tolkien, and they became close friends. Tolkien, author of the occult fantasy, Lord of the Rings, was a devout Roman Catholic. They would meet weekly to drink, smoke, and discuss each others’ stories. Tolkien would speak to Lewis about the Roman Catholic “christ”; and he worked on Lewis until he accepted the account of Christ as a “true myth. ” ⁵⁷⁵ This is an oxymoron if ever there was one. Either the account of Christ is true, or it is myth. It cannot be both. It is blasphemous to speak of the account of the Lord and Saviour in this way. But it fits in perfectly with Lewis’ love of mythology, which he was steeped in.

Lewis eventually joined the Anglican institution, and was Anglo- Catholic in doctrine; but he was greatly influenced by Tolkien, and at heart Lewis was clearly a “closet Papist.” He was certainly no Evangelical! The ecumenical Christianity’ Today magazine, which praised Lewis and recommended his Narnia books, still had to admit that Lewis was “a man whose theology had decidedly unevangelical elements”. ⁵⁷⁶ And even the neo-Evangelical ecumenical author, J. I. Packer, who used Papist language and called Lewis “our patron saint”, admitted that Lewis was “no such thing” as an Evangelical; yet he has become the most widely-read supposed “defender” of “Christian” basics among professing “Evangelicals!” ⁵⁷⁷

Lewis had no interest in judging the soundness or otherwise of certain denominational traditions. In the preface of his famous book, Mere Christianity, he wrote: “The reader should be warned that I offer no help to anyone who is hesitating between two ‘Christian’ denominations. You will not learn from me whether you ought to become an Anglican, a Methodist, a Presbyterian, or a Roman Catholic…. Ever since I became a Christian I have thought that the best, perhaps the only service I could do for my unbelieving neighbours was to explain and defend the belief that has been common to nearly all Christians at all times.”

An Evangelical? Not in the least. He was thoroughly ecumenical.

His stated aim, in Mere Christianity, was to present “an agreed, or common, or central or ‘mere’ Christianity.” In other words, those doctrines which are common to all who call themselves “Christians”, including Papists, Anglicans, ecumenists, liberals, etc. He was so concerned to achieve this aim that he submitted parts of his book to four ecclesiastics for criticism: an Anglican, a Methodist, a Presbyterian, and a Roman Catholic. ⁵⁷⁸ He believed that one is free to choose whichever “tradition” one likes the most. Sound doctrine and godly practice – these were of no consideration to Lewis.

He was so adept at reducing “Christianity” to a very, very low common denominator, a “mere Christianity” as he himself called it, that his writings, in addition to being acceptable to Roman Catholics, “Evangelicals”, liberals, ecumenists, etc., are even acceptable to the Mormons! In April 1998, Mormon professor Robert Millet, dean of Brigham Young University, spoke at Wheaton College on the topic of C. S. Lewis and said that Lewis “is so well received by Latter-Day Saints [i.e. Mormon cultists] because of his broad and inclusive vision of Christianity”. ⁵⁷⁹

Lewis did not believe in the biblical doctrine of penal substitution, and thus promoted a false doctrine of the atonement. He denied the doctrine of man’s total depravity. He believed in the Popish heresies of baptismal regeneration, salvation by works, the mass, purgatory, and praying for the dead. He did not believe in the biblical doctrine of repentance. He did not believe that the Holy Scriptures were inerrant, and thus rejected the doctrine of the divine inspiration of the Bible. He believed in theistic evolution. He denied the doctrine of hell. He thought that the salvation of unbelievers was possible. And he also requested the “last rites” of the Roman Catholic institution on his deathbed. ⁵⁸⁰

Lewis did not openly join the Roman Catholic “Church”. But despite holding to some non-Papist doctrines, that he was a “closet Papist” there can be no doubt, as the evidence above shows; and Papists have loved his writings and claimed him as one of their own. In a favourable article on Lewis published in The Catholic Herald, entitled “Why ever didn’t C. S. Lewis become a Roman Catholic?” the author wrote: “we may surely say that we are honouring the memory of a man whose mind was naturaliter Catholica“. ⁵⁸¹

Michael Coren, a Papist author who wrote a biography of Lewis for teens, entitled C. S. Lewis: The Man Who Created Narnia, was asked by the Roman Catholic news agency, Zenit: “What do Catholics need to know about C. S. Lewis?” This was his reply: “They should know he wasn’t a Catholic, but that doesn’t mean he wouldn’t have become one eventually. G. K. Chesterton became a Catholic in 1922 but had really been one for 20 years.” He went on to say: “Lewis… was a man of his background but his views were very Catholic: he believed in purgatory, believed in the sacraments, went to confession.” ⁵⁸²

No wonder, in the light of Lewis’ belief in, and propagation of, Popish teaching, he was described by a high-ranking Jesuit theologian as “probably the most successful Christian apologist of the twentieth century.” ⁵⁸³

But did Lewis, in fact, actually join the Roman Catholic institution before his death? Papists say he did not; but he confessed his sins regularly to a priest of Rome, and he received the Romish sacrament of the “last rites”, on July 16, 1963. ⁵⁸⁴ And it is highly unlikely that he would have received the “last rites” if he had not in fact formally converted to Rome! So there appears to be more to Lewis’ love of Romanism than at first meets the eye. There are aspects to all this that are very mysterious. He certainly appears to have been a Papist before his death.

As noted above, when the film of the first book came out, “churches” worked themselves up into a froth of excitement, convinced that this movie represented a huge evangelistic opportunity.

The movie’s makers made a concerted effort to include “Christian” organisations throughout the production of the movie. And religious leaders (specially selected!) were given a sneak preview at 140 venues throughout the United States. Michael Flaherty, president of Walden Media, said this preview was just one aspect of promoting the movie. “We’re willing to talk to almost all audiences that want to hear about the movies we make,” he told the Texas Catholic newspaper. “People seem to be interested that we’re going to churches to promote this movie, but we’re also going to schools, libraries, boy scout and girl scout groups. We’re going everywhere.” ⁵⁸⁵ In other words, once again money was the motive. It did not matter whether the interested groups were Roman Catholic or Evangelical churches, secular schools or libraries – the movie was promoted to all because they knew it would appeal to all. The supposedly “Christian” content was sufficiently downplayed so as not to offend anyone, and yet it was sufficiently present so that it could be interpreted any way the viewer desired. As Flaherty said: “We’re interested in telling great stories and being true to the original themes of the author. Many times these great stories we want to tell will have elements of faith in them, and we don’t shy away from that. If people interpret the original themes of the book to have elements of faith in them, then they will probably see those same themes in the movie.”

Mere “elements of faith”; people “interpreting the story to have these elements of faith”; this was what passed for “Christian entertainment”. If this really was a Christian movie, the Christian message would be clear, bold, and all-pervasive in the story. But it was not.

Flaherty admitted the real motive behind such movies when he said that Hollywood producers “are going to be open to any audience that can make them money. If it helps sell tickets, moviemakers are going to emphasise Christian elements in movies.” And that is the bottom line! Hollywood producers had not suddenly exercised faith in God, but they most certainly had faith in the trend of religious movies to make money for them, and they most certainly had faith in the gullible “Christian” public to flock to such movies and blow their money on them!

In Britain, a so-called “Evangelical” publisher sent out special Narnia packs to churches. Christian Publishing and Outreach (CPO), which distributed material to 20,000 churches, approached Disney and was granted permission to use two images from the film for its Narnia packs. Russ Bravo, development director for CPO, which provided posters, DVDs, invitation cards and folders, said: “A lot of churches have been ordering and will be staging their own events. We have seen very big demand across the range. We have a what-to-do guide, outlines that give ministers ideas on how to deliver sermons and material for Sunday schools”. ⁵⁸⁶

Had things really sunk so low? Had the “Evangelical” world really sunk to such depths that ministers were given sermon outlines based on a Disney movie of an occult fantasy book written by an unregenerate Anglo-Catholic? Was this now the source for ministers’ sermons – a movie instead of the Bible? Yes, this really was how bad things had become. A generation or two ago, ministers were preaching against the movies; now they were going to the movies for their preaching material!

In the UK the Methodist organisation, Methodist Children, wrote a special Narnia service. ⁵⁸⁷ Not to be outdone, Manchester Cathedral staged a Narnia day; and St Luke’s Anglican “church” in Maidstone decided to give out free tickets to single parents, as it had also done when The Passion had been released! “We are giving away £10 000 worth of tickets to single-parent families in and around the area,” said a spokesman for the “church”. “It’s a Christmas gift from the church to families who may not be able to afford to go to the cinema.” £10 000 could purchase a lot of Bibles to be distributed freely, or Gospel tracts; the sort of things one would expect a church would want to give away freely. But this was not a Christian church. For this Anglican “church”, its concept of “outreach” and “evangelism” was to get people into a movie theatre to see a Hollywood blockbuster!

Any notion of Christians being separate from and unspotted by the world was jettisoned long ago by the majority of institutions falsely calling themselves “churches” in the West. Faced with fast-emptying pews and the corresponding loss of income, they decided that they needed to re-write the Gospel, re-define Christianity, and become fashionable and “relevant” in the world; in a word, to become precisely what the Bible forbids Christians to be (Jn. 17:11,14-16; 1 Jn. 2:15-17; 2 Cor. 6:14-18; Jas. 1:27). But the Word of God is ignored by most who call themselves “Christians” today, and in its place they have formulated their own policy – to be as much in the world as it is possible to be; to show the world that “it’s cool to be a Christian”, and that being one does not in any sense mean that a person must deny himself anything. Their attitude is, “We can have the world and Jesus too!” Their message is, “Being a Christian doesn’t mean you can’t go out for a night on the town. Christians can participate in virtually all the activities anyone else participates in; the only difference is, we have Jesus as our Saviour!” The tragedy is that such “Christians” are Christians in name only. They are as lost as anyone else. The Bible is very clear: “Let every one that nameth the name of Christ depart from iniquity” (2 Tim. 2:19). They have never known the Lord and Saviour, the holy, harmless, undefiled Son of God who is separate from si nn ers (Heb. 7:26), and who came into this world “to save his people from their sins” (Matt. 1:21).

Disney, of course, was smiling all the way to the bank, grateful indeed for the gullible thousands of churchgoers who naively assumed that this movie was great Christian entertainment for their kids. It brought in more money – a lot more money – and money, after all, is Hollywood’s god.

The movie was occult fantasy supposedly delivering “the Gospel” in the form of magic, sorcery, and heathen mythology. Hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions of children, already increasingly paganised and opened up to the black arts through a barrage of occultism and fantasy adventure, most notably by the Harry Potter books and movies, were now indoctrinated even further into pagan beliefs and practices – even while they were being told by “churches” that the Narnia books were Christian. What spiritual confusion and devastation this was creating in young hearts and minds!

Hollywood Starts to Make Other “Faith-Based” Movies After the Success of The Passion and The Chronicles of Narnia

What is written below is excerpted and adapted from an article written by the present author, entitled “Faith-Based” Films or Hollywood Heresy ? ⁵⁸⁸

In the past, professing Christians knew that Hollywood could not, as a general rule, be relied upon to produce decent, moral, clean entertainment. Preachers thundered against supporting the sinful “entertainment” that spewed from the movie industry. And the ungodly garbage that Hollywood dished up was for the most part shunned by those claiming to be Evangelical Christians.

And in addition to producing immoral movies, over the years the movie industry has frequently produced films which are direct attacks on the Christian faith. In such movies Christ the Lord, His Gospel, and His followers, are ridiculed.

Occasionally producers have made biblical “epics” such as Cecil B. DeMille’s The Ten Commandments, or Franco Zeffirelli’s Jesus of Nazareth, and others of that nature; or they have zeroed in on biblical accounts containing a lot of fighting or romance (such as Samson and Delilah, a favourite theme for obvious reasons in this age of sexual immorality), and some of these movies have been touted as being “accurate” and “authentic”; but not only were they usually nowhere near as biblically accurate as they claimed to be, such films were not made in order to further the Christian faith, evangelise the lost, or build up true believers in their faith. They were simply attempts by the moviemakers to rake in mega-bucks from sweeping biblical sagas; and they often succeeded in doing just that.

By the 1980s the movie industry was becoming increasingly pervasive in society; and at the same time, as churches were moving away from their doctrinal foundations and from practical separation from the world, pastors no longer preached against ungodly entertainment. Professing Christians were increasingly attending the movies, no matter what was showing, and without much condemnation from the pulpits, if any, for the hirelings occupying them knew on which side their bread was buttered. Besides, the pastors were all too often just as much devotees at the shrine of Hollywood as anyone else.

Then came the invention of videos, which brought the movies right into the living rooms of multiplied millions of people the world over. Suddenly, pastors not only had to condemn attending sinful movies, but to be consistent they had to condemn the bringing of those same movies right into the homes of their flocks. And this was something most pastors simply were not prepared to do. They compromised, they fell silent, their own children brought home the same Hollywood junk, and in no time at all a revolution had taken place which continues to this day. Professing Christians were watching anything and everything, seemingly without any conscience about it. The entertainment industry is a very different monster to what it was in the 1970s, in that today it is all-pervasive in society. Literally everywhere one goes, one is bombarded with it, in the form of music and movies. Television screens are in shops, malls, cars, and sometimes in every bedroom of people’s homes. Many people rent DVDs a number of nights a week – certainly they watch TV throughout the entire evening. Many, in fact, watch it almost all day long as well, even at work. By 2007 the content of movies and television programmes had become the most popular topic of conversation in America, according to the Bama Research Group! ⁵⁸⁹ And the rest of the world was not far behind. Computers provide instant access to the make-believe world of Hollywood and its equivalents. The so-called “stars” are seen everywhere, on magazine covers, posters, etc. We truly live in an entertainment-saturated world.

But even so, the moviemakers did not, as yet, tap into this vast and constantly growing market with films containing a specifically “Christian” content (or what passes for such). After all, the millions of so-called “Christians” attending the movies, and buying up or renting the videos or DVDs, were just as content as those who made no profession of Christianity to watch whatever Hollywood vomited out! They did not care if the movies glorified violence, or were filled with sexual immorality of all kinds, or foul language and blasphemy. Every so often a prominent “Christian” commentator would take a swipe at the filth being glorified in the movies, but hardly any of them ever advocated the only biblical response: staying away from them. They would bemoan the filth, but continue to go and watch it, along with the millions of others who would be found sitting in churches on Sunday mornings, even though their Friday and Saturday nights were taken up with watching ungodly movies, and the rest of the nights in the week were given over to soaking in the same from their TV screens at home. A study by a leading Hollywood marketing firm, MarketCast, suggested that “Christians”, in addition to readily watching mainstream “entertainment”, were also drawn to violent fare – even the most conservative among them! Joseph Helfgot, president of MarketCast, said, “There’s a wind going through the production community about responding to religion. But when it comes to movies, people distinguish between moral issues and entertainment issues. And most people, even the very religious, are very happy with their movies.” ⁵⁹⁰

What an indictment of those calling themselves Christians! Most people, even the very religious, are very happy with the movies that are churned out. They will watch precisely the same movies as those who make no profession of faith in Christ!

But of course, being religious, they would also love to watch “religious” movies; and Hollywood did not cater for this. It was in fact very anti-religious.

Until, that is, The Passion of the Christ.

As we have seen, this Roman Catholic splatter-movie took the world by storm, purporting to be an accurate, authentic depiction of the crucifixion of Christ, although it was nothing of the sort. Not that long before this, a film of this nature would have been shunned by Evangelical Protestants. But times had changed. Those calling themselves Evangelicals were not what they used to be! They were now avid moviegoers, vast numbers of them, with no qualms about watching scenes of horrific violence. They were also softened up to Roman Catholicism by decades of the ecumenical movement, being told by their own spiritually blind pastors that Romanism was “just another Christian church”, Roman Catholics were “brothers and sisters in the Lord”, etc. And what is more, the vast majority of them were by now so ignorant of sound biblical truth that they readily embraced Arminianism, shallow counterfeit evangelistic methods such as “movie evangelism”, “music evangelism”, the “altar call” and the “sinner’s prayer”, and the lie that they must be “in the world (i.e. part of the world, doing what the world does) to win the world” (so obviously contrary to Jn. 17:14-16, 2 Cor. 6:14-18, etc.).

Therefore when The Passion came out, they swarmed into movie theatres by their millions, urged on by their pastors. Protestant ministers pronounced this Papist film a “true Christian movie” and a great evangelistic tool, perhaps one of the greatest ever. And now Hollywood woke up to the vast “Christian” market out there. Evangelicals and Fundamentalists number tens of millions in the United States alone, and tens of millions more in the rest of the world. It is true that huge numbers of professing “Christians” had for years shown that they were more than willing to watch anything and everything the non-Christians watched; but The Passion proved that they would also flock in huge numbers to a “Christian” movie. But also, such a movie would attract still more professing “Christians”, those somewhat more discerning than the common herd, who still had some standards left and would not go to watch movies which were an overt attack on their morals or their faith. “A segment of the market is starving for this type of content [i.e. religious content],” said Simon Swart, general manager of 20th Century Fox’s U.S. home entertainment unit. ⁵⁹¹ FoxFaith, Fox’s “Christian” division, declared that they were targeting, in particular, Evangelical or “born-again Christians”, who had often rejected popular entertainment as offensive. In fact, 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment built up a network of “Evangelical Christian” moviegoers, including 90 000 congregations and a database of over 14 million mainly “Evangelical” households.

In the wake of the phenomenal runaway success of The Passion, Hollywood sat up with a jolt. The Passion grossed many hundreds of millions of dollars in worldwide box office proceeds. Dollar signs began to flash in producers’ eyes. There was a huge untapped – and extremely lucrative – market out there. They now knew that millions of professing “Christians” would rush to watch movies claiming to be “Christian”. And they would not even be very discerning – they would pretty much gobble up any old religious or pseudo-religious fare that Hollywood served up!

The vice-chairman of Universal Pictures, Marc Shmuger, said of the “Evangelical” market, “It’s a well-formed community, it’s identifiable, it has very specific tastes and preferences. In every fashion, you need to customize your message to your audience.” ⁵⁹² This quote shows plainly enough that it is all about making money as far as the movie producers are concerned. Some studios actually began turning to experts in “Christian marketing” to scan their scripts for content that would be objectionable to “Christians”, and come up with marketing plans to target the “Christian” audience.

And so the moviemakers began to add things into their movies which they thought would appeal to “Christians”, and to take things out which they thought would offend them. An example of adding something in: in a movie called Mr And Mrs. Smith, which was about professional assassins, when a neighbour’s car is stolen a crucifix hangs conspicuously from a rearview mirror, and the actors wear borrowed jackets that read “Jesus Rocks” as they go undercover. And the movie’s director said, “We decided to make the next-door neighbour, whose crucifix it is, be hip, young, cool Christians. It’s literally in there for no other reason than I thought, This is cool.” ⁵⁹³

And an example of taking something out: during shooting of the movie Flightplan, actor Peter Sarsgaard was instructed to strike the word “Jesus” from his dialogue. “They said: ‘You can’t say that. You can’t take the Lord’s name in vain’,” Sarsgaard said of the film’s producers. ⁵⁹⁴

Well, if such additions and deletions satisfy professing “Christians”, then truly what passes for “Christianity” is shocking! A crucifix in a scene would once upon a time have thrilled no one but a Roman Catholic; and if those calling themselves Evangelicals are impressed because some godless moviemaker puts a crucifix in a particular scene, or makes the actors wear jackets with the words “Jesus Rocks”, then what passes for “Evangelical Christianity” is so far from being biblical that there are no words to adequately describe it. Likewise if the removal of a single use of the Lord’s name makes “Christians” assume that the movie is a good one!

But in the wake of The Passion, it was not just that moviemakers were making a few changes to their movies such as the ones described above – they realised that entire movies should be made to appeal to the “Christian” public.

As we have seen, the next major, supposedly “Christian” movie was The Chronicles of Narnia: the Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. And following the massive commercial success of The Passion and The Chronicles of Narnia, 20th Century Fox announced that it would be producing as many as a dozen major “faith-themed” films a year, aimed at Evangelicals, under its new “faith-based” division, FoxFaith. This was described by the Los Angeles Times as “the biggest commitment of its sort by a Hollywood studio.” But it was certainly not the only studio to commit itself to this. And yet again, straight from the horse’s mouth as it were, we were made aware of the kind of “Christian” movie that would be produced. “We want to push the production value, not videotape sermons or proselytise,” said Simon Swart of Fox’s U.S. home entertainment unit. ⁵⁹⁵ “We are not here to proselytise, we are making entertainment,” said Steve Feldstein, senior vice president of FoxFaith. ⁵⁹⁶ Tragically, millions of professing “Christians” would rejoice over this hypocritical, dollar-driven interest by a major studio in producing such movies.

Make no mistake about it, Hollywood was still blatantly anti- Christian. The studios and producers were willing to chum out some “Christian-themed” movies if they believed it would make money for them. But it was extremely naive to believe that the moviemakers had all suddenly experienced some kind of conversion! It was all about profits. The Passion proved there was a vast “Christian” audience out there willing to waste their money on this kind of film, and the moviemakers rushed to cash in on that. But the movie industry was still committed to its agenda of making films which attack biblical Christianity, true Christians, the Gospel of Christ, and the Person of the Lord Jesus Christ Himself. It had not changed.

Yet spiritually blind “Evangelicals” could not see what had happened! In fact, they welcomed it! Increasing numbers of churches began to make use of movie-like screens at the pulpits, where clips from movies, both religious and secular, were made accessible for churches to download, and were used to illustrate the pastor’s sermon! Professing “Christians” could easily recount scenes from their favourite films, but found it difficult to recall the central theme of the previous week’s sermon – and pastors and churches were well aware of it, and thus were swinging over to the use of film clips in their sermons. And they believed that in doing so they had made their churches more relevant to society! How deceived they were. All they had done, by integrating popular culture with their version of the “gospel”, was that they had created a hybridised “gospel” that was nothing but “another gospel” entirely, and not the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ! When a man behind the pulpit has sunk to such a low that he needs to pepper his sermon with scenes from Hollywood movies, he has acknowledged that Hollywood – ungodly, wicked Hollywood – is, as far as he is concerned, more powerful than the God of the Bible, and that such gimmicks are necessary today to enable people to “understand the Gospel”.

Such was the state of what passed for “Christianity” by the twenty- first century.

The Exorcist: In the Beginning (2005): the “Prequel” to the Exorcist Movies

This film, a so-called “prequel” to the earlier Exorcist films, supposedly covers the time when the Roman Catholic priest-exorcist discovered his “vocation”. And despite the fact that the film was described by a Roman Catholic film critic as “at times lurid and grotesque”, and “often exploitative”, this same film critic, who praised the original Exorcist film as “deeply Catholic” and “supervised at every step by Jesuit theological advisors”, stated of the latest offering: “Still, with all those reservations, it does have its merits, and does have a Catholic framework.” And: “Altogether, the film is a sense-battering experience, which is of course what most people who go to see this film want. Viewers should try also to absorb a good Catholic lesson or two.” ⁵⁹⁷ Incredible! Instead of simply saying such a film was not worth viewing, he called on viewers to try to get a Roman Catholic lesson or two out of it! Just as priests and reviewers did with the Harry Potter films, so this one did with this film: he attempted to find whatever thin strand of “good” (according to his definition) he could in it, and then to use this to justify watching the movie by claiming it had merit and a Roman Catholic framework!

As we have seen, this had been the Jesuit/Papist strategy ever since they came to reject the PCA and its Code.

The Da Vinci Code (2006): Anti-Roman Catholic Fiction, Yet Turned to Rome’s Advantage

Not everything in Hollywood was going Rome’s way again, but even so Rome turned what it could to its advantage. What is written below is excerpted and adapted from an article written by the present author at the time when The Da Vinci Code was causing a stir worldwide. The article was entitled Exposing The Da Vinci Code. ⁵⁹⁸

The novel on which the film was based, written by Dan Brown, was first published in 2003. By April 2005, 17 million copies had been sold worldwide, in 44 languages. Some claimed that it was the most successful work in history after the Bible. It was on the New York Times ’ best selling list for three years. In 2006 the film version appeared – and, just like the novel, it was an outright attack upon the Lord Jesus Christ, His blessed Gospel, and His true Church. It presented a false “christ” and a false presentation of what the Bible teaches, and millions were deceived by it into believing that Christianity is a lie, built upon falsehood and deception. Most people are extremely ignorant of both biblical truth and real history, and thus are unable to discern the difference between fact and fiction in the story. Therein lay its immense danger. It presented “another Jesus” and “another gospel” (2 Cor. 11:4).

A man who was a chairman of Sony Pictures (which was behind the movie) before becoming a producer said: “The amazing thing about this book is that it’s provocative: is it all true? Isn’t it true? As a history book it’s extraordinary. As an exploration of the evolution of a particular religion, it’s extraordinary.” ⁵⁹⁹ Note how this fictional work was being described as “a history book” – not fiction, but non-fiction!

Certainly millions became so convinced that it was substantially true, even though presented as fiction, that large numbers of them visited the sites mentioned in the story, such as Westminster Abbey in England, the Louvre in Paris, Rosslyn Chapel in Scotland, the Chateau de Villette near Versailles, etc. The owner of the Chateau stated: “This book revealed the truth that the Catholics have been hiding for thousands of years…. The book is fiction, but it’s based on truth.” ⁶⁰⁰

What, then, is The Da Vinci Code all about?

The author, rejecting the biblical truth about the Lord Jesus Christ entirely, wrote that the divinity of Christ was a myth invented by the Roman emperor Constantine in the fourth century AD. And his novel laid out a huge supposed “conspiracy”: that Mary Magdalene actually married Jesus Christ, that they had children – and that “the Church” covered this truth up, destroying Mary’s character by writing of her in the Gospel accounts as an immoral woman! Furthermore, the author claimed that the “Floly Blood” is the supposed bloodline from Christ and Mary Magdalene; and that the “Floly Grail” is not a chalice, but Mary herself!

To support his theory, Dan Brown claimed that the Dead Sea scrolls show a stronger association of Mary Magdalene with Christ than what we read in the Bible. Fie also had references to the so-called “missing Gospels”. ⁶⁰¹

Fie claimed that in the painting called “The Last Supper”, by Leonardo da Vinci, Mary Magdalene is depicted on the right of Christ – supposedly a female apostle along with the other apostles. Fie claimed that her place was usurped by a male hierarchy, thereby suppressing the “sacred feminine.” And he asserted that the Roman Catholic institution organised a massive cover-up of this truth.

The story made reference to so-called Gnostic “gospels”, such as The Gospel of Mary. Other sources used by Brown were: The Goddess in the Gospels: Reclaiming the Sacred Feminine, and, The Woman’s Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets. These give a good idea of where Brown’s intellectual and spiritual leanings lay. ⁶⁰²

According to the story, the royal historian, Sir Leigh Teabing, an eccentric obsessed with the “Floly Grail”, shelters Robert Langdon, a Flarvard professor of Religious Symbology, at his French chateau. Another character is Sophie, a French cryptologist able to decipher codes and puzzles, working with Langdon. Teabing shows Sophie The Gospel of Mary, supposedly written in Greek in the second century AD. It would be best to quote directly from the book at this point: ⁶⁰³

“‘I shan’t bore you with the countless references to Jesus and Magdalene’s union [said Teabing]. That has been explored ad nauseam by modem historians. I would, however, like to point out the following.’ He motioned to another passage. ‘This is from the Gospel of Mary Magdalene.

“Sophie had not known a gospel existed in Magdalene’s words. She read the text:

“‘And Peter said, “Did the Saviour really speak with a woman without our knowledge? Are we to turn about and all listen to her? Did he prefer her to us? ”

“‘And Levi answered, “Peter, you have always been hot- tempered. Now I see you contending against the woman like an adversary. If the Saviour made her worthy, who are you indeed to reject her? Surely the Saviour knows her very well. That is why he loved her more than us. ” ”’

Teabing explains that Peter was jealous of Mary Magdalene. ‘“The stakes were far greater than mere affection,’ Teabing told Sophie, ‘because at this point in the gospels, Jesus suspects he will soon be captured and crucified.’” So he told Mary how to carry on his Church! Teabing added, ‘“I dare say Peter was something of a sexist.’”

“‘This is Saint Peter,”’ said Sophie; “‘the rock on which Jesus built His Church.’” To which Teabing replied: “‘The same, except for one catch. According to these unaltered gospels, it was not Peter to whom Christ gave directions with which to establish the Christian Church. It was Mary Magdalene.’”

The book continues: “Sophie looked at him. ‘You’re saying the Christian Church was to be carried on by a woman?’ ‘That was the plan. Jesus was the original feminist. He intended for the future of His Church to be in the hands of Mary Magdalene. ’ ‘And Peter had a problem with that,’ Langdon said, pointing to The Last Supper. ‘That’s Peter there. You can see that Da Vinci was well aware of how Peter felt about Mary Magdalene.’” The suggestion was made to Sophie that in the painting by Leonardo, Peter was leaning menacingly towards Mary, and slicing his blade-like hand across her neck.

Next, Teabing pulls out a chart of genealogy, and shows Sophie that Mary Magdalene was of the House of Benjamin, and thus of royal descent. Sophie is told that Mary Magdalene was not poor, but that “she was recast as a whore to erase evidence of her powerful family ties.” “But why,” she asks, “would the early Church care if Magdalene had royal blood?” It is explained to her that it was her consorting with Christ that concerned the early Church, rather than her royal blood. “As you know, the Book of Matthew tells us that Jesus was of the House of David. A descendant of King Solomon – King of the Jews.

By marrying into the powerful House of Benjamin, Jesus fused two royal bloodlines, creating a potent political union with the potential of making a legitimate claim to the throne and restoring the line of kings as it was under Solomon.”

Then Teabing dropped his bombshell: “The legend of the Holy Grail is a legend about royal blood. When Grail legend speaks of the chalice that held the blood of Christ, it speaks in fact, of Mary Magdalene, the female womb that carried Jesus’ royal bloodline.”

‘“But how could Christ have a bloodline unless…?’ Sophie paused and looked at Langdon. Langdon smiled softly. ‘Unless they had a child.’”

“‘Behold,’ Teabing proclaimed, ‘the greatest cover-up in human history. Not only was Jesus Christ married, but He was a father. My dear, Mary Magdalene was the Holy Vessel. She was the chalice that bore the lineage, and the vine from which the sacred fruit sprang forth!”’

The Bible, God’s Word, refutes Brown’s lies:

Firstly, the divinity of Christ was not invented by the emperor Constantine in the fourth century. The Bible is lull of clear references to His divinity. To list just a few of the many passages which reveal it: Psa. 45:6,7 with Heb. 1:8,9; Isa. 7:14 with Matt. 1:22,23; Isa. 9:6; Jn. 1:1; Acts 20:28; Rom. 9:5; Phil. 2:5-8; Col. 2:9; 1 Tim. 3:16. Dan Brown showed both his utter contempt for God’s Word, and his abysmal ignorance of the Bible and of history, in making this absurd claim.

Secondly, the Lord Jesus Christ did not marry Mary Magdalene, nor beget children by her or anyone else. The Son of God came into this world to save sinners – this was His divine mission (1 Tim. 1:15). Mary Magdalene was one such sinner saved by God’s grace through faith in Christ. He cast seven devils out of her (Mk. 16:9; Lk. 8:2).

The Bible tells us very little about Mary Magdalene. She was with Mary the mother of the Lord, and some other women, near the cross when Jesus was crucified (Jn. 19:25). She sat over against the sepulchre when Jesus was laid in it (Matt. 27:6); and very early on the first day of the week, the day of His resurrection, she came to see the sepulchre, and to anoint Jesus’ body with spices, and found it empty; and she was the very first to whom the risen Jesus showed Himself after His resurrection (Matt. 28:1-10; Jn. 20:1-18; Mk. 16:1-11; Lk. 24:1-10). She was a devoted and faithful disciple of the Lord Jesus.

But there is not a word about her being of the House of Benjamin! And Jesus certainly did not marry her! Dan Brown’s fantasy was not the first to suggest that the Lord Jesus married Mary Magdalene – it is a lie that has cropped up many times before. This is because of a supposition (for that is all it is) that Mary Magdalene was the prostitute mentioned in Lk. 7:37-50. There is nothing whatsoever to support this supposition. They were two different women. But wicked men love to put forward this suggestion of a marriage between Christ and a supposed prostitute, for then it makes Christ appear to be a man of loose morals. They paint the entire scenario in their brains: the founder of a new sect physically attracted to a very worldly woman. They entirely ignore the fact that we are nowhere told Mary was a prostitute, and besides, the Lord Jesus set her free from Satan’s power, and she became a devoted, holy disciple. That is not “juicy” enough for their sinful minds!

When Jesus met Mary Magdalene after He rose from the dead, what did He say to her? “Touch me not; for I am not yet ascended to my Father” (Jn. 20:17). He would not so much as let her touch Him! He told her to go and tell His disciples that He was going to ascend; and this is what she immediately did (Jn. 20:17,18). And thereafter He did not appear to her alone, although she certainly would have spent time with Him in company with all His other disciples, before His ascension.

The Lord Jesus Christ did not marry anyone. Marriage was ordained by God for the good of ma nk ind. Christ was God from all eternity; He came in the flesh, without laying aside His divinity, but taking a human nature into union with His divine nature; and He came into this world to purchase a “bride” with His own blood. But His “bride” consists of all the elect, all those for whom He laid down His life and shed His blood. The true Church is the mystical bride of Christ. He has no physical bride, nor ever any need of one (2 Cor. 11:2; Eph. 5:23-32; Rev. 19:6-9; 21:9). Nor did the Lord Jesus beget children physically. The Bible says that His spiritual “children” are His elect people, for whom He died (Heb. 2:13).

It is nothing less than heresy and blasphemy to say that the perfectly sinless Son of God married a woman, and begot children.

This is proclaiming “another Jesus” indeed (2 Cor. 11:4) – not the true Jesus Christ revealed in His Word. It does not matter in the least if there are scrolls supposedly showing a stronger association of Mary Magdalene with Christ than what we read in the Bible – it is the Bible that is divinely inspired (2 Tim. 3:16). We did not have to wait till the twentieth century and the discovery of certain scrolls to ascertain the truth about Christ and Mary Magdalene – the books that comprise the Holy Scriptures, divinely inspired, were written in the first century AD, during the lifetime of the apostles, and furthermore were known to the true Church from that time on (see, for example, Col. 4:16; 2 Pet. 3:15,16; Rev. 1:1-3,10,11). God’s Word is settled. No more writings are ever to be added to it.

As for the so-called “Gnostic gospels”: one of the characters in Brown’s novel says of them that they are the “unaltered gospels”. In saying this, he implies that the four Gospels found in the New Testament were altered, and therefore cannot be trusted. Of course, he could not give any evidence for this; but millions of readers accepted it anyway.

Gnosticism, the word being derived from the Greek word meaning “knowledge”, was a heresy that arose in the early centuries of the Christian era. Gnostics claimed to possess special occult knowledge relating to God, salvation, etc. Gnosticism is not Christian in any sense, for it is unbiblical and anti-biblical. Aspects of it were exposed and refuted by the inspired writers of the New Testament Scriptures (e.g. Col. 2:8-23; 1 Tim. 1:4; Tit. 1:14; 1 Tim. 6:20; 1 Cor. 8:1). Unregenerate men are always seeking extra knowledge, and there is a particular attraction towards supposed knowledge that is “hidden” from the majority and known only to a select few. Herein lies the attraction of Gnosticism, in all its forms including modem ones; and herein lies also the attraction of Dan Brown’s fantasy to many: the attainment of “knowledge” supposedly hidden for centuries, occult “clues” hidden in mysterious places, tantalising hints of something beyond the awareness of the masses.

Men will eagerly sift through the Bible for supposed “hidden” messages or information, all the while ignoring, or failing to see, the plain, straightforward message of the Bible – the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the Gospel of salvation; or they will eagerly search outside the Bible for supposed “hidden” messages that to their minds contradict and overthrow the truth of the Bible (as in The Da Vinci Code). Either way, Satan is the winner. For by such means he keeps men from knowing the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the only Saviour of sinners. For, “Neither is there salvation in any other [than the true Christ of God]: for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved” (Acts 4:12). Lost men eagerly search for “hidden” knowledge here, there, and everywhere; but the true, saving knowledge of the Gospel is hidden from them, unless and until the Ford opens their eyes. Truly, truly, “if our gospel [the true Gospel of Christ] be hid, it is hid to them that are lost: in whom the god of this world [Satan] hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them” (2 Cor. 4:3,4).

Thirdly, it is a total fallacy to claim that Mary Magdalene was supposed to carry on Christ’s Church, for “Jesus was the original feminist”; but that her place was usurped by a male hierarchy, thereby suppressing the “sacred feminine”; and that “the Church” covered up the “truth” about Christ and Mary Magdalene, destroying her character by writing of her in the Gospel accounts as an immoral woman. One fantasy after another from Dan Brown’s brain!

There was, after all, no such “truth” to cover up. Christ was not married to Mary, and they did not have children. The Gospel accounts do not say much about Mary Magdalene at all. The writers of the Gospels did not depict her as an immoral woman. Very few details of her life are given.

The New Testament makes it very clear that Christ chose the apostles, and that they were all men. Mary’s place was not usurped by a “male hierarchy” – she never had a place to begin with, as one of the band of apostles.

As for the “sacred feminine”, this is all hogwash. It is very appealing to many in this age of militant feminism, and of goddess-worship by New Agers, witches, and others. Millions today are turning to the worship of a female deity, and anything that promotes that concept in the minds of the general public is very acceptable to them. Warbling on about the “sacred feminine” was a sure-fire way for Brown to up the sales of his book.

Besides, to believe the absurdity of this “cover-up” is to believe that the four Gospels were written by “the Church” (i.e. in Brown’s mind, the Roman Catholic “Church”), rather than by Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. This, if true, would mean that the four Gospels are mere fabrications, to which were attached the names of the four men to give them authenticity. But it is not true. The Gospel accounts were written by men who lived in the first century AD, and who were Christians, disciples of Christ. The Roman Catholic “Church”, which only came into existence centuries later, had absolutely nothing to do with their authorship. The Roman Catholic institution is guilty of very many cover-ups throughout its history, but this was not one of them. It could not “cover up” when it did not even exist!

As for the “evidence” in the famous painting called “The Last Supper”, by Leonardo da Vinci: let us for a moment assume that da Vinci really did depict Mary Magdalene on Christ’s right side, supposedly as being a female apostle. We are sure that authorities on the painting would deny that he did any such thing, but let us, just for a moment, suppose that he did. So what? Are we to be so foolish as to make a mere painting, by a Roman Catholic artist (however brilliant), our authority? Are we to set aside the testimony of God’s own Word, the Bible, attested by many infallible proofs, on the basis of this supposed “hidden clue” in a painting? Has the world gone mad? Evidently it has, when millions of gullible readers can reject the truth of God’s Word on such flimsy “evidence” as this.

The Brown story presents Peter as a “sexist”, jealous and scheming man (for he supposedly knew Christ wanted Mary to establish His Church, but was very opposed to this), and even a man who contemplated the murder of Mary Magdalene. What a terrible distortion of the truth about the godly apostle, Peter, a faithful Christian and minister! A simple reading of Peter’s own epistles, or of his sermon on the day of Pentecost, will provide the reader with an accurate picture of this humble, zealous servant of Christ. Nothing in the biblical account presents Peter as jealous of Mary Magdalene, scheming, with murderous thoughts towards her; and as for that modern-day, “politically-correct” term, “sexist”, it is too pathetic for words.

Thus, this fiction is an attack upon the Lord Jesus Christ, for it depicts Him as a mere man, who fathered a child by Mary Magdalene. And it is an attack upon the Gospel of Christ, for obviously anyone who believes in, and follows, Jesus Christ, if He was who the book says He was, is following a mere man. In addition, as The Da Vinci Code makes reference to so-called Gnostic “gospels”, which are not divinely inspired but merely the works of enemies of the truth, people are drawn to accepting such lies as the “Gospel truth.”

But it is also an attack upon the true Church of Christ. Some might say, “But it’s an attack upon the Roman Catholic institution, not the true Church!” However, it is not that simple. Nothing Dan Brown wrote could ever expose even a fraction of the lies, false beliefs, human traditions, and massive cover-ups that characterise Roman Catholicism. The truth about Roman Catholicism is far more horrifying than anything in Dan Brown’s fiction. He wrote of how the Papal institution supposedly invented a story about Mary Magdalene and got this story incorporated into the Gospel accounts of the life of Christ. This is fiction, not fact. Rome did no such thing. But what did the Papal system do? It baptized the heathen doctrine of the mother-goddess worshipped around the world, calling this false deity “the Virgin Mary”, and exalted her to a position even superior to that of its own false “christ”! It gave “Mary” powers that the true Mary, the mother of the Lord, never had, it commands its blinded adherents to pray to her, sing hymns to her, build shrines in her honour, and it sets her up as assisting Christ in the salvation of the world! Truly, Romanism has invented a tale about Mary: not the “Mary Magdalene” of Dan Brown’s imagination, but the “Mary” worshipped by over a billion Roman Catholics worldwide as the “Mother of God”! The truth is stranger than fiction indeed.

But the problem with The Da Vinci Code s attack on Romanism is this: it presents the Romish institution as “the true Church”; thus, anything in the story exposing the falsehood of the Romish “Church” is seen as exposing true Christianity, by the millions who read it! And thus, by presenting Roman Catholicism as “the Church”, it leads its readers to believe that Christianity is a lie; a deception!

But in a backhanded way The Da Vinci Code, despite its anti-Romanism, actually played right into Rome’s hands. How so?

The first way in which this occurred was when Opus Dei began turning the story to its own advantage. Dan Brown wrote of Opus Dei in the book. Opus Dei (Latin for “God’s Work”) is a secretive Roman Catholic organisation, extremely powerful and wealthy. Opus members include priests and non-priests, men and women, married and unmarried people, and many hold key positions in business, politics, etc. Often their affiliation to the organisation is unknown to others. These are facts! And so Brown saw an opportunity to make Opus Dei a part of his conspiracy book, as being deeply involved in protecting “the Church” from its enemies: murdering, drugging people, etc. Opus Dei, of course, denied all these things: as sales of the book soared, the Opus website stated, “Opus Dei is a Catholic institution and adheres to Catholic doctrine, which clearly condemns immoral behaviour, including murder, lying, stealing, and generally injuring people”.

Such disclaimers notwithstanding, anyone with an understanding of the true history of Roman Catholicism knows that Roman Catholic doctrine has never stood in the way of the Roman Catholic institution being involved in murder, lying, stealing, etc. History is replete with the evidence. The Jesuit Order alone has been guilty of all these things and more – and although the impression is given that the Jesuits and Opus Dei are enemies, behind the scenes this is certainly not always the case. The fact is that Opus Dei, like the Jesuit Order, is a dangerous organisation that will stop at nothing to achieve its goals. So Brown was correct in this. This is why his story became so popular: there was just enough truth in it to make it all seem plausible, in the minds of millions.

Amazingly, however, although The Da Vinci Code did not depict Opus Dei in a good light at all, the organisation turned the book to its own advantage. For example, in Britain a Radio 4 programme on 27 October 2005 claimed to have been granted “unrestricted access” to Opus Dei; and Channel 4 TV’s “Opus Dei and the Da Vinci Code” aired on 12 December 2005. But the interviewers on both programmes treated Opus Dei with kid gloves. “The interviewers did not press issues and did not probe. This was presumably a condition of access to Opus. One investigator was a former mo nk . The alleged ‘unrestricted access’ was stage managed and – mostly limited – to the women’s quarters. (The women in Opus are entirely separate and inferior to the men.)… Channel 4 had posed the question, ‘Does Opus Dei deserve its sinister portrayal?’ The programme’s tame verdict was a foregone conclusion”. ⁶⁰⁴

Given the huge influence Opus Dei members exert in all fields, including the media, this is not surprising.

But Opus was not finished turning Dan Brown’s story to its advantage. On the TV programme, 60 students at the London School of Economics were shown attending a lecture on 5 May 2005, entitled “The Da Vinci Code and Opus Dei: the Da Vinci Code Fact or Fiction? Opus Dei Tells All.” And the lecturer was Andrew Soane, Director of the Opus Dei Information Office in Britain. Another Opus director, Jack Valero, said: “A few years ago Opus Dei was virtually unknown outside Catholic circles. Now 70 million people have heard of Opus Dei. They have heard a pack of lies. We can now explain what Opus Dei is and what it does…. It is a great opportunity.”

Valero also said, “People read the book and phone in.” When the interviewer suggested to him, “Dan Brown is your best recruiting agent,” Valero replied, “Maybe he has done something he did not intend to.”

In addition, Roman Catholic journalist, John L. Allen, wrote a book entitled Opus Dei: Secrets and Power Inside the Catholic Church. He was granted access to Opus personnel and records to which others were not permitted. But: “Allen uses the fictional caricature of Opus in The Da Vinci Code to make points in Opus’ favour. Even where criticism of Opus is unavoidable it is muted and over qualified. This book could lead many Roman Catholic parents to take a more favourable view of Opus”. ⁶⁰⁵

Thus Opus Dei managed to actually use the unprecedented interest in Brown’s book to get people interested in the organisation, and even to recruit new Opus members!

And the second way in which the book, and the film, actually played into Rome’s hands is as follows: some of the things Brown wrote about the Roman Catholic institution, Opus Dei, etc., are true. But the trouble is that his story was such a mixture of some truth and much error. Thus on the one hand, there are those who have no idea what is fact and what is fiction, and therefore they believe the lies and fantasies of the author relating to the Lord Jesus Christ, His Gospel, etc. But on the other hand, there are those who understand that it is fiction, and who come to the following conclusion: “The book is a work of fiction, by its author’s own admission; it’s just a story; it is not meant to be taken seriously; and thus there is no reason whatsoever to believe that there is anything sinister about the Roman Catholic Church. He was writing a story, nothing more.” And as a result, they will in the future view the works of serious researchers into Rome’s wicked doings, intrigues, plots, schemes, assassinations, etc., in the same light! Whenever a serious work appears, exposing some aspect of the dark deeds of the Papal system, the tendency will be for many to dismiss it lightly as “a Da Vinci Code-type conspiracy theory”. Especially as, in the light of all the negative publicity generated against it by the book, the Vatican went out of its way to present itself as nothing like the kind of institution portrayed in the book. It is a past master at slick make-overs.

Either way, Satan’s purposes have been served. And the same is true of Dan Brown’s Da Vinci Code.

Bishops Issue Documents to Guide Papists in Dealing with the Media

And so the love-hate relationship between the Roman Catholic institution and Hollywood continued. In 2006 bishops’ conferences issued guidelines to Roman Catholics concerning the media. The Australian bishops’ conference published a document entitled, “Go Tell Everyone: A Pastoral Letter on the Church and the Media.” Recognising what it considered to be the positive aspects of the media, the document called on Roman Catholics to be “critical users”, not “passive consumers”, of the media. The media, it stated, should be used to communicate the Roman Catholic “gospel”. And later in the year the Canadian bishops published a document entitled, “The Media: A Fascinating Challenge for the Family.” In it, they stated that the media’s immense power can be positive, if they inform and educate; “But they also have the capacity to harm the family by presenting a false vision of life, love, family, morality and religious beliefs.” It recommended that families view the media critically, and react to media bias against religion by means of protests. It also set out a series of recommendations for parents on how to instruct their children in media use. ⁶⁰⁶

Rocky Balboa (2006): another Pro-Roman Catholic Movie

What is written below is excerpted and adapted from an article written by the present author, entitled Rocky Balboa: a “Christian Boxer”? ⁶⁰⁷

The Passion of the Christ set the ball rolling, and thereafter one movie after another was churned out with a supposedly “Christian” theme, or at the very least supposedly “Christian” undertones. In 2006 Hollywood served up Rocky Balboa, described as “the final round in the award-winning Rocky franchise.”

Hollywood actor Sylvester Stallone created the character of “Rocky”, a heavyweight boxer, decades earlier in a movie of the same name; and the first one was followed by a string of sequels. Then in 2006 he made, and acted in, what he said would be the last Rocky movie. Except that this one was touted as a movie to build one up in one’s “Christian” faith!

Incredible? Astounding? This reveals the depths to which those claiming to be “Christians” had sunk, when they could praise a boxing movie as containing a “Christian” message that should be studied, discussed, promoted, and even used as an evangelistic outreach tool!

What was the movie about? The following is an overview taken from a website called RockyResources.com, with the present author’s comments inserted at appropriate points:

“Rocky Balboa is an inspirational story that depicts a man who honorably answers the call in his life. With the odds stacked against him Rocky finds something left to give [What “call”? – the “call” to punch up another man for fame or money? Has the so-called “Church” reached the stage where the gory sport of boxing is now to be viewed as a call, if a man is “good” at it? Apparently yes].

“The greatest underdog story of our time is back for one final round of the Academy Award-winning Rocky franchise, former heavyweight champion Rocky Balboa steps out of retirement and back into the ring, pitting himself against a new rival in a dramatically different era.

“After a virtual boxing match declares Rocky Balboa the victor over current champion Mason ‘The Line’ Dixon, the legendary fighter’s passion and spirit are reignited. But when his desire to fight in small, regional competitions is trumped by promoters calling for a re-match of the cyber-fight, Balboa must weigh the mental and physical risks of a high profile exhibition match against his need to be in the ring [His need to be in the ring? Do certain men actually have a need to be boxers? A “need” used to mean food, clothing, shelter. Other things were “wants”. But apparently the fictional character of Rocky has a “need” to be a boxer. Would someone else then have a “need” to be a knife-fighter, perhaps? After all, if a man has a “need” to be a boxer, then really anything is possible. And more importantly, do some Christians have this “need”? Apparently yes, if the fanfare about this movie was to be believed].

“Rocky Balboa motivates us to face our own challenges with perseverance, community support, and prayer [Prayer? Does Rocky pray for victory in the ring? Do others pray for him to win? That anyone could even think a movie about a boxing champion could ever possibly motivate anyone to face one’s challenges with prayer is shocking enough. What has modern-day “Christianity” become?].

“The story presents a dynamic opportunity for insightful discussions about where we find our courage, how we overcome losses and remain faithful, and what we define as victory” [The Bible answers all these matters perfectly. True courage comes from the Lord; believers remain faithful to the Lord by His grace, for He enables each one of His elect to persevere to the end; and as for overcoming and the true definition of victory, the Bible says: “For whatsoever is bom of God overcometh the world: and this is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith ” (1 Jn. 5:4). But apparently we need to hold discussions about these things, being guided by this movie about a boxing champion! Not even a movie about the life of Paul, or Peter, or David, or Moses – a movie about some fictional boxer called Rocky! “The Lord is my Shepherd,” wrote David in Psa. 23:1, and the Holy Spirit guides into all truth, Jn. 16:13. But Rocky would be the shepherd of vast numbers of blind moviegoers, by guiding them (they believed), if not into all truth, then at least into a whole lot. Instead of turning to Christ, multitudes of “churchgoers” now turn to the cinema, and to superstars for answers to life’s problems. And the most tragic thing of all is that huge numbers do not even see anything wrong with this. Their lives are so dominated and controlled by Hollywood, that they do not even perceive the problem!].

And what of the man who created and played the part of “Rocky”? According to Stuart Shepard of Focus on the Family’s Citizenlink.com, Sylvester Stallone considered himself “reborn”. He said this during a teleconference with pastors and religious leaders, as reported on RockyResources.com. But let us delve a bit deeper. Focus on the Family was so ecumenical that it would not bother to make this distinction, but we must: Stallone was, by his own admission, a Roman Catholic. So when he spoke of being “reborn”, we have to bear in mind that he evidently meant this in the Roman Catholic sense. And what is that? According to Canon 208 of the Roman Catholic Code of Canon Law, one’s “rebirth” is when one is baptised! And Canon 849 says that by Roman Catholic baptism, “people… are bom again as children of God”. Thus a Roman Catholic means something radically different from a true Christian, when he speaks of being “reborn”.

Stallone said: “I was raised in a Catholic home, a Christian home, and I went to Catholic schools and I was taught the faith and went as far as I could with it. Until one day, you know, I got out in the so-called real world and I was presented with temptation. I kinda like lost my way and made a lot of bad choices.”

Stallone spoke of Romanism and Christianity as being one and the same. This is how a Romanist would talk, of course, and the ecumenicals at Focus on the Family and elsewhere would readily accept Romanists as Christians, but the fact is that Romanism is not Christian, and there is the world of difference between a “Catholic home” and a Christian one. It is the difference between darkness and light.

He said he realised his fame was not the most important part of his life, and that God could help a person overcome his past. “The more I go to church, and the more I turn myself over to the process of believing in Jesus and listening to his Word and having him guide my hand, I feel as though the pressure is off me now.”

He also said: “You need to have the expertise and the guidance of someone else. You cannot train yourself. I feel the same way about Christianity and about what the Church is: The Church is the gym of the soul.”

When he said this, Stallone was sixty. And like many people who reach this age, he had doubtless begun to think about death, and the life hereafter. He doubtless truly realised that fame is fleeting, and that life itself is short, and all the money and fame in the world cannot take a man to heaven. And so he turned to a false religion, as so many do in their later years. What a tragedy.

Stallone said that the infamous character of Rocky was meant to reflect the nature of Jesus! In the conference call with pastors and religious leaders he said, “It’s like he was being chosen, Jesus was over him, and he was going to be the fella that would live through the example of Christ. He’s very, very forgiving. There’s no bitterness in him. He always turns the other cheek. And it’s like his whole life was about service.”

It was shocking enough that men calling themselves “pastors and religious leaders” would even bother to have a conference with Stallone over this movie and his supposed “Christian faith”. Any true pastor, given the opportunity to speak with Stallone like that, would use it to witness to him of Christ the Saviour. But no – these men talked to him for the purpose of hearing what he had to say about the “faith lessons” of his boxing movie!

That was shocking enough. But that Stallone compared his character with the Lord Jesus Christ! – there seem to be no depths to which false ministers, blind leaders of the blind, will not sink, for they did not immediately and vociferously refute such a wicked notion. Stallone said, “it’s like his [Rocky’s] whole life was about service.” A boxer whose whole life is about service? A boxer who “was being chosen, Jesus was over him, and he was going to be the fella that would live through the example of Christ”? Where was the condemnation of such rubbish from the “pastors and religious leaders”? Deafening silence.

On a section of the website entitled “Faith Leaders Respond” (also called “Pastors and Leaders: Their Response”), one could see the kind of men (and women!) described as “Faith Leaders” and “Pastors”. To name just a few:

Stuart Shepard, Managing Editor of Focus on the Family’s Citizenlink.com: “Stallone spoke of being reborn in a teleconference with pastors and religious leaders concerning faith elements of the unlikely sixth {Rocky) movie…. I have to confess I was won over by the real-life story of redemption I heard. I’m believin’ it.”

What would we expect from this particular source? Focus on the Family: ecumenical, riddled with psychology.

Dick Rolfe of The Dove Foundation: “I had a very favorable overall impression of the movie…. One Biblical profanity is the only ‘speed bump’ in an otherwise compelling movie.”

This was supposed to be a movie with “Christian” undertones, and yet it contains a “biblical profanity”. And incredibly, this man shrugged his shoulders and said it was just a small “speed bump”, nothing to be concerned about, the movie was still great! This was the level to which so-called “Christian” leaders had sunk! Who cares what the Bible says, it is fine to use a little profanity, the movie is great anyway – this was the message such a statement conveyed.

The Catholic Digest: “There’s a tremendous spirituality connected with the character of Rocky, because the entire thing was based on good Christian values and dilemmas – whether he could persevere through the storms.” Thus Roman Catholics were considered to be “Pastors and Leaders” as well. This movie was acceptable to both Papists and “Protestants”, in true ecumenical spirit. It therefore could not in any sense present the true Gospel of Jesus Christ, nor be truly Christian.

Francis Maier, Chancellor, Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Denver, Colorado: “[Rocky Balboa] is a really excellent film…. It’s also one you can take the kids to.” A little “biblical profanity” and a message that boxing is an acceptable sport notwithstanding. But of course the Papists would praise it.

Roman Catholic nun, Rose Pacatte, of the “Daughters of St. Paul”: “One theme that stood out for me was the whole idea of self esteem. And how important that is to be formed…. That’s a good message for people to know and hear.” Apart from being yet another comment by a Papist, under the title of “Pastors and Leaders”, this was just nonsense. What does the Bible say about “self esteem”? “Let nothing be done through strife or vainglory; but in lowliness of mind let each esteem other better than themselves” (Phil. 2:3). Esteeming others better than oneself, in true humility, is the very opposite of the arrogant “self esteem” mantra of modem psychology. But again, this is the kind of thing that would appeal to a Papist, and to millions of others as well.

The home page of the website was designed to provide “useful” tools to learn about the movie, “and utilize the film as a teaching, preaching or outreach opportunity. If you are a church, school, or small group leader, there are some excellent resources here that will help you ‘get in the ring’ with Rocky.”

When a pastor has reached the stage of using a film about a boxer to supposedly “teach” the flock, or an evangelist is using it as an “outreach opportunity”, then truly, there are no words to adequately describe the state of what passes for “Christianity” in our times. The Bible has been set aside, and the words and methods of sinful men have replaced it. Truly, truly, the “watchmen are blind: they are all ignorant, they are all dumb dogs” (Isa. 56:10). These prophetic words are once again fulfilled: “For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears; and they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables” (2 Tim. 4:3,4). They will not read and study the Bible for themselves, but will turn to fables, to the movies, and embrace them as the truth; and unless a “teacher” gives them what they want, they will not support him. So there are “heaps” of false “teachers”, scratching the ears of deceived souls and catering to their lust for worldly entertainment. That is where the money is.

There was a “Register for Updates” section on the site, which said – amongst other things –

“Tell us how we can serve you:

“- I am a MINISTRY/ORGANIZATION and we would like to partner to promote the film.”

It also advertised “Leader Resources” – including a “Leader’s Guide” – to “help in creating lively discussions about faith themes found in Rocky Balboa. The material includes discussion starters, scriptural references, fun trivia, tools, and effective actions, which could include hosting an interfaith event,” etc.

Ah! There we have it. The material could be used to host an “interfaith event”! Roman Catholics, Protestants – maybe even others – all joining together as one big happy family, to promote Rocky Balboa as a movie with profound “faith themes”! The blurring of fantasy and reality had reached this stage. People are so devoted to the idolatry of the movies, that their whole lives revolve around going to see them, analysing them, and molding their lives according to them. And religious leaders realised this, and began cashing in on it. They could not hold onto their flocks by the Bible alone, but felt they must cater to a generation that lives like a parasite on the Hollywood host. Is this an exaggeration? .Everywhere, everyone talks about the movies, talks as if these movies and their stars have a life of their own, and talks as if they have profound wisdom which we should all live by. And religious leaders kn ow it. So they cater to it. Instead of sound teaching from the Bible, they provided discussions around supposed “faith themes” found in this movie. Instead of biblical separation, they promoted interfaith events around it.

One could also order the “Rocky Balboa Outreach Box”! The advert said: “This kit is designed for faith, educational, and community leaders to help tell the story of Rocky – one of courage, faith, and perseverance.” It is the task of the true Bible teacher to tell the story of Christ the Lord! But these false shepherds, these blind guides, were going to be telling the story of this fictional boxing character! – and in doing so, they would feel they had “done the Lord’s work” and “witnessed” to people!

True courage, faith and perseverance are found in the lives of the real men and women of the Bible, as well as in the lives of true Christian men and women throughout history. How possibly could the story of a boxer, and one moreover who is not even real, convey such things? It is utterly impossible.

On the “Digital Resources” (“Content for Webmasters”) section of the site, for the “Website Administrator Electronic Press Kit”, 2 Timothy 4:7 appeared from some Bible version or other: “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith”! The King James Version says, “I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith”.

It is true that Paul the apostle, both here and also in 1 Tim. 6:12 and 1 Cor. 9:26,27, uses boxing as an illustration of the spiritual warfare in which Christians are engaged. But he is not condoning boxing with these words! For the Bible says of Christians, “What? know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own? For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God’s” (1 Cor. 6:19,20). The Lord is certainly not glorified by a man punching another man repeatedly for entertainment, for “sport”, causing blood to spurt from his face, bruising his body, and even punching him unconscious! This is mindless, senseless violence and does not in any sense glorify God. Many boxers suffer severe injuries, even to their brains. And nor does it bring glory to God for anyone to sit watching such “sport”, enjoying the spectacle. “Whether therefore ye eat, or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God” (1 Cor. 10:31). Boxing cannot in any sense be compatible with such things as love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, and temperance (Gal. 5:22,23). And it is impossible for one to go from watching a boxing match in a spiritual frame of mind: “whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report… think on these things” (Phil. 4:8). Boxing stirs up passions in men. It stirs up anger, hatred, feelings of revenge and retaliation. Self-defence is legitimate; but beating up someone for fun or “sport” is sinful, plain and simple.

To misuse 2 Tim. 4:7, as was done by those promoting this boxing movie as a movie with “Christian” themes, revealed a shocking lack of understanding of the Bible, and of what it truly means to be a Christian.

The Nativity Story (2006): Yet Another Pro-Roman Catholic Movie

In late 2006 the film, The Nativity Story, made its appearance. The story was told from the point of view of Mary and Joseph, and a huge amount of poetic licence was taken with the characters. This is how it was justified by screenwriter Mike Rich, who considered himself “a devout Christian”: “There’s very little detail in Scripture other than small accounts in Luke and Matthew. That means sourcing material while staying true to the Gospel.” ⁶⁰⁸

But he did not stay true to the Gospel. He sent his script to those described as “leading theologians, Jewish scholars and Biblical experts”. And, as one Roman Catholic reviewer put it, the film was: “A composite of the birth narrative accounts in the gospels of Matthew and Luke, embroidered with apocryphal traditions as well as the imaginative inspiration of the filmmaker”. ⁶⁰⁹

The movie’s co-producer, Marty Bowen, was a Roman Catholic. He said: “Growing up, I’ve always put Mary on a pedestal. She was beyond reproach, and we never took her off that pedestal. When you see a statue of Mary in a church, she’s not real; she’s plaster. We’re trying to make her real. We want to portray her as a fairly normal girl becoming a young woman. We grow with her in this story; it’s an extreme character arc.” ⁶¹⁰

Further evidence of the unbiblical, pro-Roman Catholic nature of the film was given by the young girl who played the role of Mary, Keisha Castle-Hughes. She said: “The biggest thing, you never think is that she [Mary] was just 14 and carrying a child. She was just a girl, and then the next day, she’s a woman and married, and the next she becomes like the mother of the world.” ⁶¹¹ Firstly, there is no evidence whatsoever that Mary was 14 years old. The Bible does not tell us, and there is no other way of knowing for certain. Secondly, Mary never became “mother of the world.” But Rome certainly refers to her as “Mother of the Church”.

Also, in the film Mary’s parents not only appear, but are named – Anna and Joachim. The Bible, of course, does not give the name of Mary’s mother, but this has not stopped Rome from coming up with one: “St. Anne” has always been the name associated with Mary’s mother in Roman Catholic tradition, without any basis in fact. And the unbiblical nature of the film continues, with Mary being troubled over her upcoming marriage to “a man I hardly know, a man 1 do not love” (nothing like this exists in the Bible account); the three “Magi” (the Bible does not mention how many there were; this again is Roman Catholic tradition); the star being explained as a rare convergence of Venus, Jupiter and an astral body (the star was miraculous and was a real star, not some natural cosmic convergence); references foreshadowing events in Christ’s life, such as Mary washing Joseph’s feet, Joseph being angry over merchants in the temple, and others.

But Rome has never let the facts get in the way of a good propaganda story. This is what The Nativity Story was, and Rome was just glad that yet another movie could be harnessed for its own ends.

The Golden Compass (2007): Another Hollywood Attack on Roman Catholicism

Of course, despite the resurgent interest in Hollywood in making movies with a religious message, things did not all go Rome’s way: Hollywood, at its heart, was still decidedly anti-Christian and anti- Roman Catholic. And this was demonstrated, yet again, with the release of The Golden Compass.

Based on the first book in a trilogy entitled His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman, and put out by New Line Cinema in partnership with Scholastic Media, it was an attack on Roman Catholicism. This was denied by Nicole Kidman, the lead actress and a professing Roman Catholic. She said, “I was raised Catholic. The Catholic Church is part of my essence. I wouldn’t be able to do this film if I thought it were at all anti-Catholic.” ⁶¹² Her denial notwithstanding, however, the film certainly promoted an anti-Romanist message. According to a Roman Catholic reviewer, “I vehemently disagree with Nicole Kidman. The trilogy, His Dark Materials, is the most seductive and diabolical attack upon God and the Catholic Church that I have ever encountered in books for children. Throughout all three volumes, Pullman is seeking to alienate children from God and the Catholic Church. By volume three, he has children joining the fallen angels in a final demonic attack upon the Kingdom of God.” ⁶¹³ In the movie the explicit attacks on the Romish religion were toned down, but the author well knew that after seeing it children would rush off to buy the far more explicit books.

Pullman said in an interview, “Atheism suggests a degree of certainty that I’m not quite willing to accede. I suppose technically, you’d have to put me down as an agnostic. But if there is a God, and he is as the Christians describe him, then he deserves to be put down and rebelled against. As you look back over the history of the Christian church, it’s a record of terrible infamy and cruelty and persecution and tyranny. How they have the… nerve to go on Thought for the Day and tell us all to be good when, given the slightest chance, they’d be hanging the rest of us and flogging the homosexuals and persecuting the witches.” He came out openly and said, “My books are about killing God.” He also said: “[English poet William] Blake said that [poet John] Milton was a true poet and of the Devil’s party without knowing it. I am of the Devil’s party and know it.” ⁶¹⁴ He also said in an interview: “I’m trying to undermine the basis of Christian belief.” ⁶¹⁵

This poor benighted man was unable to distinguish between the false religion of Romanism, a harlot pretending to be the virgin bride of Christ, and the true Church of Christ which has never killed or persecuted anyone.

He also knew that he could get away with his blatant message because people were at the time focusing so much on the Harry Potter books and films that his own trilogy could slip in “under the radar”. He said, “I think that as long as people are agitated about whether Harry Potter makes you into a satanist, they’re not going to be very bothered with me. So, I’m happy to [take] shelter under the great umbrella of Harry Potter.” ⁶¹⁶

According to the story, demons are the friends of children, animal spirits which embody the souls of people and accompany them through life; God was not the Creator of the universe, but a usurper; heaven and hell do not exist; the “Church” desires the “dehumanisation” of children by separating them from their personal friend-demons; God must be killed and the “Church” must be vanquished for the good of humanity; God is finally destroyed; the pope is called Pope John Calvin and the Vatican is moved to Geneva to reflect Calvin’s authoritarian rule over that city; Romish priests kidnap children and one priest is an assassin; etc., etc.

As an example of the blatant hatred for what Pullman considers to be “the Church”, there is this diatribe, uttered by a witch in the story: “There are churches there, believe me, that cut their children too… not in the same way, but just as horribly. They cut their sexual organs, yes, both boys and girls; they cut them with knives so that they shan’t feel. That is what the church does, and every church is the same: control, destroy, obliterate every good feeling.” ⁶¹⁷

Another character in the story says, “The Christian religion is a very powerful and convincing mistake, that’s all.” ⁶¹⁸ This particular character is a lapsed nun. In addition, the story contains messages in favour of witchcraft, sodomy, evolution, divination and premarital sex.

As is very evident, the books are not just an attack on the false Roman Catholic religion, but on biblical Christianity as well. There is a mighty spiritual war going on, and it is a war for souls. Satan will make use of pro-Papist films, and of anti-Papist films, to achieve his goals. Either way, he plays both sides and he wins.

Rambo (2008): a “Christian Rambo” Movie

Sylvester Stallone, fresh from his foray into the pro-Roman Catholic religious movie world with Rocky Balboa, then decided to make a fourth movie in his Rambo series, about a Vietnam-vet action hero. Only this time, playing to the renewed interest in pro-religious films, he gave his latest offering (simply entitled Rambo) a religious twist.

In the story, Rambo is approached by some American missionaries who want him to lead them into Myanmar (the former Burma) to bring aid to the oppressed Karen tribe, many of whom are Christians. He does so, and later, when Burmese troops capture the missionaries, their pastor asks Rambo to rescue them. The film contains the usual Stallone- movie extreme, gory and stomach-turning violence: people being blown up, beheaded, impaled, etc. Any supposed “moral” message (or even pro-“Christian” message) is simply lost under the horror of this gore-fest. 619 But this did not trouble the multitudes of professing “Christians” who went to see the film, and doubtless thought highly of the Roman Catholic Stallone for slipping what they believed to be a “pro-Christian message” into the film. Thus is evil justified. Those who want to be entertained by evil will always find ways to justify it. The task is just made a whole lot easier when the moviemakers claim the trash they chum out contains some kind of “moral” or “religious message.”

A poll conducted in 2008 by the Jewish Anti-Defamation League in the United States found that 61% of Americans believed their religious values were under attack by the media. 59% believed those who ran TV networks and major film studios did not share their religious or moral values. 43% believed there was “an organized campaign by Hollywood and the national media to weaken the influence of religious values in this country.” ⁶²⁰ And yet these high percentages did not give the Hollywood or TV network moguls any sleepless nights. They simply continued to make their anti-religious films and TV programmes, and to rake in millions. The reason is not hard to find, and it is just as true today as it was then: Americans might know that there is something utterly rotten within Hollywood; they might object to the attacks on their religious values; but at the end of the day, they have become so addicted to the media, so mesmerised by its entertainment, that they are simply unwilling to give it up. They continue to watch the very films and programmes which they know are blatantly attacking their religious beliefs. And what is true of Americans is true of millions throughout the world.

Chapter fifteen – Conclusion

Throughout Hollywood’s history there have been two sinister and very powerful forces at work, seeking to harness the immense influence of the movies for their own purposes: the Roman Catholic institution, and liberal and Marxist forces, the latter specifically connected to powerful Jewish interests.

As has been shown in this book, Roman Catholicism exerted the greatest influence over Hollywood, and indeed over its many Jewish movers and shakers who champed at the bit and ground their teeth in frustration but could do little to change the situation, throughout the period that is often called Hollywood’s “Golden Age”. But over time, for reasons given in this book, Roman Catholic influence over Hollywood declined, and then it was that liberal and Communist Jewish influence, suppressed for so long by Romanism and mostly overtly hostile to Romanism, was able to take its revenge. And it is these liberal and Marxist forces which are at present ascendant, indeed dominant, in the film industry.

And they do not hide their agenda either. In the June 1, 2011 internet edition of the Hollywood Reporter, TV executives admitted in taped interviews that Hollywood was pushing a liberal agenda. For example, Susan Harris, the creator of such TV programmes as Soap and The Golden Girls, was quoted as saying that Conservatives are “idiots” with “medieval minds”. She also said: “At least, you know, we put Obama in office, and so people, I think, are getting – have gotten – a little bit smarter.” And the co-creator of the programme Friends, Marta Kauffman, said that casting Candice Gingrich-Jones as a minister who married two lesbians was a “[expletive deleted]-you to the right wing.” She said that in particular, she liked the minister’s line, “Nothing makes God happier than when two people, any two people, come together in love.” ⁶²¹

No, they do not hide their agenda. But they do seek to hide the scale of Jewish control over Hollywood. Although liberal/leftist, secular humanist, and Communist Jews have used Hollywood as a powerful tool in bringing about the destruction of the West’s morals, undermining its Protestant foundations and swinging it leftward, as a general rule they did not want the truth of Jewish involvement in this agenda to become widely known, for this could lead to a backlash against them; so they worked hard to suppress this truth. Just how successful they were was shown in 2008 by the results of a poll conducted by the Jewish Anti-Defamation League (ADL). It found that only 22% of Americans believed that Jews controlled Hollywood and big media. Some 44 years earlier, in 1964, a similar ADL poll found that almost 50% of Americans believed this. Thus the leftist/Communist drive to suppress this truth had been extremely successful.

But despite their attempts to suppress this truth, every now and then someone lets the cat out of the bag. When the results of the ADL poll were released, at least one Jewish-American journalist was both shocked and upset about the ignorance of Americans on this matter! In a column in the Los Angeles Times entitled “How Jewish is Hollywood?” Joel Stein wrote: “I have never been so upset by a poll in my life. Only 22 percent of Americans now believe ‘the movie and television industries are pretty much run by Jews, ’ down from nearly 50 percent in 1964. The Anti-Defamation League, which released the poll results last month, sees in these numbers a victory against stereotyping. Actually, it just shows how dumb America has gotten: Jews totally run Hollywood ’ (italics added). ⁶²² He listed Jewish media heads, including: News Corp. president Peter Chemin; Paramount Pictures chairman Brad Grey; Walt Disney Company chief executive Robert Igor; Sony Pictures chairman Michael Lyndon; Warner Brothers chairman Barry Meyer; CBS Corp. chief executive Leslie Moonves; MGM chairman Harry Sloan; and NBC-Universal chief executive Jeff Zucker.

Stein went on: “The Jews are so dominant I had to scour the trades to come up with six Gentiles in high positions of entertainment companies. When I called them to talk about their incredible achievement, live of them refused to talk to me, apparently out of fear of insulting Jews. The sixth, AMC president Charles Collier, turned out to be Jewish.”

Stein believed that more Americans, not fewer, should know that Jews control the media. He concluded: “I don’t care if Americans think we’re running the news media, Hollywood, Wall Street, or the government. I just care that we get to keep running them.”

Stein was proud of the Jewish control of Hollywood and wanted the world to know it. The facts he published could not have been pleasing to those Jews seeking to keep the full extent of Jewish control of Hollywood under wraps.

Yes, Jews control Hollywood. But note: the Jewish people, as a people group, do not control Hollywood. Vast numbers of Jews would not identify with the liberal, secular humanist, Marxist agenda being shoved down the world’s throats via Hollywood movies. In saying “Jews control Hollywood”, we are saying that certain powerful Jewish liberals, secular humanists and Marxists control the industry. And it is these powerful men who are using the medium of film to deliberately push their diabolical agenda.

Liberals and Marxists, in particular Jewish liberals and Marxists, control Hollywood… for now. The false “Church” of Rome, once all-powerful over Hollywood, does not control Hollywood… for now. But Rome never gives up, which is why we can be certain it is doing all in its power to once again triumph in Hollywood. It suffers setbacks; it advances, then is forced to retreat, then advances again. And as has been shown in this book, it has certainly regained some of its influence again. Nothing like it once had, as yet; but it never gives up. And it must be remembered, as we have seen, that liberal Jesuits work behind the scenes to influence the films that are made.

But it is truly a sign of the times when professing Protestants believe that Hollywood under Roman Catholic control during its so-called “Golden Age” was better than Hollywood under liberal and Marxist control. They say this because, when Roman Catholics – via the Breen Office and the Legion of Decency – had the clout to force film studios to clean up their offerings, morally, before releasing them for public consumption, films were “cleaner”. But when Roman Catholic control waned, films became far more immoral. And this is true as far as it goes. But to take this position merely demonstrates, in fact, just how foolish and indeed biblically illiterate Protestants have become. For to focus solely on morality is simply not enough. The importance of good morals cannot be over-emphasised, of course; but what about truth?

Herein lies the great danger of the moviemaking era when Roman Catholics controlled Hollywood with an iron hand; and this would be the great danger if ever Roman Catholics fully controlled Hollywood again. Even though, as a result of Roman Catholic censorship through the PCA and the Legion of Decency, movies of that era were often “cleaner” than they would have been without the Jesuit Code in place, it must never be forgotten that Roman Catholicism was frequently being subtly promoted. And thus Protestants who went to be entertained by the movies during that “Golden Age” were in fact being entertained – and thus subtly indoctrinated – by Roman Catholic doctrine, plots, and characters.

It is therefore utterly foolish of professing Christians to say things like, “At least in those days there was some sense of decency in movies, and they were better and more moral than what came afterwards, when the Code was scrapped and movies became far filthier.” How careful true Christians must be here! A movie that is morally unclean is of course very harmful to the viewer; but is a “clean” movie that pushes Roman Catholic morals, doctrines, characters, etc., less harmful? True, it may not be as morally harmful, but it would be spiritually harmful – and that is equally dangerous in the light of eternity. For if a man is outwardly morally upright all his life, yet spiritually deluded, he is as lost as the immoral man. Multiplied millions of people are merrily skipping down the broad way that leads to destruction (Matt. 7:13) who are very moral in their behaviour, upright, clean-living, decent people by the world’s standards. Yet they are just as lost as any murderer or adulterer, for they are deluded religiously. As one glaring example, consider the following portion of God’s Word. Biblical prophecy makes it plain that each and every pope of Rome is the biblical Antichrist, and a powerfully descriptive word-portrait of him is given in 2 Thessalonians 2:1-12. And it says of him that he comes “with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish; because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved. And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie: that they all might be damned who believed not the truth, that they might be saved” (vv.10-12, italics added). Note that the words emphasised by italics show plainly that one is not damned only for living an immoral life, but for not believing the truth, not receiving the love of the truth, and believing a lie because of strong delusion! False religion leads to hell just as certainly as sinful living. Unbelievers and idolaters are listed in the same verse as murderers and whoremongers as having their part in the lake of fire (Rev. 21:8).

Multitudes are outwardly very moral, who are yet utter strangers to the truth of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and are deceived by false religion. Good morals will make society a better place, outwardly, and this is good as far as it goes, on a temporal level, for society; but good morals will not keep a single person out of hell, and they will not take a single person to heaven. For salvation is not by living an outwardly good life.

And besides, even apart from the Romish religion, or Romish religious concepts and outlooks at least, being so often promoted in such films, Romish morality is promoted as well. For such morality falls short of biblical morality, as Romish morality is certainly not one and the same with biblical morality. This is shown by the fact that even in such films, things are frequently permitted which are unbiblical. For example, the standards of modesty in clothing are not as high as what the Scriptures command; courting couples are permitted a leniency which the Bible does not permit in the relations between men and women before marriage; recreational activities such as dancing, drinking, etc., are readily portrayed as perfectly acceptable; and more. In this way, and precisely because such films are considered “moral” and “decent”, the high moral standards which were once maintained by Protestants were subtly lowered, little by little, by a process of gradualism. And we see the results everywhere today in so-called “Protestant” churches, where the moral standards of the members are little different from those of the world around them. Indeed, they are as much a part of the world as anyone else.

The truth is, Hollywood under either Roman Catholic or liberal and Marxist control is a very dangerous thing. The evidence is overwhelming. The medium of film is the most powerful medium in the modem world, and for its entire existence it has been used for evil by these two satanically-motivated forces. And this will continue, regardless of which evil force is dominating it at any given time.

What, then, should the true Christian’s attitude be towards Hollywood? A pamphlet written by the author, entitled Hollywood and the Christian, is reproduced below, slightly edited to make it a fitting conclusion to this book. ⁶²³

A vast and lucrative industry thrives on the almost-insatiable appetite of hundreds of millions of people for entertainment. Films, whether via the big screen, TV, DVDs or the internet, fill the eyes and ears of modem man with images and sounds designed to thrill him, excite him, make him laugh, make him cry, and make him lust.

Mankind’s appetite for entertainment is nothing new. In centuries past, the arena and the stage catered to this appetite. In the ancient arenas men fought with beasts, and men fought with men, in bloody clashes that only ended with the death of one of the contestants; and the crowds bayed for more and more blood. And on the stages, plays were put on which entertained people with violence, fornication, adultery, idolatry, heathen mythology, etc. The invention of the motion picture was the next step; and today, at a mere touch, a seemingly endless variety of films are available right in one’s own house, at any time one desires.

The name “Hollywood” has become synonymous with the motion picture industry, being the centre of the industry in America and the largest movie production industry in the world; but of course ungodly movies are made in many other parts of the world as well.

Those who profess to be followers of Christ, children of the living God, are duty-bound before God to consider the “entertainment industry” in the light of holy Scripture. Huge numbers of professing “Christians”, who can wax eloquent about the precious doctrines of the faith, who speak piously and appear so godly, are virtual slaves to the “box”, bowing down every evening before what is all too often a modem household god, prostrating themselves before this idol of entertainment. Should it be in need of repairs, a replacement is sought with all the anxiety displayed by Laban when his daughter stole his household images (Gen.31:19-35). Professing “Christians” speak enthusiastically about the latest movie release or the latest “soap” saga on TV. In one breath they speak of attending a service in their church, and of sitting glued to their seats at home, hungrily devouring some show. It was not uncommon, in the days before it was possible to record a TV show, to hear them bemoaning the fact that some meeting of their church took place at the very time their favourite show was being aired. Some “churches” even re-scheduled their services to ensure that everyone got home in time to lap up an “important” soapie! Such is the power of the “box.”

How many parents – professing to be Christians – rightly condemn the rock music young people listen to, some even forbidding it in their homes, and yet they sit glued to their TV screens, with their children around them, soaking up the vile filth that spues into their living-rooms from that piece of electronic equipment? Hypocrites! Condemning only what suits them! Where are the ministers who speak out against the sinful “entertainment” of Hollywood? One reason almost none do so is because so many of them are slaves to these things as much as their flocks are. Where is the separation from the world that the Bible commands?

Do the Scriptures have anything to say on this subject? They most certainly do! For the Scriptures list, as sins in the eyes of a holy God, such things as fornication, adultery, uncleanness, lasciviousness, idolatry, sodomy, stealing, covetousness, drunkenness, reviling, extortion, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies, envyings, murders, revellings, and suchlike (1 Cor.6:9,10; Gal.5:19-21; etc.). And even’ single one of these sins is portrayed, and glamourised, and glorified, by the movie industry! In Romans 1 we find another list of terrible sins in the sight of God (vv.21-31). And then we read these solemn words: “Who knowing the judgment of God, that they which commit such things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but have pleasure in them that do them ” (v.31). Some may argue that they simply watch these things, but do not live that way themselves; yet here we see that those who take pleasure in others committing such sins, are guilty as well! No Christian is to take pleasure in even watching such things, let alone doing them. This is “the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes”, which “is not of the Father, but is of the world” (1 Jn.2:16); and we are commanded, “Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him” (1 Jn.2:15). Take note: if any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him! It is as simple as that. He is not a Christian, regardless of what he professes.

Those who commit the sins portrayed in the movies will not inherit the kingdom of God, according to 1 Cor.6:9,10 and Gal.5:21. They are the works of the flesh, according to Gal.5:19. And yet we see huge numbers of professing “Christians” actually taking pleasure in those who commit such things. And they do so, knowing the judgment of God, that such sinners are worthy of death. Where is the evidence of regeneration in such people? Regardless of their profession of faith in Christ, they give evidence that it is an empty profession. They walk in darkness, not in the light. Away with their pious talk, their praises, their prayers! “They profess that they kn ow God; but in works they deny him” (Tit. 1:16). They are a blight upon the Church, a disgrace to the Holy One they claim to love and serve.

Let us briefly divide movies into certain categories, and examine these.

There is, firstly, the type of movie known as the thriller. Under this category would be found most adventure movies, spy stories, detective stories, war films, and much more. The vast majority of them involve hatred, violence, murder, revenge. These sins, almost without exception, are considered essential ingredients. But the Christian is to love his enemies (Matt.5:44,45), to be gentle (Gal.5:22), to commit no murder, not even in the heart (Matt.5:21,22), and to seek no revenge (Rom. 12:19-21) – the very opposite of the essential ingredients of most thrillers! The Christian is not to walk according to this world. He is a citizen of a heavenly country. He is to “think on” such things as are true, honest, just, pure, lovely, and of good report (Phil.4:8). He is to set his affection on things above, not on things on the earth (Col.3:2). He cannot do this if he is filling his mind with images of unnecessary violence, or murder, or revenge.

Then, too, thrillers usually contain such things as fornication, adultery, and other sexual sins. Not only are such scenes shown – that would be evil enough – but such sins are actually glorified. The Lord Jesus said, “Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time, Thou shalt not commit adultery: but I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart” (Matt.5:27,28). Adulterous scenes are constantly portrayed in movies, inciting lust in the viewers. Merely to look at a woman (or man) with lust is to commit adultery, and yet night after night so-called “Christians” do precisely that. But the holy God that they claim to love and worship sees all, and His judgment will not tarry forever.

This type of movie also often contains scenes glorifying drinking, and drunkenness (see Prov.20:l; 23:29-35; 1 Cor.6:10), and various other sins, such as blasphemy and profanity. The child of God has no excuse, no justification, for watching such things.

Besides all that has been said above, there is another point that must be made: what constitutes heroism in our eyes? People refer to the “hero” of the movie. Is he a true hero? Is it heroic, to do what he does? To kill, to hate, to lust? In the life of our Lord upon the earth, we see true heroism. Yet He was the very opposite of the so-called “heroes” of the screen.

Secondly, there is the category of movie known as the love story. The world cannot teach the Christian about true love. “Love”, to the worldly, usually means lust. And so-called “love stories” are usually filled with adultery, fornication, divorce, hatred and bitterness, etc. Such things are dreadful sins!

Women, in particular, are devotees of this type of “entertainment”. It is fantasy, escapism, a time in which women close out their own real world, with all its problems and struggles, and fill their minds with the standards and values of the ungodly. Tragically, so widespread are such sins as divorce, adultery, etc., today, that many women are living miserable lives, and they seek escape for a few hours in soaking up such movies. Only at the feet of the Lord Jesus can peace and joy be found. The Christian woman must spend much time in studying the Word of God, not in idly sitting in front of the TV screen, taking in the devil’s trash.

Thirdly, there is that category known as science fiction. In addition to being filled, for the most part, with the usual violence, adultery, blasphemy, profanity, and other sins found in virtually all types of films today, films in this category promote the absolutely unscriptural concept of life on other planets. The Bible tells us that God created life on earth; but we are not told that there is life anywhere else in the physical universe. In fact, the Bible positively precludes any such notion. When God created the heaven and the earth, He immediately focused upon earth alone (Gen. 1:1,2). The sun, moon, and stars were created, firstly, for God’s pleasure (Rev.4:11); secondly, for the benefit of man and other creatures upon the earth: for signs, and seasons, and days, and years; to give light upon the earth (Gen. 1:14-19); thirdly, to declare the glory of God, and show His handiwork (Psa.l9:l), leaving men without excuse (Rom. 1:20), so that it is indeed the fool who says in his heart, There is no God (Psa.l4:l). But no life is to be found anywhere else. The Lord Jesus Christ came to earth alone, to die for men and women ordained to eternal life; He left heaven’s glories, and came to earth; and when His work was done, He returned to heaven. He went to no other planet, He redeemed no other creatures. The notion of life in outer space, advocated by science fiction tales, promotes the diabolical theory of evolution, for of course, if life could spontaneously evolve here on earth, then conceivably it could do so elsewhere in the universe. But for those who believe the Holy Scriptures, it is quite evident that there is no life anywhere else; and they should derive no pleasure from such ungodly fantasies as are portrayed in science fiction films.

Fourthly, the comedy must be mentioned. This type of film is often considered “innocent” by many professing “Christians”; but they should know better. Such films almost always contain foul language, filthy jokes and filthy behaviour. They are far from being innocent entertainment. For a comedy to be successful in this sinful world, it must almost always make fun of sexual matters. Such wickedness should never be entertaining to Christians. “Marriage is honourable in all, and the bed undefiled: but whoremongers and adulterers God will judge” (Heb.l3:4); and yet marriage is mocked, and adultery and fornication are treated lightheartedly, in this type of film. “But fornication, and all uncleanness, or covetousness, let it not be once named among you, as becometh saints; neither filthiness, nor foolish talking, nor jesting, which are not convenient: but rather giving of thanks” (Eph.5:3,4). Many innocent things are amusing, and there is a time to laugh (Eccl.3:4); but to laugh at sin is itself sinful.

Sexual matters in particular, but in fact all Christian truth, God Himself, and the Lord Jesus Christ, are mocked in many comedies. The blessed Name of the Lord is used as a curse-word on the lips of wicked men and women. What true Christian can sit through such vileness, and be entertained? Can the true Christian bear to hear his Lord’s Name used thus? He is a hypocritical liar who says that he loves the Lord, but can tolerate, and even laugh at, such things! To hear the worldling make fun of the One before whom he will stand on the judgment day is a cause for weeping, not laughing. It is a tragedy, not a comedy.

Finally, we will mention so-called “Christian” films. The medium of film is not automatically sinful, and certain historical films, depicting the lives of various Christians of the past or even other historical events, can be profitable, if they are accurately made, and exalt the Lord. But the great majority not only fail to meet these criteria, many of them are positively sinful. They are made by Hollywood producers who only have profit in mind, and for this reason distort the truth and focus on those things which will attract audiences.

Furthermore, films depicting the life of Christ, with some actor portraying the holy Son of God, are contrary to the Word of God, which makes it clear that any representations of any of the three divine Persons of the Trinity are sinful (Exod.20:4-6; Acts 17:29). Although the eternal Son became flesh, we have no idea what He looked like, and thus any representation of Him is purely imaginary, and inaccurate; and even if we did know exactly what He looked like, we still could not depict Him, for His divine glory, which the apostles beheld (Jn.l:14), cannot be depicted; and yet, if only His humanity was depicted, then His nature would be divided – and that is heretical. Furthermore, as Christ is the image of the invisible God (Col. 1:15; Heb. 1:3), so that He could say to those who saw Him that they had seen the Lather (Jn. 14:8,9), it follows that if we attempt to depict Christ, we attempt to depict the invisible God; but as we can only depict Christ inaccurately, we would thereby depict the invisible God inaccurately. And in doing so, we would have made a similitude of God as a man, which would be sinful (Deut.4:15,16). The apostles, who kn ew Him in the days of His earthly ministry, never attempted to depict Him in art. No Christian should think that he is wiser than they. Films in which some sinful man attempts to portray the Lord Jesus Christ, the brightness of the Father’s glory, the express image of His Person, in whom dwells all the fulness of the Godhead bodily, should be shunned by all true Christians as utterly contrary to the will of God.

In conclusion, faithful pastors must insist on separation from all such filth on the part of their church members, with those refusing to turn from such things facing the same disciplinary measures they would face for other sins. For that is precisely what the watching of the type of motion pictures described above constitutes: sin! Where are the pastors who will take such a stand? They will be very unpopular, their churches will be much smaller, but they will be honouring the Lord.

Perhaps the reader is thinking to himself that even to own a TV must then be sinful. But this is not the case at all. The TV itself is merely a box of electronic parts. It is what is displayed on its screen that is either sinful or not. It can be used to educate. It can be used to inform us about the world we live in. It can have these positive uses, and to view such things is not sinful. But no Christian should ever spend a moment of time watching films which are ungodly and immoral. To do so is to sin grievously against the Lord.

Huge numbers of TV and movie devotees claim to be Christians. They claim to worship the true God, and that they seek to depart from iniquity. The Bible commands all who profess to be Christ’s to examine themselves, whether they be in the faith (2 Cor. 13:5); and we urge all those who prostrate themselves towards Hollywood every evening with the same blind zeal as the Muslims who prostrate themselves towards Mecca, to earnestly examine their profession of faith in the light of God’s Word. A lover of Zion cannot be a lover of Hollywood; he who is on a life-long pilgrimage to the heavenly city cannot simultaneously be on a pilgrimage to the shrines of the “stars” in Hollywood. No man can serve two masters.

And – as has been shown in this book – the believer should not put himself under the power of an industry which has done so much to promote Roman Catholicism, liberalism and Marxism – and continues to do so.

For the true Christian, the answer to the depravity of the movies is not to pin his hopes on government censorship. To do so is to grant the government more power than it should ever have, in areas it has no business becoming involved in, which leads to all kinds of other problems including possible persecution; and besides, it will never solve the problem anyway. Nor is the Christian to trust in worldly movie ratings systems, nor religious ratings systems for that matter. The answer is far more simple: the child of God must simply stay away from these movies, just as he or she should stay away from all other evils. “And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove them” (Eph. 5:11). “Dearly beloved, I beseech you as strangers and pilgrims, abstain from fleshly lusts, which war against the soul” (1 Pet. 2:11). Be separate from the world and its ways! “I will set no wicked thing before mine eyes ” (Psa. 101:3).

END NOTES:

CHAPTER ONE: THE JESUIT USE OF THE DRAMATIC ARTS

1. Sin and Censorship: the Catholic Church and the Motion Picture Industry, by Frank Walsh, pg.2. Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 1996.

2. This is covered in more detail in a series of recorded sermons, entitled On Books, the Box, and the Box Office, by Shaun Willcock. Bible Based Ministries, 2010.

3. The Jesuits: the Secret Army of the Papacy, by Shaun Willcock. Bible Based Ministries, 2012.

4. Occult Theocrasy, by Lady Queenborough, pg.311. The Christian Book Club of America, Hawthorne, California, USA. Reprinted 1980.

5. Footprints of the Jesuits, by R.W. Thompson, pgs.42-8. Hunt and Eaton, 1894.

6. The Secret History of the Jesuits, by Edmond Paris, pg.24. Chick Publications, Chino, California. Undated, but translated from the French in 1975.

7. The Secret History of the Jesuits, pgs.21,22.

8. Les Jesuites, by J. Huber, pgs.71,73. Sandoz et Fischbacher, Paris, 1875. Quoted in The Secret History of the Jesuits, pg.26.

9. Footprints of the Jesuits, pg.51.

10. Footprints of the Jesuits, pgs.57-9.

11. Fourteen Years a Jesuit, by Count Paul von Hoensbroech, Void, pg.117, and Vol.II, pg.320. Cassell and Company Ltd., London, 1911. Also Footprints of the Jesuits, pg.61.

12. The Power and Secret of the Jesuits, by Rene Fiilop-Miller, pg. 417. George Braziller, Inc., New York, 1956.

13. The Power and Secret of the Jesuits, pg. 28.

14. Catholics in the Movies, edited by Colleen McDannell, pg. 210. Oxford University Press, Inc., New York, 2008.

15. The Power and Secret of the Jesuits, pg. 409.

16. The Power and Secret of the Jesuits, pgs. 409-410.

17. The Power and Secret of the Jesuits, pg. 417.

18. Catholics in the Movies, pg. 210.

19. The Power and Secret of the Jesuits, pg. 411.

20. English Churchman, May 18 and 25 2001, No. 7559. English Churchman, Wedmore, Somerset, England. Article: “Hang a Jesuit and he’ll make off with the rope!”

21 . The Power and Secret of the Jesuits, pg. 411 ff.

22. See The Pagan Festivals of Christmas and Easter, by Shaun Willcock. Bible Based Ministries, reprinted 2004.

23. See The Two Babylons, by Alexander Hislop. Loizeaux Brothers, Neptune, New Jersey, USA, 1959.

24. The Power and Secret of the Jesuits, pgs. 413-4.

25. The Power and Secret of the Jesuits, pg. 414.

26. The Power and Secret of the Jesuits, pg. 416.

27. The Power and Secret of the Jesuits, pg. 28.

CHAPTER TWO: THE JEWS CREATE HOLLYWOOD

28. An Empire of Their Own: Flow the Jews Invented Hollywood, by Neal Gabler, pgs.1-2. Anchor Books, Doubleday, New York, 1989.

29. An Empire of Their Own, pgs.5-6.

30. An Empire of Their Own, pg.7.

31. Sin and Censorship, pg. 4.

32. An Empire of Their Own, pgs.203-4.

33. An Empire of Their Own, pg.204.

34. An Empire of Their Own, pg.61.

35. An Empire of Their Own, pg.63.

36. An Empire of Their Own, pg.64.

37. An Empire of Their Own, pg.119.

38. An Empire of Their Own, pg. 196.

39. An Empire of Their Own, pg.196.

40. An Empire of Their Own, pgs. 151-3.

41. An Empire of Their Own, pg. 168.

42. An Empire of Their Own, pg.306.

43. An Empire of Their Own, pg. 286.

44. An Empire of Their Own, pg.285.

45. An Empire of Their Own, pg.416.

46. An Empire of Their Own, pg.317.

47. An Empire of Their Own, pg.318.

CHAPTER THREE: PROTESTANTS, ROMAN CATHOLICS AND FILM CENSORSHIP IN THE EARLY YEARS

48. Catholics in the Movies, pg. 14.

49. Catholics in the Movies, pg. 14.

50. Catholics in the Movies, pg.29.

51. For example, see Fifty Years in the Church of Rome, by ex-priest Charles Chiniquy, The Protestant Literature Depository, London, 1886; Out of Hell and Purgatory’, by ex-priest P.A. Sequin, The Home of Rest, Stevens Point, Wisconsin, 1912; Foreign Conspiracy Against the Liberties of the United States, Leavitt, Lord and Co., New York, 1835; Romanism: a Menace to the Nation, by ex-priest Jeremiah J. Crowley, The Menace Publishing Company, Aurora, Missouri, 1912; etc.

52. Catholics in the Movies, pg. 18.

53. Catholics in the Movies, pg.37.

54. Catholics in the Movies, pgs.40-1.

55. The Catholic Crusade Against the Movies, 1940-1975, by Gregory D. Black, pgs.6,7. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, United Kingdom, 1998.

56. Sin and Censorship, pg. 11.

57. The Catholic Crusade Against the Movies, pg.7.

58. Sin and Censorship, pg. 10.

59. The Catholic Crusade Against the Movies, pg.8.

60. Hollywood’s Censor: Joseph 1. Breen and the Production Code Administration, by Thomas Doherty, pgs.32-3. Columbia University Press, New York, 2007.

61. Sin and Censorship, pg. 9.

62. Hollywood and the Catholic Church, by Les and Barbara Keyser, pg. 4. Loyola University Press, Chicago, Illinois, USA, 1984.

63. Hollywood and the Catholic Church, pg.6.

64. Hollywood and the Catholic Church, pg.10.

65. See The Vatican Moscow Washington Alliance, by Avro Manhattan. Chick Publications, Chino, California, 1982.

66. Hollywood and the Catholic Church, pgs. 19,20.

67. Hollywood and the Catholic Church, pg.20.

68. Sin and Censorship, pg. 18.

69. Sin and Censorship, pg. 19.

70. Sin and Censorship, pg. 19.

71. Hollywood’s Censor, pg.33.

72. Sin and Censorship, pg. 25.

73. Sin and Censorship, pg. 26.

74. Hollywood’s Censor, pg.35.

75. Sin and Censorship, pg. 34.

76. Sin and Censorship, pg. 48.

77. Sin and Censorship, pg. 54.

78. Hollywood and the Catholic Church, pg. 175.

79. Sin and Censorship, pg. 33.

80. The Catholic Crusade Against the Movies, pg. 10; and Sin and Censorship, pg. 47.

CHAPTER FOUR: JESUIT REGULATION OF THE MOVIE INDUSTRY: THE PRODUCTION CODE

81. Hollywood’s Censor, pg. 172.

82. Gaelic American, 20 August 1927; quoted in Catholics in the Movies, pg.54.

83. An Empire of Their Own, pg.277.

84. An Empire of Their Own, pg.278.

85. Sin and Censorship, pg. 38.

86. “An Affront to Catholics”, press release, National Catholic Welfare Conference News Service, 25 July 1927; quoted in Catholics in the Movies, pg.55.

87. Sin and Censorship, pg. 40.

88. Sin and Censorship, pg. 42.

89. Sin and Censorship, pg. 42.

90. Sin and Censorship, pgs. 42-3.

91. Catholics in the Movies, pgs. 53-5.

92. Sin and Censorship, pg. 45.

93. Sin and Censorship, pgs. 52,53.

94. Sin and Censorship, pg. 53.

95. Hollywood and the Catholic Church, pg. 22.

96. Sin and Censorship, pgs. 52-3.

97. Hollywood and the Catholic Church, pg.22.

98. See Trappings of Popery, by Shaun Willcock, pgs.11-14. Published for Bible Based Ministries by New Voices Publishing, Cape Town, South Africa, 2007. Also Pictures of Christ (recorded sermon), by Shaun Willcock. Bible Based Ministries, 1990.

99. Sin and Censorship, pg. 53.

100. Sin and Censorship, pgs. 53-4.

101. Catholics in the Movies, pg.54.

102. Catholics in the Movies, pgs.17,55.

103. The Catholic Crusade Against the Movies, pgs.9,10.

104. Sin and Censorship, pgs. 56,57.

105. The Catholic Crusade Against the Movies, pg.10.

106.The Catholic Crusade Against the Movies, pgs.11,12; and Hollywood’s Censor, pgs.42-3.

107.The Catholic Crusade Against the Movies, pg.13.

108. The Catholic Crusade Against the Movies, pgs. 13,14.

109. The Catholic Crusade Against the Movies, pgs. 14,15.

110 . Hollywood’s Censor, pg.45.

111. Hollywood’s Censor, pg.45.

112. Hollywood’s Censor, pgs.45-6.

113. Sin and Censorship, pg. 61.

114. Hollywood’s Censor, pgs. 173-4.

115. Sin and Censorship, pg. 61.

116. Hollywood’s Censor, pgs. 174-5.

117. Sin and Censorship, pgs. 62-5.

118. Hollywood’s Censor, pg.41.

119. Hollywood’s Censor, pg.89.

120. Sin and Censorship, pg.67.

121. Sin and Censorship, pg.71.

122. Sin? and Censorship, pg. 71.

123. Hollywood and the Catholic Church, pg. 47.

124. Hollywood and the Catholic Church, pg. 48.

125. Hollywood and the Catholic Church, pg. 48.

126. The Catholic Crusade Against the Movies, pgs. 16,17.

127. Sin and Censorship, pg. 73.

128. The Catholic Crusade Against the Movies, pg.18.

CHAPTER FIVE: JOSEPH I. BREEN AND THE CODE

129. Sin and Censorship, pg. 54.

130. Catholics in the Movies, pg. 17.

131. The Catholic Crusade Against the Movies, pg.12.

132. Hollywood’s Censor, pg.14.

133. Hollywood’s Censor, pg.21.

134. Hollywood’s Censor, pg.20.

135. Hollywood’s Censor, pg.7.

136. Hollywood’s Censor, pg.7.

137. Hollywood’s Censor, pgs.24-9.

138. Hollywood’s Censor, pg.29.

139. Sin and Censorship, pgs.75-6.

140. Sin and Censorship, pg. 79.

141 .Hollywood and the Catholic Church, pgs.26-7.

142. Hollywood s Censor, pg.7.

143. Hollywood’s Censor, pg.51.

144. Sin and Censorship, pg. 82.

145. Sin and Censorship, pg. 82.

146. Sin and Censorship, pgs.83-4.

147. Hollywood’s Censor, pg. 63.

148. Hollywood’s Censor, pg. 172.

149. Hollywood’s Censor, pg.lll.

150. Hollywoods Censor, pg.8.

151. Hollywood’s Censor, pg. 174.

152. Motion Picture Production Code of 1930, Section V, “Profanity”, quoted in Catholics in the Movies, pg.94.

153. Hollywood s Censor, pg. 122.

154. Catholics in the Movies, pgs. 17,18,93; and Hollywood’s Censor, pgs.92-95.

155. Hollywood’s Censor, pg. 113.

156. Motion Picture Production Code of 1930, Section VII, “Religion”, quoted in Catholics in the Movies, pgs.93,94.

157. Catholics in the Movies, pg. 19.

158. Catholics in the Movies, pgs.92,94,95.

159. Catholics in the Movies, pg. 19.

160. Hollywood’s Censor, pgs. 14,15.

161. Hollywood’s Censor, pg.18.

162. Hollywood’s Censor, pg.20.

163. Hollywood’s Censor, pgs.19,20.

164. The Catholic Crusade Against the Movies, pg.20.

165. See for example, Hitler’s Pope: the Secret History of Pius XII, by John Cornwell, Viking Penguin, London, 1999; Unholy War, by David I. Kertzer, Pan Macmillan, London, 2002; The Vatican in World Politics, by Avro Manhattan, Horizon Press, Inc., New York, 1949; The Vatican Against Europe, by Edmond Paris, the Wickliffe Press, London, 1961; and The Secret History of the Jesuits, by Edmond Paris, Chick Publications, Chino, California (undated).

166. Catholics in the Movies, pgs.92-3; and Hollywood’s Censor, pg.199.

167. Hollywood’s Censor, pg.199.

168. Hollywood’s Censor, pg.199.

169. Hollywood’s Censor, pg.201.

170. Hollywood’s Censor, pg.201.

171.Hollywood’s Censor, pgs.202-3.

172. Hollywood’s Censor, pg.204.

173. See, for example, Roman Catholicism Un-American, by O.C. Lambert. Published by O.C. Lambert, Winfield, Alabama, USA, 1956.

174. See The Vatican Moscow Washington Alliance.

175. Hollywood’s Censor, pgs.207-8.

176. Hollywood’s Censor, pg.208.

177. Hollywood’s Censor, pg.211.

CHAPTER SIX: THE ROMAN CATHOLIC LEGION OF DECENCY

178. The Catholic Crusade Against the Movies, pg.21.

179. Sin and Censorship, pg.87.

180. Sin and Censorship, pg.91.

181. The Catholic Crusade Against the Movies, pg.22.

182. The Catholic Crusade Against the Movies, pg.26.

183. Catholics in the Movies, pg.96.

184. Hollywood’s Censor, pgs.57-8.

185. Hollywood’s Censor, pgs. 65-6.

186. Hollywood s Censor, pg. 66.

187. Hollywood’s Censor, pg.56.

188. The Catholic Crusade Against the Movies, pgs. 17,18.

189. Sin and Censorship, pgs.97-8.

190. Sin and Censorship, pg. 113.

191. See More Than These: a History of How the Pro-Life Movement has Advanced the Cause of the Roman Catholic Church, by Ralph Ovadal. Heart of the Matter Publications, Monroe, Wisconsin, USA, 2004.

192. Hollywood’s Censor, pg. 67.

193. Sin and Censorship, pg. 103.

194. Hollywood’s Censor, pg. 70.

195. Sin and Censorship, pg. 106.

196. Sin and Censorship, pg. 104.

197. Hollywood’s Censor, pg. 67.

198. Hollywood’s Censor, pg. 188.

199. Hollywood’s Censor, pg. 68.

200. Sin and Censorship, pgs. 111-113.

201. Sin and Censorship, pg.110.

202. An Empire of Their Own, pg. 319.

203. An Empire of Their Own, pgs. 319-320.

204. An Empire of Their Own, pgs. 322-3.

205. An Empire of Their Own, pg. 328.

206. Sin and Censorship, pg. 134.

207. Catholics in the Movies, pg.96.

208. The Catholic Crusade Against the Movies, pg.l.

209. The Catholic Crusade Against the Movies, pg.2.

210. The Catholic Crusade Against the Movies, pg.l.

211. Catholics in the Movies, pg.97.

212. Catholics in the Movies, pg.96.

213. Catholics in the Movies, pg. 19.

214. The Catholic Crusade Against the Movies, pg.l.

215. The Catholic Crusade Against the Movies, pg.2.

216. Sin and Censorship, pg. 151.

217. Sin and Censorship, pg. 151.

218. Sin and Censorship, pg. 152.

219. Sin and Censorship, pg. 152.

220. The Catholic Crusade Against the Movies, pg.2.

221. The Catholic Crusade Against the Movies, pgs.26-7.

222. Sin and Censorship, pg. 144.

223. Sin and Censorship, pgs. 145-6.

224. The Catholic Crusade Against the Movies, pgs.27-8.

225. The Catholic Crusade Against the Movies, pgs.2,3.

226. The Catholic Crusade Against the Movies, pg.28.

227. Hollywood’s Censor, pg. 79.

228. The Catholic Crusade Against the Movies, pg.28.

229. Hollywood’s Censor, pg. 173.

230 . Hollywood and the Catholic Church, pg. 62.

231. Hollywood’s Censor, pgs. 184-5.

232. Hollywood’s Censor, pg. 172.

CHAPTER SEVEN: THE “GOLDEN AGE” 1930s AND 1940s: ROME TRIUMPHANT IN HOLLYWOOD

233. Catholics in the Movies, pg. 14.

234. Catholics in the Movies, pgs. 15,16.

235. Catholics in the Movies, pg. 16.

236. Hollywood and the Catholic Church, pg. 95.

237. Hollywood’s Censor, pgs.185-6.

238. An Empire of Their Own, pgs.330-1.

239. An Empire of Their Own, pg. 330.

240. An Empire of Their Own, pgs. 341-2.

241. Sin and Censorship, pgs. 150-1.

242. Hollywood’s Censor, pg.198.

243. Hollywood and the Catholic Church, pg.29.

244. Hollywood and the Catholic Church, pg. 64.

245. Hollywood and the Catholic Church, pg. 68.

246. Sin and Censorship, pg. 157.

241. Sin and Censorship, pg. 159.

248. An Empire of Their Own, pg. 352-3.

249. An Empire of Their Own, pg. 343.

250. The Catholic Crusade Against the Movies, pg.36.

251. An Empire of Their Own, pg. 348.

252. See, for example, The Vatican against Europe, by Edmond Paris, the Wycliffe Press, London, 1988; etc.

253. Hollywood’s Censor, pg. 167.

254. Hollywood’s Censor, pgs. 167-8.

255. Sin and Censorship, pg. 175.

256. Sin and Censorship, pg. 169.

257. Sin and Censorship, pg. 170.

258. Sin and Censorship, pg. 182.

259. Hollywood’s Censor, pg. 158.

260. Sin and Censorship, pg. 187.

261. Catholics in the Movies, pg.118.

262. Catholics in the Movies, pg.91.

263. Catholics in the Movies, pg. 19.

264. Hollywood’s Censor, pg. 135.

265. Sin and Censorship, pg. 149.

266. Hollywood’s Censor, pg. 189.

267. Hollywood and the Catholic Church, pg. 171.

268. Sin and Censorship, pg. 228.

269. The Catholic Crusade Against the Movies, pg.35.

270. Hollywood and the Catholic Church, pg. 163.

271. Catholics in the Movies, pgs.83-5.

212.Catholics in the Movies, pg.84.

273. Sin and Censorship, pg. 222.

274. Catholics in the Movies, pgs.95,96.

275. Hollywood and the Catholic Church, pg. 186.

276. The Catholic Crusade Against the Movies, pg.31.

277. The Catholic Crusade Against the Movies, pg.31.

278. The Catholic Crusade Against the Movies, pg.43.

279. The Catholic Crusade Against the Movies, pg.54.

280. Hollywood’s Censor, pg. 187.

281. Catholics in the Movies, pg. 107.

282. Sin and Censorship, pg. 229.

283. Sin and Censorship, pgs. 229-230.

284. See, for example, The Secret History of the Jesuits, by Edmond Paris; The Vatican Against Europe, by Edmond Paris; and The Vatican in World Politics, by Avro Manhattan.

285. Catholics in the Movies, pg. 108.

286. Catholics in the Movies, pg.122.

287. Catholics in the Movies, pg.117.

288. Catholics in the Movies, pg. 111.

289. Rome Still Claims to Be the One True Church, by Shaun Willcock. Bible Based Ministries, 2007.

290. Sin and Censorship, pg. 235.

291. Sin and Censorship, pg. 190.

292. Hollywood’s Censor, pg. 197.

293. Hollywood’s Censor, pg. 172.

CHAPTER EIGHT: THE 1940s: CHALLENGES TO THE CODE AND TO ROMAN CATHOLIC DOMINATION

294. Hollywood’s Censor, pg. 231.

295. An Empire of Their Own, pg. 355.

296. An Empire of Their Own, pg. 356.

297. An Empire of Their Own, pg. 357.

298. An Empire of Their Own, pgs. 354-5.

299. The Aida Parker Newsletter, Issue No. 226, March 1999. Aida Parker Newsletter (Pty) Ltd., Auckland Park, Johannesburg, South Africa.

300. The McAlvany Intelligence Advisor, May 2000. The McAlvany Intelligence Advisor, Phoenix, Arizona, USA.

301. The Aida Parker Newsletter, March 1999.

302. The Aida Parker Newsletter, March 1999.

303. The Aida Parker Newsletter, March 1999.

304. The Aida Parker Newsletter, March 1999.

305. An Empire of Their Own, pgs. 367-8.

306. The Aida Parker Newsletter, March 1999.

307. An Empire of Their Own, pg. 370.

308. An Empire of Their Own, pgs. 371-2.

309. The Aida Parker Newsletter, March 1999.

310. The Aida Parker Newsletter, March 1999.

311. Hollywood’s Censor, pg. 228.

312. Hollywood and the Catholic Church, pg. 180.

313. Hollywood and the Catholic Church, pg. 181.

314. Sin and Censorship, pg. 203.

315. The Catholic Crusade Against the Movies, pg.50.

316. Sin and Censorship, pg. 203.

317. Sin and Censorship, pgs. 205-6.

318. The Catholic Crusade Against the Movies, pg.52.

319. The Catholic Crusade Against the Movies, pg.55.

320. The Catholic Crusade Against the Movies, pg.53.

321.The Catholic Crusade Against the Movies, pg.55.

322. The Catholic Crusade Against the Movies, pg.56.

323. The Catholic Crusade Against the Movies, pg.59.

324. Sin and Censorship, pg. 211.

325. The Catholic Crusade Against the Movies, pg.62.

326. Sin and Censorship, pg. 221.

327 .Sin and Censorship, pg. 221.

328. The Catholic Crusade Against the Movies, pg.77.

329. See The Secret History ofthe Jesuits, by Edmond Paris; The Vatican against Europe, by Edmond Paris; Hitler’s Pope, by John Cornwell; Convert…or Die! by Edmond Paris, Chick Publications, Chino, California, undated; The Vatican s Holocaust, by Avro Manhattan, Ozark Books, Springfield, Missouri, 1986; etc.

330. The Catholic Crusade Against the Movies, pg.77.

331. See The Vatican Moscow Washington Alliance.

332. Sin and Censorship, pg. 192.

333. Sin and Censorship, pgs. 222-3.

334. Sin and Censorship, pgs. 224-5.

335. Hollywood’s Censor, pg. 287.

336. Hollywood’s Censor, pg. 288.

337. The Catholic Crusade Against the Movies, pg.87.

338. Sin and Censorship, pg. 244.

339. Sin and Censorship, pg. 241.

340. Hollywood’s Censor, pg.293.

341. Hollywood’s Censor, pg.294.

342 .Sin and Censorship, pg. 190.

343. Hollywood’s Censor, pg.298.

CHAPTER NINE: THE 1950s: ROMAN CATHOLIC MOVIE CENSORSHIP TAKES A BEATING

344. Catholics in the Movies, pg.150.

345. The Catholic Crusade Against the Movies, pg. 91.

346. The Catholic Crusade Against the Movies, pg. 96.

347. The Catholic Crusade Against the Movies, pg.96.

348. The Catholic Crusade Against the Movies, pg. 96.

349. Sin and Censorship, pgs. 253-4.

350. The Catholic Crusade Against the Movies, pg. 100.

351. The Catholic Crusade Against the Movies, pg. 101.

352. The Catholic Crusade Against the Movies, pg. 101.

353. Sin and Censorship, pg. 245.

354. The Catholic Crusade Against the Movies, pg. 114.

355. The Catholic Crusade Against the Movies, pg. 115.

356. An Empire of Their Own, pg. 385.

357. The Catholic Crusade Against the Movies, pg.134.

358. The Catholic Crusade Against the Movies, pg.135.

359. Sin and Censorship, pg. 257.

360. Hollywood’s Censor, pg.309.

361. The Catholic Crusade Against the Movies, pg. 126.

362. The Catholic Crusade Against the Movies, pg. 127.

363. Sin and Censorship, pgs. 259-260.

364. The Catholic Crusade Against the Movies, pg. 132.

365. The Catholic Crusade Against the Movies, pg. 130.

366. The Catholic Crusade Against the Movies, pgs.131-2.

367. The Catholic Crusade Against the Movies, pg.138.

368. The Catholic Crusade Against the Movies, pg.139.

369. Sin and Censorship, pg. 264.

370. The Catholic Crusade Against the Movies, pg.139.

371. Sin and Censorship, pg. 265.

372. Sin and Censorship, pg. 266.

373. Hollywood and the Catholic Church, pg. 82.

374. Hollywood and the Catholic Church, pg. 83.

375. See The Vatican Moscow Washington Alliance.

376. The Catholic Crusade Against the Movies, pg.141.

377. Hollywood’s Censor, pg. 184.

378. Hollywood’s Censor, pg.312.

379. The Catholic Crusade Against the Movies, pg.141.

CHAPTER TEN: THE 1950s: HOLLYWOOD LIBERALISES UNDER JESUIT DIRECTION

380. Hollywood’s Censor, pg.316.

381. Catholics in the Movies, pg.133.

382. The Catholic Crusade Against the Movies, pg.143.

383. Hollywood’s Censor, pg. 325.

384. The Catholic Crusade Against the Movies, pgs. 144-5.

385. See, for example, In God’s Name, by David Yallop, Corgi Books, London, 1985; and Murder in the Vatican, by Avro Manhattan, Ozark Books, Springfield, Missouri, USA, 1985.

386. The Catholic Crusade Against the Movies, pg. 145.

387. The Catholic Crusade Against the Movies, pg.147.

388. Time, December 24, 1956.

389. The Catholic Crusade Against the Movies, pg.168.

390. The Catholic Crusade Against the Movies, pg.168-9.

391. Sin and Censorship, pg. 277.

392. Hollywood’s Censor, pg. 327.

393. Sin and Censorship, pg. 276.

394. The Catholic Crusade Against the Movies, pg. 164.

395 .The Catholic Crusade Against the Movies, pg.172.

396. Sin and Censorship, pg. 277.

397. The Catholic Crusade Against the Movies, pg.164.

398. The Catholic Crusade Against the Movies, pg.164.

399. The Catholic Crusade Against the Movies, pg. 154-5.

400. Sin and Censorship, pg. 281.

401. The Catholic Crusade Against the Movies, pg.175.

402. Sin and Censorship, pg. 283.

403. The Catholic Crusade Against the Movies, pg.176.

404. Hollywood and the Catholic Church, pg. 174.

405. The Catholic Crusade Against the Movies, pg.179.

406. The Broadcasting Controversy, the Pope and Catholic Action, by D.J. Beswick, pgs.6,7. Published in Wellington, New Zealand, 1976.

407. The Broadcasting Controversy, the Pope and Catholic Action, pg. 11.

408. Catholics in the Movies, pgs.25-6.

409. The Catholic Crusade Against the Movies, pg.176.

410. The Catholic Crusade Against the Movies, pgs.181-2.

411. The Catholic Crusade Against the Movies, pgs.182-3.

412. Hollywood’s Censor, pg. 327.

413. Hollywood and the Catholic Church, pg. 36.

414. Hollywood and the Catholic Church, pgs. 37-8.

415. Sin and Censorship, pg. 293.

416. The Catholic Crusade Against the Movies, pgs.188-9.

417. Sin and Censorship, pg. 294.

418. The Catholic Crusade Against the Movies, pg.190.

CHAPTER ELEVEN: THE 1960s: THE BEST OF TIMES, THE WORST OF TIMES FOR ROME

419. The Catholic Crusade Against the Movies, pgs.213-4.

420. Hollywood’s Censor, pg. 329.

421. The Catholic Crusade Against the Movies, pgs.214-217.

422. The Catholic Crusade Against the Movies, pg.195.

423. The Catholic Crusade Against the Movies, pgs.196-7.

424. Sin and Censorship, pg. 297.

425. Sin and Censorship, pg. 298-9.

426. Sin and Censorship, pg. 297.

427. The Catholic Crusade Against the Movies, pg.214.

428. The Catholic Crusade Against the Movies, pg.191

429. The Catholic Crusade Against the Movies, pg.202.

430. The Catholic Crusade Against the Movies, pg.202.

431. Sin and Censorship, pg. 301.

432. Sin and Censorship, pg. 303.

433. The Catholic Crusade Against the Movies, pgs.208-9.

434. The Catholic Crusade Against the Movies, pg.210.

435. The Catholic Crusade Against the Movies, pg.220.

436. The Catholic Crusade Against the Movies, pg.220.

437. Hollywood’s Censor, pg. 330.

438. Catholics in the Movies, pgs.20,21.

439. Catholics in the Movies, pg. 108.

440. Catholics in the Movies, pg. 108.

441. Catholics in the Movies, pgs.21-2.

442. Catholics in the Movies, pg. 150.

443. The Broadcasting Controversy, the Pope and Catholic Action, pg. 14.

444. The Broadcasting Controversy, the Pope and Catholic Action, pgs. 15-16.

445. Sin and Censorship, pg. 315.

446. Sin and Censorship, pg. 317.

447. Sin and Censorship, pg. 318.

448. Catholics in the Movies, pg.21.

449. Hollywood and the Catholic Church, pg. 144.

450. Catholics in the Movies, pgs.22-4.

451 .Catholics in the Movies, pg.13.

452. The Catholic Crusade Against the Movies, pg.221.

453. Sin and Censorship, pg. 318.

454. The Catholic Crusade Against the Movies, pgs.227-8.

455. The Catholic Crusade Against the Movies, pg.228.

456. The Catholic Crusade Against the Movies, pg.227.

457. Sin and Censorship, pg. 319.

458. The Catholic Crusade Against the Movies, pg.232.

459. Sin and Censorship, pg. 322.

460. Sin and Censorship, pg. 322.

461. The Catholic Crusade Against the Movies, pg.232.

462. The Catholic Crusade Against the Movies, pg.234.

463. Hollywood’s Censor, pg. 330.

464. Hollywood’s Censor, pgs. 332-3.

465. Sin and Censorship, pg. 323.

466. Hollywood’s Censor, pg. 335.

467. The Catholic Crusade Against the Movies, pg.233.

468. Sin and Censorship, pg. 325.

469. See The Vatican Moscow Washington Alliance.

470. Hollywood and the Catholic Church, pg. 226.

471. Reported in Petrus Romanus: the False Prophet and the Antichrist are Here, by Thomas R. Horn, February 12, 2012. NewsWithViews.com.

472.The Catholic Crusade Against the Movies, pgs.234-6.

473. Sin and Censorship, pgs. 327-8.

474. Sin and Censorship, pg. 328.

475. Catholics in the Movies, pg. 231.

476. See The Marxist Minstrels: a Handbook on Communist Subversion of Music, by David A. Noebel. American Christian College Press, Tulsa, Oklahoma, USA, 1974.

477. Catholics in the Movies, pg. 235.

CHAPTER TWELVE: THE 1970s: ROME UNDER ATTACK, BUT FIGHTS BACK

478. Hollywood and the Catholic Church, pgs.85-6.

479. See Betrayal: the Crisis in the Catholic Church, by the investigative staff of the Boston Globe. Little, Brown and Company, Boston, USA, 2002. And Beyond Belief: the Catholic Church and the Child Abuse Scandal, by David Yallop. Constable and Robinson Ltd., London, UK, 2010.

480. New York Times Magazine, 15 May 1983, article: “Italian Americans: Coming Into Their Own,” written by Stephen S. Hall, and quoted in Hollywood and the Catholic Church, pg. 243.

481. The Broadcasting Controversy, the Pope and Catholic Action, pg. 19.

482. The Broadcasting Controversy, the Pope and Catholic Action, pgs.21,32.

483. The Broadcasting Controversy, the Pope and Catholic Action, pg.25.

484. Hollywood and the Catholic Church, pg. 188.

485. Catholics in the Movies, pgs. 180,182.

486. Catholics in the Movies, pg. 192.

487. Hollywood and the Catholic Church, pg. 90.

488. The Catholic Crusade Against the Movies, pg.237.

489. Hollywood and the Catholic Church, pg.30.

490. Catholics in the Movies, pgs. 198-9.

491.Catholics in the Movies, pg. 204.

492. Catholics in the Movies, pg.220.

493. Catholics in the Movies, pg.221.

494. Catholics in the Movies, pg.201.

495. Catholics in the Movies, pg.202.

496. America, 2 February 1974.

497. Catholics in the Movies, pg.211.

498. Catholics in the Movies, pg.203.

499. Hollywood and the Catholic Church, pg. 196.

500. Catholics in the Movies, pg.208.

501.Catholics in the Movies, pg.210.

502. Hollywood and the Catholic Church, pg. 197.

503. Hollywood and the Catholic Church, pg. 204.

504. Hollywood and the Catholic Church, pg. 204.

505. Hollywood and the Catholic Church, pg. 212.

506. Catholics in the Movies, pg.221.

507. The Tablet (New Zealand), 4-8-76, reported in The Broadcasting Controversy, the Pope and Catholic Action, pg.15.

508. Catholic Almanac, 1974 edition, pgs.683-4; quoted in The Broadcasting Controversy, the Pope and Catholic Action, pgs. 1,2.

509. Official Catholic Directory of England and Wales, 1974 edition, pgs.427- 8; quoted in The Broadcasting Controversy, the Pope and Catholic Action, pg.3.

510. The Broadcasting Controversy, the Pope and Catholic Action, pg.3.

511. The Broadcasting Controversy, the Pope and Catholic Action, pg.3.

512. The Tablet (New Zealand), May 19, 1976; quoted in The Broadcasting Controversy, the Pope and Catholic Action, pg.3.

513. The Broadcasting Controversy, the Pope and Catholic Action, pgs.4,5.

514. The Broadcasting Controversy, the Pope and Catholic Action, pg.5.

515. The Broadcasting Controversy, the Pope and Catholic Action, pg.5.

516. Hollywood and the Catholic Church, pg. 250.

517. Hollywood and the Catholic Church, pg. 253.

518. Hollywood and the Catholic Church, pgs. 240-1.

519. Hollywood and the Catholic Church, pg. 225.

520. Hollywood and the Catholic Church, pg. 132.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN: THE 1980s: THE MOVIE ASSAULT ON ROMANISM CONTINUES

521. The Catholic Crusade Against the Movies, pg.239.

522. Sin and Censorship, pg. 328.

523. The Catholic Crusade Against the Movies, pgs.240-2.

524. Sin and Censorship, pg. 330.

525. Catholics in the Movies, pg.229.

526. Catholics in the Movies, pg. 234.

521. Catholics in the Movies, pg. 235.

528. See, for example, The Priest, the Woman, and the Confessional, by Charles Chiniquy. Chick Publications, Chino, California, USA.

529. Catholics in the Movies, pg. 245.

530. Hollywood and the Catholic Church, pg. 253.

531. See for example, The Vatican Empire, by Nino Lo Bello, published by Pocket Books, New York, 1969; The Vatican Connection, by Richard Hammer, published by Holt, Rhinehart and Winston, New York, 1982; and The Vatican Billions, by Avro Manhattan, published by Chick Publications, Chino, California, 1983.

532. See for example, Awful Disclosures of Maria Monk, printed by John Jones, London, 1836; My Life in the Convent, by Margaret L. Shepherd, Christian Truth and Victory Publications, Alexandria, Minnesota; and House of Death and Gate of Hell, by L.J. King, published by Osterhus Publishing House, Minneapolis, Minnesota, 1947-1948.

533. Catholics in the Movies, pg.321.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN: FROM THE TWENTIETH INTO THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY

534. The Southern Cross, July 26, 1998. Article: “Hollywood Tikes us’, says priest.”

535. Rome Watch International, Volume 5, No.6, November/December 2000. Open Bible Ministries, Belfast, Northern Ireland.

536. The Southern Cross, January 14, 2001. Article: “Spirituality is making a comeback in Hollywood, say industry insiders.”

537. See, for example, Harry Potter: Witchcraft Repackaged (video), by Robert S. McGee and Caryl Matrisciana. NPN Videos, 2001. Also NewsWithViews.com, July 31, 2007. Article: “Harry’s Last Battles and Rowling’s Beliefs.”

538. Friday Church News Notes, July 22,2005, Volume 6, Issue 29. Way of Life Literature. Port Huron, Missouri. Article: “Harry Potter Foolishness.”

539. NewsWithViews.com, July 31, 2007. Article: “Harry’s Last Battles and Rowling’s Beliefs.”

540. The Telegraph, 18 July 2007. Article: “Use Harry Potter to Spread Christian Message.”

541. The Southern Cross, July 11 to 17, 2007. Article: “Christian Side to Potter.”

542. See, for example. The Two Babylons.

543. The Witness, July 16, 2009. Article: ‘“Harry Potter’: Vatican Praises Latest Film.”

544. The Southern Cross, July 20 to 26, 2011. Article: “Vatican paper: Harry Potter champions values.”

545. The Southern Cross, January 9 to 15, 2002. Article: “Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings ‘fundamentally Catholic.’”

546. Battle Cry, July/August 1985. Chick Publications, Chino, California, USA.

547. “The Passion of the Christ Outreach for Antichrist, by Shaun Willcock. Bible Based Ministries, 2004.

548. Catholics in the Movies, pg.333.

549. Time, March 1, 2004.

550. Billy Graham: Serving the Papal Antichrist (recorded lectures), by Shaun Willcock. Bible Based Ministries, 1991.

551. See Prophets of PsychoHeresy II: Critiquing Dr. James C. Dobson, by Martin and Deidre Bobgan. EastGate Publishers, Santa Barbara, California, USA, 1990.

552. Catholics in the Movies, pg.335.

553. Time, March 1, 2004.

554. The Passion of the Christ: What Should Christians Think of It? by Andy Foster. The Burning Bush, Vol.35, March 2004, Kilskeery Free Presbyterian Church, Kilskeery, Northern Ireland.

555. The New Yorker, September 15, 2003.

556. The Catechism of the Catholic Church, para. 1367. Paulines Publications Africa, Nairobi, Kenya, 1994.

557 .The Passion of the Christ: What Should Christians Think of It?

558. The New Yorker, September 15, 2003.

559. 2/19/04.

560. Time, March 1, 2004.

561. The Passion, by Ralph Ovadal. Wisconsin Christians United, February 24, 2004.

562. “The Passion of the Christ”: Mel Gibson’s Vivid Deception, by Richard Bennett and J. Virgil Dunbar. The Berean Beacon.

563. Catholics in the Movies, pg. 336.

564. Catholics in the Movies, pg. 319.

565. “The Chronicles of Narnia”: Occult Fantasy of a Closet Roman Catholic, by Shaun Willcock. Bible Based Ministries, 2005.

566. “ Faith-Based” Films or Hollywood Heresy? by Shaun Willcock. Bible Based Ministries, 2009.

567. The Witness, November 30, 2005.

568. The Witness, November 30, 2005.

569. Christianity Today, April 23, 2001.

570. Battle Cry, July-August 1985.

571. C.S. Lewis Books – Definitely NOT Christian, by Sidney W. blunter.

572. CRN Journal, Issue 10, Winter 2000/2001. Christian Research Network, Colchester, UK.

573. Christianity Today, September 7, 1998.

574. C.S. Lewis: the Man and His Myths, by Albert James Dager. Media Spotlight. Also Battle Cry, July-August 1985.

575. Battle Cry’, July-August 1985.

576. Christianity Today, April 23, 2001.

577. CRN Journal, Issue 10, Winter 2000/2001. Also News from the Front, June 2003, pg. 9. “Take Heed” Ministries, Ballynahinch, Northern Ireland.

578. C.S. Lewis and Evangelicals Today.

579. Christianity Today, June 15, 1998, as quoted in C.S. Lewis Acceptable to Mormons, June 17, 1998. Way of Life Literature’s Fundamental Baptist Information Service.

580. CRN Journal, Issue 10, Winter 2000/2001. Also Rome Watch International, Vol. 8, No. 6, November/December 2003, quoting The Canadian Revivalist, March-April 2003. And News from the Front, June 2003, December 2003, and June 2004. And C.S. Lewis and Evangelicals Today.

581. CRN Journal, Issue 10, Winter 2000/2001.

582. Zenit.org, December 7, 2005.

583. The Southern Cross, January 5 to 11, 2005.

584. C.S. Lewis: a Biography, pgs. 198,301, as found in C.S. Lewis and Evangelicals Today.

585. The Southern Cross, December 14 to 20, 2005.

586. The Witness, November 30, 2005.

587. The Witness, November 30, 2005.

588. ‘Faith-Based” Films or Hollywood Heresy? by Shaun Willcock. Bible Based Ministries, 2009.

589. Christianpost.com, March 12, 2007.

590. The Sunday Times, 1 August 2005.

591. The Southern Cross, September 27 to October 3, 2006.

592. The Sunday Times, 1 August 2005.

593. The Sunday Times, 1 August 2005.

594. The Sunday Times, 1 August 2005.

595. The Southern Cross, September 27 to October 3, 2006.

596. Weekend Witness, October 21, 2006.

597.The Southern Cross, January 12 to 18, 2005. Article: “Lessons for Catholics in this portrayal of satanic evil.”

598. Exposing The Da Vinci Code, by Shaun Willcock. Bible Based Ministries, 2006.

599. The Da Vinci Deception, by Roy Livesey, pg.8. Bury House Christian Books, Kidderminster, UK, 2005.

600. The Da Vinci Deception, pg. 8.

601. Opus Dei Versus the Da Vinci Code – Opus the Winner? 1/4/2006. Taken from the British Church Newspaper, 6 January 2006; and The Da Vinci Deception, by Roy Livesey.

602. The Da Vinci Hoax, by Sandra Miesel, quoted in The Da Vinci Delusion, Frontline Fellowship, 5 May 2006.

603. Quoted in The Da Vinci Deception, pgs. 18-20.

604. Opus Dei Versus The Da Vinci Code – Opus the Winner?

605. Opus Dei Versus The Da Vinci Code – Opus the Winner?

606. Zenit.org, November 5, 2006. Article: “Hollywood’s Fledgling Faith.”

607. Rocky Balboa: a “Christian Boxer”? by Shaun Willcock. Bible Based Ministries, 2006.

608. The Southern Cross, November 15 to 21, 2006. Article: “The nativity comes to life on big screen.”

609. The Southern Cross, November 29 to December 5, 2006. Article: “Nativity movie gets it right.”

610. The Southern Cross, November 15 to 21, 2006.

611. The Southern Cross, November 15 to 21, 2006.

612. St. Joseph’s Covenant Keepers, reproduced by [email protected], 12 December 2007. Article: “The Golden Compass: a Five-alarm Warning for Parents.”

613. St. Joseph s Covenant Keepers

614. Africa Christian Action, 7 December 2007. Article: “Beware of The Golden Compass – Selling Atheism to Kids.”

615. The Southern Cross, November 14 to 20, 2008. Article: “Stop crying wolf over Flarry Potter; worry about Pullman.”

616. The Southern Cross, November 14 to 20, 2008.

617. Africa Christian Action, 7 December 2007.

618. Africa Christian Action, 1 December 2007.

619. Weekend Witness, February 9, 2008. Article: “Rambo just wants to hand- forge iron and be left alone, but then a blonde missionary shows up.”

620. National Prayer Network, December 23, 2008. Article: “Americans Suspicious of Big Media, ADL Disturbed.”

CHAPTER FIFTEEN: CONCLUSION

621 Movieguide, 2 June 2011. Article: “Shock? Hollywood’s Liberal Bias Outed in Hollywood Reporter.”

622. National Prayer Network, December 23, 2008.

623. Hollywood and the Christian, by Shaun Willcock. Published by Bible Based Ministries.

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THE JESUITS: THE SECRET ARMY OF THE PAPACY

The New Testament abounds with warnings of wolves in sheep’s clothing: men pretending to be part of Christ’s flock, but in reality ministers of Satan, infiltrating the churches of Christ and bent on destroying them.

For centuries a ruthless secret army has served the global conquest objectives of the Roman Papacy: the Jesuit Order. This is the most diabolical and dangerous of all Roman Catholic orders. It stops at nothing in the relentless pursuit of its goal: to destroy all enemies of the Papacy. History is filled with Jesuit intrigue, deception, duplicity, plots, murders, etc. And against Protestantism, in particular, the Jesuits have always directed their energies, by infiltration of Protestant churches, posing as Protestant ministers, undermining the true faith, etc. The shocking state of professing Protestant “Christendom” is ample testimony that they have been all too successful.

This is a time when so little is known of the Jesuits, and yet so much needs to be known. And this is the purpose of this book.

SATAN’S SEAT

There is a powerful and sinister institution at work in the world, claiming to be Christian but in reality antichristian, which is all the more deadly because it appears so beautiful and holy to so many. According to the Word of God, fully supported by the historical evidence which perfectly fits the prophetic picture, this is the Roman Catholic institution. This biblical truth has been believed by countless numbers of God’s people through the centuries, but it is not believed by the multitudes of modern-day “Protestants,” caught up in the pursuit of “unity” with the Roman Catholic institution. It is the purpose of this book to bring the truth to light.

Satan s Seat traces this masterpiece of the devil from its origins in ancient paganism to its final prophetic destruction. It has been written so that the Christian reader will have, in his hands, a book which gives a panoramic view of centuries of history. Fully documented and easy to read, it also presents the Gospel to Roman Catholics, Protestants, and others.

THE MADNESS OF MULTICULTURALISM

Cultural relativism is the false doctrine that all cultures are equally valid and good. And multiculturalism is the false doctrine that everyone must respect everyone else’s culture, and tolerate and even celebrate all cultural practices, so that all humans will live together in harmony as one big, happy, tolerant, multicultural family. But this is neither possible nor sensible. The fact is, multiculturalism is madness.

When we evaluate and judge cultures and cultural practices by the light of the Bible, we find that all cultures are definitely not equal; that those cultures which were once greatly influenced by Protestantism were superior to all others; and that no true Christian should respect cultural practices that are degraded and sinful. Cultural relativism and multiculturalism are simply two more weapons in Satan’s modem arsenal in his ceaseless war against the Lord Jesus Christ.

Continued from XIII. Extreme Unction.

The officers of a New Testament Church are bishops and deacons. No other class is ever named as discharging permanent duties in the apostolic communities. The names presbyter and bishop designated the same position, the one describing the venerable gravity of the man, the other the oversight which his episcopal duties imposed.

The deacon was charged with the care of the poor, and the distribution of the elements at the Lord’s Table. It was no part of his diaconal (pertaining to a deacon) duties to preach, though Stephen and Philip proclaimed the word of life. When the first glow of gospel love warmed the hearts of men, though persons were specially set apart for the duties of the ministry, preaching in some way appears to have been a general work, for we find Acts viii. 1, 4, that by persecution the members of the church at Jerusalem “were all scattered abroad;” and “they that were scattered abroad, went everywhere preaching the word.” At a very early day, after inspired men left the churches, deacons become inferior ecclesiastics; and bishops were made superior to elders.

At first all bishops were on an equality no matter where their field of labor was located. Perhaps in the beginning of the third century, in some places, one bishop began to claim some measure of superiority over another. At the commencement of the fourth century the order of metropolitans was generally recognized.

They ordained the bishops over whom they exercised jurisdiction; they decided controversies among their episcopal subjects; they summoned provincial synods; they published ecclesiastical laws made by councils or by the emperors in their own provinces, and enforced their observance; and they took charge of sees made vacant by death in their jurisdiction until they received new bishops. The name is derived from the seats of these lords of bishops. The capital of a province was the residence of an ecclesiastical prince. Hence he was called a metropolitan. The Council of Chalcedon has two canons appointing those cities to be honored as the residences of metropolitans, which enjoyed the same distinction in the civil government of the empire. There are a few exceptions to this rule, The principal one was in Africa, where the senior bishop was primate no matter where he lived.

It is supposed that this order first showed itself in the churches about A.D. 381. Socrates, speaking of the Synod of Constantinople, held in A. D. 381, says: “Then too patriarchs were constituted, and the provinces distributed, so that no bishop might exercise any jurisdiction over churches out of his own diocese: for this had been often indiscriminately done before, on account of the persecutions.” He then recounts the divisions of the empire into patriarchates, and gives the names of the princely bishops.

The patriarch ordained all his metropolitans; he summoned them and all provincial bishops under them to councils over which he presided; he received appeals from metropolitans and provincial synods; and originally had no ecclesiastical superior. Under God in his church empire, he was sovereign. At first there were thirteen or fourteen patriarchs. By many changes and efforts, in the course of time the number was reduced to five: the patriarchs of Rome, Constantinople, Antioch, Alexandria and Jerusalem.

In the time of Paul, the presbyter was the bishop. In two hundred and fifty years from his day he was the assistant of the bishop. Presbyters might preach, baptize, consecrate the Lord’s Supper, and in the bishop’s absence give absolution to penitents, after the episcopal office was elevated by men above the presbyterial.

In the early churches the deacon was “a minister of widows and tables,” a levite, that is one in the lowest grade of the ministry. According to the Council of Carthage, “a deacon was ordained, not to the priesthood, but to an inferior service,”

St. Jerome says: “The deacons choose one from themselves whom they know to be industrious, and him they call archdeacon.” It was the duty of this minister to attend the bishop at the communion table, to assist him in connection with the revenues of the church, to render help in preaching, and to exercise some supervision over the inferior ministers.

As a general rule the deaconess must be from forty to sixty years of age before receiving the appointment, a widow, having had but one husband; or an unmarried sister. ‘They are employed, says Bingham, “To assist the minister at the baptizing of women.” They were also obliged to visit the poor, the sick and the martyrs.

This office existed in the third century; its duties were to fit the sacred vessels for the altar and hand them to the deacon in time of divine service; to attend the doors of the church during the communion; and to journey to foreign churches as the bishop’s messengers.

This office existed in the third century. The acolyte at his ordination received a candlestick, with a taper in it, to instruct him that it was his duty to light the candles of the church; and an empty vessel to furnish wine for the Lord’s Supper. It is supposed that it was their duty to attend the bishop wherever he went, and that from this service their name was obtained.

In the first half of the third century this office was in full exercise in the churches. The exorcist cast out devils.

This was a distinct office in the third century. It was the duty of the lector to read the Scriptures, not at the altar, but in the reading-desk in the body of the church. The lector has entered upon his duties at eight years of age, but by a decree of Justinian, no one under eighteen was to be ordained in future.

The doorkeeper belonged to an order of the clergy in the third century. He was appointed by the bishop; and solemnly installed by receiving the keys from him with this charge: “Behave thyself as one that must give an account to God of the things locked under these keys.”

This inferior order of the clergy arose about the fourth century. Their office was to regulate and encourage church music.

These were an order of inferior clergy, who in ancient times took charge of funerals and provided for the proper burial of the dead. It is understood that in many places the Jews still have such an order.

These persons were devoted to the care of the sick, and were reckoned by some as a part of the clergy in the early Church.

There were several other minor offices in the primitive Church. Showing with considerable distinctness that it might lack piety, and be shorn of usefulness, but that it was rich in the abundance of its sacred situations.

Centuries rolled on revealing few changes among the clergy. The principal one was the rise of

The title of Cardinal was given at an early day to the seven suffragan bishops of the pope in the immediate vicinity of Rome; to the twenty-eight presbyters or chief ministers of the Roman parishes; and to a certain number of deacons who had charge of some churches and chapels of devotion. These three classes were called cardinati or cardinals, to indicate that they were the first in rank; and that they had the chief direction of all ecclesiastics, and of all church affairs in Rome. This title conferred no great honor in the beginning, though it looked to that object from the start; but in A. D. 1059, Nicolas II. restricted the right of electing a pontiff to the seven bishops and twenty-eight priests just named; and Alexander III., to quiet dissatisfaction at Rome, enlarged the college of cardinal electors by admitting into it the seven palatine judges, the arch-presbyters of the Lateran Church, and those of the churches of St. Peter and St. Maria Maggoire; and the abbots of St. Paul and St. Lawrence without the walls; and the cardinal deacons or regionarii.

The pope, says Mosheim, is chosen at this day “by six bishops in the vicinage (vicinity) of Rome, fifty presbyters of Roman churches, and fourteen overseers or deacons of Roman hospitals or deaconries.” These electors are all called cardinals. When a pontiff is to be chosen they are locked up in a single apartment, having only one door, which they are not allowed to leave until a successor to Peter is elected. Food is handed in to the members of the conclave, through a window. One of the galleries of the Vatican, with the requisite number of little cells to furnish one for each cardinal, is generally the room in which the conclave is confined. The cardinals are the princes of the papal kingdom, the counselors of the pope, the presidents and managers of all ecclesiastical boards in Rome; under the pope they are the masters of the Catholic Church. From the cardinals the pope is elected. Though not so in name, they are a new order of the clergy born in the eleventh century, and overshadowing all the dignitaries of the Catholic Church, except the Supreme Pontiff.

The Council of Trent says: “As the ministry of so holy a priesthood is a divine arrangement, it was meet in order that it may be exercised with greater dignity and veneration, that in the admirable economy of the church there should be several distinct orders of ministers, intended by their office to serve the priesthood, and so disposed as that, beginning with the clerical tonsure, they may ascend gradually from the lower to the higher orders. For the Holy Scriptures make distinct mention not only of priests but of deacons, and they teach us in impressive language the things which have special reference to their ordination; and from the beginning of the Church the names and peculiar duties of the following orders are known to have been in use: namely, subdeacons, acolytes, exorcists, readers, and doorkeepers. Although they are not all of equal rank; for sub-deacons are placed among the greater orders by the fathers and holy councils, in which we read very frequently of other inferior orders.” The council heads this chapter “Of the seven orders” that are of the ministry.

The next chapter of the decree is entitled, “Orders are a Sacrament.” It reads, “Since it is evident from the testimony of Scripture, from apostolic tradition, and from the unanimous consent of the fathers, that by holy ordination, conferred by words and external signs, grace is given, no one ought to doubt that orders constitute one of the seven Sacraments of holy Church. For the apostle says, ‘I admonish you that you stir up the grace of God, which is in thee by the imposition of my hands. For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of strength, and of love, and of sobriety.’”

The Council says:

“If any one shall affirm that by sacred ordination the Holy Spirit is not given, and, therefore, that in vain the bishops say: Receive the Holy Spirit; or that by it a character is not impressed, or that he who was once a priest may become a layman again; let him be accursed.”

It cannot be denied that in thousands of instances the Holy Spirit has not been given in ordination. Nothing can be more preposterous than the supposition that any character or quality of mind or heart is given by ordination to the candidate. The act only gives him the external authority of the Church to undertake certain duties. The imposition of apostolical hands conferred the Holy Spirit. No human hands bestow that Spirit now except those pierced on the tree of Calvary.

The Catechism of Trent says that,

“In the tonsure the hair of the head is cut in the form of a crown, which ought constantly to be preserved, and as anyone advances in orders, his crown ought to be drawn more widely. The Church teaches that this practice is received from apostolic tradition …… this custom, they say, was introduced at first by the prince of all the apostles in honor of the crown of thorns, which was pressed upon the head of our Saviour.”

The tonsure is indispensable to any ecclesiastical position. Every minister and priest must wear it.

The tonsure was first practiced by the monks in the fourth century; from them it passed over to the ministers of the Church. In the fifth century it was a badge of the clerical office. In A.D. 633, the fourth Council of Toledo enjoined all the clergy to shave the whole crown of their heads, leaving but a small tuft of their hair, in the form of a round circle, or a crown.

In England and Scotland, the tonsure led to bitter controversies between the ancient British and Pictish Christians, and the Anglo-Saxon converts of Augustine, the Roman, and his fellow monk

The Scottish priests permitted the hair to grow on the back of the head, and shaved the front from ear to ear, in the form of a crescent, which the Romanists derisively called, “The tonsure of Simon Magus.” This difficulty, and the trouble about Easter, broke up religious intercourse between the ancient churches of Britain and the papal Church of Augustine, and drove a number of noble ministers out of England, in the seventh century, who would not yield to the pope even in trivial matters. Among whom was the saintly Coleman.

The bishop’s ring denoted the nuptial union which bound him to his flock; and was a prominent mark of the dignity of a prelate.

The crozier or staff, usually bent at the top, like the crook of an ancient shepherd, was an indispensable token of episcopal authority. At the death of a bishop, in the eleventh century, his staff and crozier were forthwith transmitted to the sovereign, the bestowment of which by the monarch upon any clergyman, gave him the bishopric of the deceased. This custom stirred up the fiercest warfare ever waged by the popes between Henry IV., Emperor of Germany, and Gregory VII., Pope of Rome.

A famous pastoral staff was preserved in Ireland for many centuries. It was called, “The Staff of Jesus.” St. Patrick was said to have received it indirectly from Christ; and with it, to have driven all venomous reptiles from his adopted country. Giraldus Cambrensis, a clergyman with the English when they conquered a large part of Ireland in the twelfth century, describes it, and states that his countrymen removed it from Armagh to Dublin; where it remained till the Reformation, during which it was burned.

The miter in the West is a hat divided in two at the crown, each part tapering at the top to a narrow point or tongue; it is supposed that it was intended to represent the cloven tongues in the likeness of which the Spirit of God rested on the apostles on the day of Pentecost. Miters were often made of very costly materials; gold and precious stones lending their worth and beauty. The miter is known to have been in use from the ninth century; how much earlier it is difficult to determine.

The tiara, or papal miter, was, originally, a tall, round hat; but it was encircled by one crown by Boniface VIII, in A.D. 1295: a second was placed around it by Benedict XII. A.D. 1335, and still another by John XXIII, in A.D. 1411. It is a triple crown, literally, This is the symbol of royalty and priestly dignity worn by the popes.

The keys are another token of the pope’s dominion over heaven and the souls of men here. “The keys” refer to the power which Christ gave to Peter, and, as Catholics imagine, to the pope, Peter’s successor, when he is said to have given Peter the keys of the kingdom of heaven.

In the celebration of mass, the priest is clothed to represent Christ in his suffering. The Amice represents the cloth or rag with which the Jews muffled our Saviour’s face when, at every blow, they bid him prophesy who it was that struck him; the Alb represents the white garment with which Herod clothed him; the Girdle, Maniple and Stole, represent the cords and bands with which he was bound in the different stages of his Passion; the Chasuble, or outer vestment, represents the purple garment with which he was draped in mockery as a king, the cross on the back of which represents the one which the Saviour bore on his shoulders. Gavin says:

“The Ambito (evidently the Spanish for Amice) is like a Holland handkerchief, and is put around the priest’s neck; the Alba is a long surplice, with narrow sleeves, ornamented with fine lace; the Stole is a long list of silk, with a cross in the middle, and one at each end; the Maniple is a short list of the same silk, with as many crosses, and is tied on the priest’s left arm; the Casulla (Chasuble?) is a sort of dress made of three yards of silk, thirty-six inches. wide at the back, but narrower in front.”

Some years ago, a spectator in St. Peter’s at Rome, on a great feast day, saw “The pope in a golden chair, carried on the shoulders of twelve cardinals, advancing slowly up the grand nave. He was arrayed in a large, folding robe of white satin, embroidered with gold; he had on his head the triple crown. Bishops and cardinals, clothed in crimson, with attendant train-bearers, preceded and followed him. There were miters and crucifixes, resplendent with gems, borne along. This scene, in such a church, seemed to mock even the splendid sunlight… . . . The cardinals removed their red caps… . . . Cardinals, in long, red robes, with prodigious tails, or trails, which were carried by their servants, came up and kissed his hand, or the hem of his robe, or the cross on his slipper, bowed three times, as is said, to him, as to the Father, on his right, as to the Son, in front, and on his left,as to the Holy Ghost.” How loudly this description recalls the saying of St. Paul, 2 Thess. ii. 4 (Catholic version): Who opposeth and is lifted up above all that is called God, or that is worshipped; so that he sitteth in the temple of God, showing himself as if he were God.” Or, does it not remind us of John’s vision? “And the woman was clothed round about with purple and scarlet, and gilt with gold, and precious stones, and pearls, having a golden cup in her hand, full of the abomination and filthiness of her fornication.” Catholic version, Apocalypse xvii. 4.

Continued in The Papal System – XV. Marriage

All chapters of The Papal System by William Cathcart

“Romanism is the dominant power in the Capitol of the United States. Lincoln, Grant, and Arthur withstood it, and suffered the consequences. The power is unseen. It is shadowy. It inhabits the air and infects it. Romanism is the malaria of the spiritual world. It stupefies the brain, deadens the heart, and sears the conscience as with a hot iron. It comes, as did the tempter, with gifts in its hands, of rule, of power, and of wealth, to all who will fall down and worship it. They who yield have peace and praise. They who refuse must fight a terrible foe.” – 19th century author, Justin D. Fulton

“Washington in the Lap of Rome” is a book authored by Justin D. Fulton copyrighted in 1888. Because any copyrights prior to 1923 have expired and are now in the public domain, I took the liberty to convert a PDF file of this book to HTML format to make it easier to read and more visible on the Internet.

If you are familiar with the Illuminati / New World Order conspiracy for one-world government but do not know about the Vatican / Jesuit connection, please do yourself a favor and hear what people in the 19th century had to say about it! True history is suppressed! You won’t read this in school history books. There have been many people in history who have confirmed Justin D. Fulton’s research. Samuel Morse, the inventor of the telegraph, is one of them. When you understand the Vatican / Jesuit connection to the Illuminati, you won’t need people like Alex Jones to interpret the news for you! You’ll be able to better read between the lines and see what is happening and why it’s happening.

Preface

“WASHINGTON in the Lap of Rome” has been written to call the attention of the American people to the great trust which has been betrayed, and to the great work which devolves upon them. It uncovers facts which will bring the blush of shame to the cheek of the real Republican and fill his soul with indignation. Fifteen thousand department clerks are under the surveillance of Rome. If it be not true, as is charged, that a private wire runs from the White House, in Washington, to the Cardinal’s Palace, in Baltimore, and that every important question touching the interests of Romanism in America is placed before his eye, before it becomes a public act, it is true that the Cardinal is a factor in politics. Romanism is the dominant power in the Capitol of the United States. Lincoln, Grant, and Arthur withstood it, and suffered the consequences. The power is unseen. It is shadowy. It inhabits the air and infects it. Romanism is the malaria of the spiritual world. It stupefies the brain, deadens the heart, and sears the conscience as with a hot iron. It comes, as did the tempter, with gifts in its hands, of rule, of power, and of wealth, to all who will fall down and worship it. They who yield have peace and praise. They who refuse must fight a terrible foe. The cry has been for peace. The lips of some of the ministers and members of the Church of Christ have been padlocked. Politicians, in the grasp of this power, are unable or unwilling to move. They clank their chains with delight, and glory in being allied with an organism so potential and so astute. Others see the peril, and withstand its open and determined advance. No longer now is the clash of arms heard. The city is not, to human sight, a camp of armed men, as in the days of civil war; but if eyes could be opened as were those of the prophet’s servant, when horses and chariots were circling in the air, proofs of a conflict might now be discerned, more desperate than was ever fought by flesh and blood on the earth. To-day the ” City of Magnificent Distances ” resembles the child in the presence of the snake. It is being charmed by the viper. Duty demands that the truth be told which shall break the back of the monster. “Why Priests Should Wed ” uncovered the pollutions of Romanism in the hope of saving the women and girls of the Roman Catholic Church, now held in the grasp of superstition.” Washington in the Lap of Rome ” appeals to mankind. The surrender to Rome of the Capital of the Great Republic means death to liberty. The people of all lands and climes are interested in the conflict. The facts given will ripen the indignation of pure-minded men and women against the Jesuitical foe, who no longer creeps under cover or hides in the shadow of some wall, but stalks boldly forth on his errand of wickedness. It is believed that it will cause lovers of liberty to shake themselves from their lethargy, and not only take Washington out of the lap of Rome, but throttle the monster threatening the future of the Republic, and lift the nation to its rightful place as the educator of mankind, the leader of the best thought, and the personification of God’s great purpose, in placing within the area of an ocean-washed Republic a free Church in a free State.

May God help the truth, is the prayer of

JUSTIN D. FULTON.

CHAPTER I. The Jesuit university in the new light

ROMANISM is beginning to uncover its hand in America. It begins to be fearless, now that it is becoming natural. It is attempting to do here what it has achieved in Europe, to awe the state, control the people, and banish liberty.

Slowly, stealthily, with the look of a saint for the outward seeming, with the heart of a Jesuit for the inward reality, Romanism has accomplished in fact, if not in name, what in name as well as in fact she achieved in so many of the kingdoms of Europe, a union of Church and State. This few will admit, but all may know that fact was to have been revealed on the 24th of May, 1888 ; that it was not, was not Rome s fault, but God s decree. Preparations had been going on for months to lay on that day, in the presence of the distinguished representatives of the nation, the corner-stone of the Catholic University of America, that the light of virtue and science might be preserved in the State," in accordance with the decrees and behests of Rome. The Cardinal, the Prince of the Roman Catholic church who was to officiate as President of the Board of Trustees, is, by virtue of his high office, the most conspicuous figure in the Catholic church in this country. Born of Irish parents, July 23rd, 1834, in Baltimore, and accompanying his father to Ireland as a child, where he received his early education, he returned to the United States and graduated from St. Charles College, Howard Co., Md., in 1857. He then studied theology in St. Mary s Seminary, Baltimore, and was ordained a priest June 30th, 1861. Seven years later he was consecrated bishop of North Carolina. Afterwards he took up his abode in Richmond, Va., and in 1877 became coadjutor of Archbishop Bayley, of Baltimore, and upon his death became his successor. After the death of Cardinal McCloskey he was appointed to his present exalted position, and carried to it great versatility of talent, an unconquerable energy, and much learning

Gen. W. S. Rosecrans, Grand Marshal, was born in Ohio in 1819, graduated from West Point in 1842, and in the Civil War rose from the position of colonel to corps commander. In 1867 he resigned from the army, went to California, was elected to Congress, and at the expiration of his term was appointed Register of the Treasury. His brother was a bishop of the Roman Catholic church, and he has been noted for his devotion to his church, whether as soldier, congressman, or citizen. The orator of the day, Rev. J. L. Spalding, was born in Lebanon, Ky., in 1840. Educated in Emmetsburg, Ind. , St. Mary s, Cincinnatti, and in Louvain, Belgium, on May 1st, 1877, he was consecrated bishop of Peoria. He is a scholarly man, and it has been his dream for years to have a great Catholic University built in the United States. It was through him that Miss Mary Gwendolen Caldwell made known her gift of $300,000 to the prelates of the Baltimore Council. The mother of Miss Caldwell was a member of the Breckenridge family. The father amassed a large fortune in New Orleans, and in 1863 was compelled to come North. Residing in New York, the daughter was educated at the Academy of the Sacred Heart, Manhattanville, New York, after which she travelled extensively in Europe. The father, at his death, left an estate of four million dollars, to be divided between his two daughters. The Rev. John J. Keane, the Rector of the University, was born in Ballyshannon, Co. Donegal, Ireland, Sept. 12th, 1839. He studied classics at St. Charles College, Baltimore, and subsequently pursued a full course in St. Mary s Seminary, and was ordained in 1866. For many years he served as assistant of St. Patrick’s church, Washington, and in 1878 he was appointed to the See of Richmond. Bishop Keane’s zeal, scholarship, eloquence and organizing ability led to his election as a rector of the University. He has raised $800,000 to endow it.

In 1882 Bishop Spalding visited Rome, and obtained the Papal approval. The proposition was discussed by the Archbishops, called to Rome in 1883, and in 1884 the sanction and benediction of the Pope was promulgated to the Plenary Council in Baltimore. It was expected that the Cardinal, dressed in the red robes of his office, arm-in-arm with the President of the United States, was to strike the blow which would inaugurate the commencement of an enterprise that would exert a felt influence upon the institutions of this fast-growing Republic. Soldiers, belonging to an army seven hundred thousand strong, now enlisted and drilled, and being led by the scarred veterans of the Confederate and Union armies, were to be there, under the command of Mayor General Rosecrans, Grand Marshal, who, with prancing steed and nodding plume, was to place before the eyes of gathered thousands the proof that Church and State were united, and that a willing soldiery were getting ready to enforce the decrees of Rome. Bands of music accompanied the delegations, and filled the air with martial strains, as on Wednesday evening they marched along the streets of Washington.

Archbishops, bishops and priests, monks and nuns and Christian brothers, crowded the homes of expect ant Romanists. Everything was apparently for Rome. The President of the United States left the Presbyterian Assembly in Philadelphia to grace with his presence this occasion. Every member of the cabinet and distinguished statesmen were expected to keep him company. Seats were prepared on the platform for two thousand guests.

That night, in a great hall in Washington, gathered a company of praying people. They saw the peril ; they declared it, and pleaded with God to bring confusion upon the enemies of the faith ; though ministers in Washington as a rule, and the churches almost without exception, recognize the Roman Catholic church as a part of the Christian world, and are opposed to saying anything, or having anything said, that shall provoke discussion, or awaken enmity. Many there are who believe that Romanism is the foe of Christianity, and is yet to be cast down.

Thursday morning came. The day darkened as it climbed towards noon ; the rain came first as a protest. It increased in quantity, and finally fell in sheets. The streets looked like rivers. The procession was abandoned ; the town was held in the grip of the storm. The crowd that gathered about the great stand was roofed with umbrellas. The cardinal and clergy, who expected to pass around the building to bless the foundations, were unwilling to face the storm. At three P.M., a Change of Programme was announced, in these words: "3 P.M. The procession has been abandoned ; but the rest of the ceremony will go on." It did not go on ! The foundations remained unblest ! As Burns said:

" Full many a plan of mice and men Gang oft a-glee."

It is not the first time that Jehovah, by storm and rain, has disconcerted and broken up the plans of Rome. Twice this was done in the days of Napoleon ; when, but for them, he would have been master of the world. But it came and piled his ships on the lee shore, and buried sailor and soldier in a watery grave.

Once this same terrible result was reached when Philip II. of Spain sent his Armada of ships to crush out the power of Elizabeth, England’s noble queen. In our own land, a storm helped us, when hope had almost died out of the heart. In the Old South church, Boston, there stood up the man of God to pray. Liberty was imperilled. A fleet was on its way from the Old World to the New, bearing soldiers, determined to make an end of the attempt to kindle on the shores of this Western World the light of a new-born hope. The wind, that gently lifted a lock of his white hair from his brow, was but the touch of that tempest that engulphed the fleet in ruin and saved the country from peril. That Being who permitted the persecution of the children of Israel until Pharaoh was beside himself with wrath and egotism, and, as if to defy God, followed the people in their march to Canaan, until the floods environed him, when God withdrew the unseen walls which held back the sea and permitted the waters to break forth, smiting horse, men, and riders with the wrath of God, until chariot-wheel crushed into chariot- wheel, and Pharaoh s host, with all their pride and pomp, sank into the bottom of the sea "as a stone," still lives, and Rome, that in spite of warnings and remonstrances had attempted to dominate our intellectual forces, was compelled to halt, and learned again that the " Lady of the Tiber" was to suffer mortification and chagrin, as her beautiful garments were dispoiled by the rain the good rain, that made the meadows glorious, and opened flowers for the coming sun, and that did for Romanism in the United States what the storm did for the Armada in the Channel. The Cardinal that could make the son of a Presbyterian minister bow to Rome that could touch a spring and send seven millions of people in America to obey the behests of Leo XIII., could not control God. "Sing unto the Lord a new song, for he hath triumphed gloriously ; " and, in answer to prayer, thwarted the scheme to make an impression by a pageant we do not need, and will not always brook.

It was understood that the corner-stone of the building would be laid, no matter what sort of weather prevailed, so members of the Catholic societies and others went bravely on in the rain, attending to the duties assigned them. The bishops assembled at Father Chapelle s residence at two o clock, where they took carriages with the cardinal and his attendants, and they were driven to the Middleton estate, next to the Soldiers Home, which they had purchased for $27,000. It has a picturesque and commanding location. An old-fashioned driveway, between rows of trees, leading to the old house, starts from the intersection of Lincoln avenue with the Bunker Hill road. The grounds extend to the Metropolitan Branch of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, and the railroad station of Brooks is located there. The distance from the city is two and a-half miles. So out they went, hoping against hope, that the rain would cease.

The ecclesiastical ceremony at the site of the University was planned as follows : The procession was to form at three o clock along the Bunker Hill road. The various divisions were to gather in fields on both sides of the railroad, in such manner that the first division, when it files out, will pass before all the divisions, and each division in turn will march out upon the road, so that the whole long procession will pass in review before the last division, composed of the bishops and clergy. Following an ecclesiastical custom, each division is arranged with the junior organization first. Thus the youngest parish is placed at the head of the division, composed of representatives of parishes, and the oldest last. In the division composed of the clergy, the different bodies are arranged according to their ecclesiastical rank, the Christian Brothers coming first, followed in order by the priests, the bishops, the archbishops, and last by the Cardinal, the highest dignitary. In the programme it was arranged to sing Haydn’s anthem, "The Heavens are Telling," the choir to be accompanied by the full Marine Band. The heavens told, without the song, that America has no need of a Papal university, built to perpetuate the dominion of Romanism and to unify the many elements of which the Roman Catholic church in America is composed. One feature of the institution is the establishment of " University Burses." The "Burse" is a fund out of which the poor students are cared for. Every person is at liberty to contribute to it whatever sum he or she may desire. The object is to aid any bright-minded man whose appetite for scholarly attainment in the scientific, or the historical, or the mathematical fields of knowledge are known, but not brought out because of the lack of means to develop them. The reason for locating the university at Washington was ostensibly, as urged by Father Chapelle, because the Capital is growing rapidly as a social, as well as a political centre ; that its literary circle is a growing and a liberal one ; that a great general library, a superb law library, scientific works and collections, the National Museum, the Observatory, and other public institutions, offered facilities for study that could not be secured else where. In fact, it is the dream of Romanists to make Washington the Rome of America. The Capitol is to be the Vatican ; the great Department- buildings, the homes of her oligarchy, when the Tiber there, as in the Seven-hilled City of Italy, shall give name to the mistress of the Republic which hopes to be mistress of the world ; and when this result is achieved, it would be in keeping to have the Catholic University of America located at that centre of Mary s Land.

It was Thursday evening, May 24th, 1888. A company of lovers of American institutions were gathered in one of the corridors of a great hotel. In came the man who had led the meeting for prayer, and whose face looked as though victory was in the air. He had been all day with the Jesuits. He had seen their discomfiture, and witnessed their mortification, wrath and desperation.

" What is the outlook?"

"All right."

How goes the fight ? " " Never better. Rome has met her Waterloo, and has received a blow she will not soon forget. Cardinal Gibbons finds that he cannot manage God. He is beaten. The archbishop, bishop, and priests realize it. The president, cabinet, and congressmen who have bent the supple hinges of the knee, that thrift might follow fawning, now see it. Whiskey flows as free to-night as water fell today. It is appalling to hear the profanity. Between yesterday and today what a change ! Then all was hope ; now all is gloom ! A leading priest, who invited the speaker to come and witness the ceremony, is despondent enough. The minister reminded him of the prophecy, read to him from Revelation 18:16, and, changing it, said : Alas, alas, that great company, clothed in fine linen and purple and scarlet and decked with gold and precious stones and pearls, in one hour have been brought to see their helplessness when contending with the Almighty. May it not be a type of the disasters to attend the enterprise? A bad start is a prophecy of what, at least, is possible. The charter – the organism, – all will be opposed. The Lord also shall roar out of Zion, and the heavens and the earth shall shake ; but the Lord shall be the hope of his people, and the strength of the children of Israel. So shall ye know that I am the Lord your God, dwelling in Zion, my holy mountain. All recognized how the mighty angel may cast Rome down as a stone is thrown into the sea when the truth gets before the people, and the machinations of this foe of liberty are understood."

Tongues were loosened. Rome, though mighty, was not almighty. The truculency of politicians had been of no avail. The president and cabinet went home chagrined ; better, if not wiser, men.

The Great University looked well on paper ; but looked very diminutive to those standing in the mud and rain. So will it be when God shall take Rome in hand. "How much she hath glorified herself and lived deliciously ; for she saith in her heart, I sit a queen, and am no widow, and shall see no sorrow. Therefore shall her plagues come in one day, death, mourning, and famine ; and she shall be utterly burned with fire : for strong is the Lord God who judgeth her."

Thus spoke the minister to his friend, the priest. The words shook him up. They loosened the foundation on which superstition had been building. The New was coming. The battle was on. Never did a fiercer conflict rage in Washington. The forts were dismantled after the war. Soldiers in blue and gray had gone far away ; yet the city was full of combatants. Months before in a Roman Catholic institution, concerning which a war of words seems to go on from year to year, the minister met the priest. They sat at a table with distinguished Romanists, priests and laymen. Eleven nuns waited on them. After dinner, this priest, distinguished for his courage, cultured, talented, eloquent, made a speech, which presents the doings of the church as seen by Romanists. He praised Rome for what she is, and for what she has achieved. He spoke of the proofs of her greatness, seen in her magnificent cathedrals and churches in all the large cities, the great monasteries, convents, and asylums, crowning the hilltops that look down upon many of our large cities, of the Golden Cross that greets the eye as the traveller passes through the Golden Gate on the California Coast ; while in New York, the gateway of the Western World, Rome, in churches, in schools, in convents, in monasteries, in protectories, and what not, leads all other churches in enterprises and in far- reaching plans.

He claimed that there was more money and more brain under the control of the church in New York than in Rome itself, and that now, while the school system was being shattered and the parochial school had become a fact, Rome was to get control of the youth of America, and could hold her own against all comers. He then spoke with pride of the gift of the descendant of the great opponent of Romanism, the gifted Dr. Breckenridge, whose $300,000 was but the seedling the germ out of which was to come an University that would surprise and astound the world." He sat down, roundly applauded. The chairman then asked the minister if he would like to speak. Consenting, he arose, and said: "The speech of the distinguished priest gladdens you. Make the most of it, while you have it ; it is but for a short time." " What do you mean ? Simply this: There is nothing God Almighty hates as he does Romanism. In 1870 you proclaimed your Pope an infallible God. That act proved him to be the man of sin, the son of perdition, who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God, or that is worshipped ; so that he as God sitteth in the temple of God, showing himself that he is God." Thus was the " wicked revealed, whom the Lord shall consume with the spirit of His mouth, and shall destroy with the brightness of His coming."

“Is that your idea?” shouted the priest.

"That is the word of God. By it men and nations are to be judged. You remember that your Pope had hardly been made the church, when the beast Louis Napoleon, on which he rode into power, was destroyed. Then Babylon fell, because of a power which came down from heaven, and which lightened the earth with its glory. Because of this, the cry is going forth as never before : Come out of her, my people, that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues ! Clouds, dark with the wrath of God, are gathering in the sky of Rome ; for her sins have reached unto heaven, and God hath remembered her iniquities’

"Gentlemen, you may not know it, but it is true, that God keeps in his ear the cry and shriek of every Waldensian thrown over the Alpine cliff and torn by the jagged rocks ; every body wrenched in twain by the rack of the Inquisition ; every woman whose feet were burned over the brasier of coals ; every martyr who ascended to heaven in his chariot of fire ; all are remembered ; and God says : Reward her even as she rewarded you, and double unto her double according to her work in the cup which she hath filled, fill to her double.

"Then, again, gentlemen, there is a prophecy linked to a fact, to which I have never seen attention called. You have a perfect passion to place all your institutions on elevations. You seek to exalt yourselves in the eye of the people. The Pope exalteth himself above all that is called God, or is worshipped ; and you manifest the same spirit in the location of your public buildings. Our Lord said : Whosoever exalteth himself shall be abased. Every hilltop crowned with your great structures, proclaims the abasement of the Roman Catholic Church, and even now Christ may have said, Because you have tried to exalt yourselves at the expense of humanity and of brotherly kindness, thou shalt be brought down to hell. He that hurnbleth himself shall be exalted. This is the outlook for Rome. The present condition is not what you paint it. They tell me, if the mortgages were foreclosed on the property Rome claims to own in New York City, she would not have one foot of land, a convent, or a church. What you own would not pay what you owe. Rome is to be uncovered, and then she will be hated. In the battle to be fought, our hope is in God, and you must look out for great defeats."

With that conversation in mind, there was meaning in the results of the day. The priest felt it. He spoke of his disappointment.

"It is hard to contend against an Almighty must," replied the minister; " the hour approaches when Rome shall be fought by Romanists. What means this unrest of the Pope, this feeling that he must get out of Italy and find a refuge somewhere else? Does he not know, does not the world recognize the fact, that Romanism is nothing without Rome ? Let the Pope come to the United States and he would be compelled to walk down Broadway with a stove pipe hat, as Romanists are compelled to wear citizens clothes in Mexico. The current of free thought in America will take care of Romanism. The time is coming when men will be ashamed of the name in which they pandered to Rome." A minister of distinction declines to attack the Roman Catholic Church in Washington, lest offence be given to the representatives of foreign governments, who crowd St. Matthew s on the Sabbath, and the places of pleasure during the week, for Washington is in the lap of Rome. A Cunarder put out from New England for New York. It was well equipped ; but in putting up a stove in the pilot box, a nail was driven too near the compass. You know how that nail would affect the compass. The ship s officer, deceived by that distracted compass, put the ship two hundred miles off her right course, and suddenly the man on the look out cried: "Land ho! "and the ship was halted within a few yards of her demolition on Nantucket shoals. A sixpenny nail did that ; because it was not known that it was misplaced. It shall be the fault of those who will not heed a warning if this Jesuit University shall derange the American compass and send the Ship of State upon the rocks which threaten her.

Shall it be encouraged? It is but a part of a movement to take control of educational interests in the United States. There are 6,800 Roman Catholic churches in the United States, and there are more than 4,000 parochial schools. A movement has begun, to take possession of our public school buildings. Rome withdraws her children from the public school, leaving the seats unoccupied. Then she rents the empty building, and fills it with her children, through the assistance of men elected to do her bidding ; as is done in Pittsburg, Pa., and Maiden, Mass. As has been said, Rome sees clearly the peril which confronts her from secular teaching, and from this day she will spare "no effort to keep her children within sound of her own bell and within the limits of her own instruction. There will be no compromise ; there is no evasion ; open, determined and persistent antagonism to our common-school system is henceforth the attitude and policy of the Roman hierarchy. He who hopes to escape this struggle, or out maneuver this foe is already beaten ; he does not know the antagonist with whom he is fighting.

The universal diffusion of Catholic education means something more than the opening of schools in every parish ; it means a steady and unrelenting attack on our common schools; not on that abstract thing called the common-school system, but on every school in every locality where the Catholic voting population has any strength. This result was inevitable ; Catholics have the same indisposition to pay taxes which characterizes the great majority of men of all faiths. They are compelled to support their own church schools ; they are not disposed to support the common schools in addition ; wherever the way is open they will, as a matter of course, use their power to control or cripple the common schools. The great struggle between our schools and this vigilant and uncompromising foe will not be fought out in Congress or in Legislatures, in newspapers or pulpits ; it will be fought in every school district in the country. There will be no great and decisive battle ; there will be a long series of skirmishes. Every school meeting will be contested, and on the result of these minor contests the struggle itself will turn. Henceforth eternal vigilance will be the price we shall pay for our common schools ; henceforth, no man who cares for his community or his country can afford to shirk a duty which has been more honored in the breach than in the observance.

In many communities these foes of the common school will not lack for allies, who will, consciously or unconsciously, work with and for them ; men who will fail to see that they are being used as tools by a power which has never yet failed of the highest sagacity in using those who are too shortsighted or too selfish to comprehend the real issues involved. The only reply which must be made to the establishment of the parochial school must be the increased efficiency of the common schools.

The actual Ruler of this nation lives not in the White House at Washington, but in the palace of Baltimore. No important editorial affecting the Romish Church is printed until it has been submitted to the Cardinal for his criticism, We wonder at the power exercised. No member of Congress enters Washington but he is weighed in the Romish balances. If he comes down with the shekels for the church and with votes for her policy, all is well. If not, there is a reckoning-time sure to come, and an influence is exerted at once that touches the springs of power in his far away home. As a political machine, Rome is a transcendent success : and the Jesuit was more than half right when he said, " The representative of the Pope in the Vatican is the Ruler of the United States of America."

CHAPTER II. Romanism a deception and a fraud.

Romanism, as a religion, is a deception and a fraud. Jesuitism is the power that propels and controls it. These two facts, made plain to the people, will destroy the reverence felt for Romanism as a part of the religious world, and will take away the sentiment that it has a right to live and act in accordance with its genius and spirit. Then they will be prepared to weigh the proofs which show it to be an enemy, attempting to subvert the foundations of Republican liberty, destroy quietly the public school system, and make the United States of America a Romish Reservation. The claim is, that the Roman Catholic Church is the mother of all churches, that she is the only true church ; and, being such, is the Catholic, or Universal Christian Church. That, by Divine appointment, the Apostle Peter was the head and foundation of the church, its Pope and Christ’s vicar, or visible representative, on the earth. That he, Peter, lived in Rome for the last twenty-five years of his life, during which time, as the possessor of the “keys” committed to him by the Saviour, he bound or loosed, opened or shut, in heaven, earth, hell, and purgatory, as seemed right in his sight. That each Pope since then is the true successor of St. Peter, invested with equal authority and power ; and that to be subject to him and in full and hearty connection with the church he personally, or through the authority he delegates to others, rules, is necessary in the highest degree to salvation. Opposed to this claim, are a few facts :

1. Rome’s pretension to being the mother-church is a deception, because it never was in existence until A. D. 606. The Acts of the Apostles, as well as all ecclesiastical history, teaches, that the church in Jerusalem, in its origin, in its constitution, takes first rank. John addressed “the seven churches which are in Asia.” These churches are each are represented by a golden candlestick, or lamp, separate and distinct one from the other, and not as one lamp ; which would have been the case had there existed any just ground for the claim of Rome.

2. For the supremacy of Peter there is no Scriptural warrant. Peter was in no way the leader of the church. The power and authority conveyed by the appointment of the Apostles was conferred upon all of them. They were all chosen the same way, equally empowered to preach and baptize, all equally entrusted with the power of binding and loosing, all invested with the same mission and equally furnished with the same gifts of the Holy Ghost. Rome contends, not only for a primacy of order, but of power. Fortunately for his own reputation, Peter never did this. When the Mother of Zebedee’s children wished it, Christ said, “The Kings of the Gentiles exercise lordship over them, and they that are great exercise authority upon them. But ye shall not be so ; but whosoever will be great among you, let him be your servant.” Nothing would have so injured Peter with Christ and his brethren, and degraded and disgraced him, as to have done what Rome claims he did do, viz. : claim a pre-eminence among the Apostles. Peter’s name is not always mentioned first. James, Paul, and Apollos are placed before his, very frequently. Was any one prominent for being dear to Christ? John bore the name of “the beloved disciple.” Peter called himself a ” fellow-laborer,” and expressly forbids the governors of the church to lord it over God’s heritage, and bears the rebuke of Paul, because he was to be blamed ; without a thought of asserting his superiority or authority. Rome claims that in the words, “Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church ; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it,” our Lord declared Peter’s contemplated supremacy. It has sometimes seemed strange that Rome should utterly ignore the other address made to Peter in the same chapter, when Peter assumed supremacy, and Christ said to him: “Get thee behind me, Satan ; thou art an offense unto me ; for thou savourest not the things that be of God, but those that be of men.” Matt. 16:23. These words apply to Peter, and apply to those who have tried to exalt him above his brethren. The former do not apply to him as being the one upon whom Christ should build his church ; for Christ referred to the faith which saw in Him the Son of God. This view was held by Jerome, Chrysostom, Origen, Cyril, Hilary, Augustine, and many more ; and Paul, in 1 Cor. 3:11, points to Christ, in the words : “For other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which is Christ Jesus.” Eph. 2:20 : “And are built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner-stone.” Then, as to the power of binding or loosing, the position of Rome is confuted by the uniform action of all the apostles on such matters. They declared the conditions of salvation to be repentance towards God and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, and they would receive the remission of their sins. This precludes the idea that the Romish priesthood have power to absolve from sin.

3. Romanism is a deception, because it rests its claim upon the false supposition that Peter lived in Rome. The Scriptures declare that Peter went East, rather than West ; lived and wrought in Asia Minor ; preached to the churches in ancient Babylon, from which place he wrote his epistle. Romanists want it written at Rome, and insist that Peter went to Rome in A.D. 42 ; that he was crucified head-downwards in A.D. 67 ; that he suffered imprisonment in the Marmentine prison, over which towers St. Peter’s ; that he was buried in the Vatican, where the Pope now lives ; while there is not a scintilla of evidence to support the pretension that Peter ever was in Rome. Tradition takes the place of history, and clings to the deception as if it had a basis of even possible fact.

According to the Bible, Peter preached in Jerusalem, and instead of giving orders to the other apostles, as the head of the church, he was sent as a simple missionary to preach with John in Samaria. Acts 8:14. He proclaimed the Gospel in Cesarea, in Antioch, and Babylon, but did not come into the West.

When Paul in A.D. 60 wrote his epistle to the Romans he saluted many, but he did not salute Peter, a sufficient proof that he was not in Rome.

In 61 Paul arrived in Rome and the brethren went out to meet him. on the Appian way, Acts 28:15, but Peter was not among them. From the year 61 to 63 Paul wrote from Rome his epistles to the Philippians, Colossians, and to Timothy. In these letters he speaks of many persons, even unknown ones, and no mention is made of Peter. In his second Epistle, 2 Tim. 4:6, he says : “At my first answer no one stood with me, but all men forsook me.” If Peter had been in Rome and free, would he have abandoned Paul? If in prison, would not Paul have referred to him ? All this proves that he was not in Rome. The Apostle of the Circumcision never was in Rome. He lived and died in the East. So speaks history. Romanism becomes a fraud when it thus unblushingly lifts a lie into the place of the truth, and demands of those who belong to it unflinching submission and unswerving obedience, from beginning to end.

4. Romanism is a deception, because it predicates salvation, not through the atoning blood of Christ, but upon saying : ” I believe that there is here upon earth an organized body that is more than human, because it has a divine commission, and that organized body can teach me the truth, and that in so receiving it I cannot possibly be led into error. I believe that this organism is none other than the Catholic church, directed by the Pope, as the successor of St. Peter, and the moment a man says that, he is a Catholic.” The essence of Romanism is summed up in this : “Subjection of the intellect to divine authority in matters connected with religion.”

Notice, it does not refer to a belief in Jesus Christ, as “the way, the truth, and the life ” ; nor to receiving him into the heart, that power may be obtained to become a child of God. It makes the church authority the author of life and hope. The millions of Romanists are ruled by a Pope, claimed to be infallible, exalted above all that is called God, and worshipped as was the Druid of our ancestors, or the Pontifex Maximus of ancient Rome, and claiming to stand at the top of the system. All the persons in the Godhead, Popery denies. It denies God the Father, by installing the Pope as the Divine vicegerent, by whose authority the Second Commandment, forbidding the worship of images, is trampled upon ; and installs the Pope as Divine vicegerent of the world and the infallible ruler of the conscience. It presents him high and lifted up, clothed with power to annul laws, abrogate treaties, plant and pluck up nations, and do away with the precepts of the moral law. Popery writes on the Papal chair : “This is the seat of God, the throne of the Infallible and Holy One ; he who sits here can pardon or retain men’s sins, save or destroy souls.”

Popery ignores Jesus Christ the Saviour, and worships Mary instead. It robs Christ of his priestly office, by offering the Mass the priests sacrifice, not Christ, to save the sinner. It destroys the prophetical office, by presenting itself as the infallible teacher of the word of God and the only authorized expositor of the true sense of Scripture. It robs Christ of his kingly office, by exalting the Pope to his seat of absolute power and head of the church. In his vesture and on his thigh the Pope has written : ” I am King of kings and Lord of lords.”

For the Holy Spirit, popery substitutes the sacraments, through which divine blessings are communicated to the soul. It is this impious suggestion which crowds the church with votaries at the various masses, for the deluded believe there is no help for them apart from the priesthood, the only channel of communication between God and man. It is be cause of this murderers, no matter how heinous their crime, find it not difficult to espouse Romanism and put the eternal interests of their souls into the keeping of this error. ” They believe a lie that they may be damned.” Here then is what professes to be a complete church, and yet is an out-and-out counterfeit. Every element of strength and every principle of evil that were found in the ancient idolatries, live over again in the papacy. That same paganism whose cradle was rocked in Chaldea, whose youth was passed amid the olive groves and matchless temples of Greece, and whose manhood was reached amid the martial sounds and iron organizations of Rome, has returned anew in this papacy, bringing with it the old rites, the old festivals, the flowers, the incensings, the lustral water, the vestments, the very gods but with new names ; every thing, in short, so that were an old pagan to rise from the dead, he would find himself among his old environments ; and, without a moment’s doubt, would conclude that Zeus, the ancient Jove, the father of Clio, whose mother is Mercury, answering to Christ and Mary, was still reigning, and was being worshipped by the same rites that were practised in his honor three thousand years ago.

5. Romanism is a fraud, because it substitutes a Pantheon of idols for the Christian church, extinguishing the light of revelation, and placing the world back amid the ideas, the deities, and the rites of early idolatrous ages. It rejects the New Birth and change of heart, and inducts the child into the church in a state of unconsciousness, and holds him there by education, by training, and by fear. The church assumes control of the individual conscience. It claims to hold the keys of heaven and hell. A Romanist is afraid of the truth even of God’s word, and millions dare not read or take into their hands the Bible, lest it may sever their hold upon the church, and so whelm the soul in perdition.

The import of such teaching is to place in the hands of conscienceless men the consciences of millions of men. It is the marvel of the age, that at a period when men boast of their aspirations after progress, such numbers should thus fall as dupes into the slough of the most hopeless stagnation, into a total resignation of the freedom of their wills, of the independent action of their souls, into the amplest acceptance of dogmas, creeds and fables which it is a disgrace even to the darkest ages to have been capable of embracing. None of these things which Rome offers has the slightest atom of the simple but sublime religion of Jesus Christ, who sat upon the mountain-side and taught the noblest truths in the simplest language. They are the old tawdry paraphernalia of worn-out Paganism, refurbished and re-introduced by the most impudent priestcraft that ever palmed itself upon the world.

This it is that men are calling a part of the Religious World. Romanism is Antichrist, pure and simple. Daniel, Paul, and John have described it with the pen of inspiration, and painted it with living colors, and the pictures they made of it hang on the walls of the future, so that every eye can trace its origin, its terrible and damning work, and its awful doom. Daniel tells of “the little horn,” before which three of the ten horns fell ; which signify the ten states under control of imperial Rome. These three horns represented the Exarchate of Ravenna, given the Pope Stephen I. by Pepin, King of France, in A.D. 755. The second was the Kingdom of the Lombards, subdued by Charlemagne of France, and made over to the Pope in A.D. 774. And the third was the State of Rome itself, which was given the Pope by Louis the Pious.

It was upon the acquisition of these states that the Pope became a temporal ruler. It is said, the little horn ” had eyes like the eyes of a man,” ” and a mouth speaking great things,” ” great things against the Most High.” Assuming Divine titles, such as “His Holiness”; “Head of the Church”; “Christ’s Vicar upon Earth” ; “Infallibility,” etc., etc. But more than this assuming to dispose of rewards in heaven and hell, as well as on the earth ; changing laws of principles and conduct, and conditions of education ; a power to depose rulers, give away states or kingdoms, release subjects from their oaths of allegiance ; each of which acts, and all together, being an invasion of God’s prerogatives, as the king, ruler, saviour, judge of all men, and, therefore, such was speaking ” things against the Most High.” His ” look was more stout than his fellows,” causing him to claim supreme control over the church, the state, and the world; compelling his people cardinals, bishops, priests, or whomsoever they were, to kiss his feet ; and princes, at one time, to hold his stirrup while he mounted his horse ; and, in some instances, to lay themselves down that he might put his foot upon their necks. Asserting as Pope Paul and Pius did to Henry of France and Elizabeth of England, that as Pope they had a sovereignty above kings and people, and that, by divine appointment, was over nations and over kingdoms, to root out and to cut down, and to destroy and to throw down, to build and to plant. Further, it is added :

” He made war with the saints.”

So Paul, in 2 Thess. 2, follows up Daniel and John in Revelation 13 ; uncovers the beast like unto a leopard, and his feet as the feet of a bear, and his mouth as the mouth of a lion, and the dragon gave him his power and his seat and great authority. Then go on to Rev. 17, and the battle with Rome is described: ” The Lamb shall overcome them; for he is Lord of lords and King of kings ; and they that are with him are called, and chosen, and faithful” This is Romanism that is now being destroyed. The Pope has no longer temporal power. Let God’s children all over the world tell the truth, and her and his so-called spiritual power shall be destroyed, consumed by the spirit of the mouth of our Lord, and by the brightness of his coming, as Christ shall shine in the effulgence of proclaimed truth. Is not this papalism, when it would figure as the religion of Jesus Christ, a fraud? If so, say so; and the work of redemption will be accomplished. Let the cry arise : ” Come out of her, my people, that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues.”

For those who come out of Rome, there is freedom in Jesus Christ ; for those who remain in, there are perils such as have not yet been visited upon any race or class : ” For her sins have reached unto heaven, and God hath remembered her iniquities.”

CHAPTER III. Jesuitism that runs the Church of Rome.

To write the history of Jesuitism is to give in detail the record of sanctified scoundrelism, as with the face of a saint and the heart of a devil it has lived and wrought in this world, to do its worst against Christianity, brotherly love, manhood and rightness.

This is an awful charge. But it is also an awful failure of language when the attempt is made to tell the truth concerning this monster of iniquity. Jesuitism proves that, in human debasement, incarnate fiendishness and devilish capacity for being bad, man in the nineteenth century is equal to any horrid character that may have figured on the historic page.

A cannon-shot hit the leg of a scoundrel instead of his head, as in Spain he stood before Pampileuno’s walls. For religion, catholicity and man, that was the unluckiest cannon-shot recorded in history ; for when the tibia of the wounded patient knitted they marvelously supported the body of a man who with the heart of a devil has been permitted to masquerade in the robes of a saint. Those familiar with jail philosophy can well appreciate the impulse which drives the criminal, convicted of thieving or burglary, or murder, and on the verge of the tomb, to indulge in fancies of huger thieving, or a crueler and more infamous murder, and to long for life or unshackled arms that he might become pre-eminently notorious by its enactment. Now such a thought came over the brain of Ignatius Loyola, the founder of the Order, profanely called, of Jesus, and he recovered and was successful. The Jesuit University is built in Washington as Conspiracy Hall, in hopes that liberty may be throttled in its stronghold. Loyola took the name of Jesuits for his Order, because of pretended visions of God, the Father, who is claimed to have appeared visibly to him, and desired His Son, Jesus Christ, who stood by laden with a heavy cross, to take special care of him and his companions, which Christ promised to do. They are dangerous, because they declare no villainy, no treachery, nor cruelty to be criminal, provided it tends to the benefit of their Society.

In 1762, the King and Parliament of France were moved against the Order, and to be satisfied as to the grounds of complaint against it, they appointed a commission, consisting of five princes of the blood, four peers of France, seven presidents of the court, thirteen counsellors of the grand chamber, and four teen other functionaries. This commission examined one hundred and forty-seven Jesuit authors of celebrity, and in their report they say: “This perversity of the doctrine maintained constantly, and with out interruption, by the priests, scholars, and others styling themselves of the Society of Jesus, would destroy the natural law, that rule of life which God himself has written in the heart of man ; and, as a natural result, would break all the bonds of civil society, authorize theft, perjury, impurity, the most criminal, and, generally, every passion and every crime, by teaching secret compensation, equivocation, mental reservation ; would uproot every feeling of humanity among men, by favoring homicide and parricide ; in fact, would overturn the principles and practices of religion, and substitute in its stead all kinds of superstition, by favoring magic, blasphemy, irreligion, and idolatry.* Clement XIV., in his bull suppressing the Order, declares that it has been censured by Popes Urban XII., Clement X., XI., XII., Alexander VII., VIII., Innocent IX., XII., XIII., and Benedict XII., and then proceeds by saying: ” After a mature deliberation, we do, of our certain knowledge and the fulness of our apostolic power, suppress and abolish the said Society. We deprive it of all activity whatever of its houses, schools, colleges, hospitals, lands, and, in short, of every place whatsoever, in whatever kingdom or province they may be situated. We abrogate and annul its statutes, rules, customs, decrees, and constitutions, even though confirmed by oath, and approved by the Holy See, or otherwise. We declare all and all kind of authority, the general, the provincial, the visitors, and other superiors of said Society, to be forever annulled and extinguished, of whatever nature soever the authority may be ; as well in things spiritual and temporal.”

Be it remembered, that – up to A.D. 1860, this Order of persons had been expelled no less than seventy times from countries in which they had been living and applying their principles, and that these were almost all Roman Catholic countries ; and yet they have a most popular church in Washington, a college in Georgetown, and now are building the University, with the countenance of the representatives of the Great Republic, in less than a quarter of a century after their assassination of Abraham Lincoln !

Let us learn how they train men for infamous deeds.

Behold them consecrating the dagger of the assassin for, perhaps, some man now under the ban.

The following is the Jesuit’s manner of consecrating both the persons and weapons employed for the murdering of kings and princes by them accounted heretics. The person whose silly reasons the Jesuits have overcome with their more potent arguments is immediately conducted into their sanctum sanctorum, designed for prayer and meditation. There the dagger is produced, carefully wrapt up in a linen safe guard, enclosed in an iron sheath, engraven with several enigmatical characters, and accompanied with an Agnus Dei; certainly, a most monstrous confutation so unadvisedly to intertwine the height of murderous villainy and the most sacred emblem of meekness together. The dagger, unsheathed, is hypocritically bedewed with holy water, and the handle, adorned with a certain number of coral beads, put into his hand, thereby assuring the credulous fool that as many effectual stabs as he gives the assassinated prince, so many souls he should redeem out of purgatory on his own account. Then they deliver the dagger into the homicide’s hands, with a solemn recommendation, in these words :

“Elected son of God, receive the sword of Jephthah; the sword of Samson, which was the jawbone of an ass; the sword of David, wherewith he smote off the head of Goliath ; the sword of Gideon ; the sword of Judith ; the sword of the Maccabees ; the sword of Pope Julius II., wherewith he cut off the lives of several princes, his enemies, filling whole cities with slaughter and blood. Go forth prudently, courageously, and the Lord strengthen thine arm.”

Which being pronounced, they all fall upon their knees, and the Superior of the Jesuits pronounces the following exorcism :

” Attend, O ye Cherubim ; descend and be present, O Seraphim. You thrones, you powers, you holy angels, come down and fill this blessed vessel the parricide with eternal glory ; and daily offer to him (for it is but a small reward) the crown of the blessed Virgin Mary, and of all the holy patriarchs and martyrs. He is no more concerned among us ; he is now of your celestial fraternity. And thou, O God, most terrible and inaccessible, who yet has revealed to this instrument of thine, in thy dedicated place of our prayer and meditation, that such a prince is to be cut off as a tyrant and a heretic, and his do minions to be translated to another line, confirm and strengthen, we beseech thee, this instrument of thine, whom we have consecrated and dedicated to that sacred office, that he may be able to accomplish thy will. Grant him the habergeon of thy divine omni-potency, that he may be enabled to escape the hands of his pursuers. Give him wings, that he may avoid the designs of all that lie in wait for his destruction. Infuse into his soul the beams of thy consolation, to uphold and sustain the weak palace of his body ; that, contemning all fears, he may be able to show a cheerful and lively countenance in the midst of present torments or prolonged imprisonments ; and that he may sing and rejoice with a more than ordinary exultation, whatever death he undergoes.”

This exorcism being finished, the parricide is brought to the altar, over which, at that time, hangs a picture containing the story of James Clement, a Dominican friar, with the figures of several angels protecting him and conducting him to heaven. This Clement was accounted a blessed martyr for his barbarous murder of Henry III., King of France. This picture the Jesuits show their cully ; and, at the same time, presenting him with a celestial coronet, rehearse these words : ” Lord, look down and behold this arm of thine, the executioner of thy justice ; let all thy saints arise, and give place to him ; ” which ceremonies being ended, there are five Jesuits deputed to converse with him, and keep the parricide company ; who, in their common discourse, make it their business, upon all occasions, to fill his ears with their divine wheedles ; making him believe that a certain celestial splendor shines in his countenance, by the beams whereof they are so overawed as to throw themselves down before him and kiss his feet ; that he appears no more a mortal, but is transfigured into a Deity ; and, lastly, in a deep dissimulation, they bewail themselves, and feign a kind of envy at the happiness and eternal glory which he is so suddenly to enjoy ; exclaiming thus before the credulous wretch : ” Would to God the Lord had chosen me in thy stead, and had so ordained it by these means, that being free from the pains of purgatory, I might go directly, without let, to paradise.” But if the persons whom they imagined proper to attempt the parricide prove anything squeamish or reluctant to their exhortations, then, by nocturnal scare crows and affrighting apparitions, or by the suborned appearances of the Holy Virgin, or some other of the saints, even of Ignatius Loyola himself, or some of his most celebrated associates, they terrify the soon retrieved misbeliever into a compliance with a ready- prepared oath, which they force him to take, and thereby they animate and encourage his staggering resolution. Thus these villainous and impious doctors in the arts of murder and parricide, sometimes by the terrors of punishment, sometimes by the allurements of merit, inflame the courage of the unwary, and, having entangled them in the grooves of sacrilegious and bloody attempts, precipitate both soul and body into eternal damnation.

This is the method by which Jesuits clear themselves from their enemies. How happy, then, must that nation be, where Loyalists flourish !

Add to this the Jesuit’s oath, and the peril seems increased : “I do renounce and disown any allegiance as due to any heretical king, prince or state named Protestant, or obedience to any of their inferior magistrates or officers.”

“I do further declare that the doctrine of the Church of England, the Calvinists, Huguenots, and of others of the name of Protestants, to be damnable ; and they themselves are damned and to be damned that will not forsake the same.

” I do further declare, that I will help, assist, and advise all or any of His Holiness agents, in any place wherever I shall be, to extirpate the heretical Protestant doctrine ; and to destroy all their pretended powers, regal or otherwise.

“I do further promise and declare, that notwithstanding I am dispensed with to assume any religion heretical, for the purpose of propagating of the Mother Church’s interest, to keep secret and private all her agents councils, from time to time as they intrust me, and not to divulge, directly or indirectly, by words, writing, or circumstance whatsoever, but to execute all that shall be proposed, given in charge or discovered unto me, by you, my ghostly adviser, or any of this sacred convent. All this I swear, by the blessed Trinity and blessed Sacrament, which I am about to receive, to perform, and on my part to keep inviolably ; and do call all the heavenly and glorious host of heaven to witness these my real intentions, to keep this my oath.

” In testimony whereof, I take this most holy and blessed Sacrament of the Eucharist, and witness the same further with my hand and seal, in the holy convent, this day of A.D.,” etc.

This oath evidences that every Jesuit is a traitor to the play, ready at any moment to perform any act that will further the interests of his order. It permits him to be a hypocrite, and to profess religion simply to plot against it and overthrow it. Jesuitism makes religion a pretense and a sham and plotting and rascality a business, and yet it runs the Church of Rome, and is treated by one of the great political parties as an ally worthy of confidence and support. Why were the Jesuits reinstated by Pio Nono, and confirmed in their position by Leo XIII? To answer this-question, we must go back to 1868. Then, to take away the States of the Church from the rule of the Pope, was to bring universal crash to every European empire. Fortunately, Emperor William had no faith in such prognostications. Within the Church of Rome was a conflict as to the propriety of pronouncing the Pope infallible. Discussion went on throughout the Roman Catholic world. The prophecy of Paul, in 2 Thess. 2:3,4, was to be fulfilled ; “the man of sin, the son of perdition,” was to ” exalt himself above all that is called God or that is worshipped ; so that he as God sitteth in the temple of God, showing himself that he is God.” This was fulfilled in A. D. 1870. Two hundred thousand people have borne Pio Nono to his throne in St. Peter’s and worshipped him as God. He is absolute in power. French bayonets uphold his temporal power. It looks as if the Pope was supreme.

Open again the Word of God to Rev. 17:11, and read the doom of Louis Napoleon, ” the beast that was,” is Napoleon I ; “and is not,” for there was a time when the Napoleonic power was out of sight and out of mind. After which, Louis Napoleon climbed to power, betrayed Mazzini, and Garibaldi in Italy, became the beast upon which the Harlot of the Tiber rode ; ” and is the eighth and is of the seven,” for it will be remembered, he built on the Napoleonic dynasty, and went to perdition. This is prophecy. Read a page from history. The Minister of France walks in the palace-yard of Emperor William and makes a remark which gives offence. Napoleon had boasted of his prowess, and thought a war only was necessary to make him Master of Prussia, as was his uncle before him. Emperor William resented the affront and rebuked the speaker. As a result, war was declared ; and the German army, as if on a picnic- excursion, overran France, encamped at Versailles, and took possession of Paris, and Louis Napoleon as an exile disappeared from the affairs of Europe. The army of France was withdrawn. The army of Victor Emmanuel was invited by the people of the States of the Church to enter Eome as King of Italy. He came. The Pope retired to the Vatican as the spiritual sovereign of Roman Catholics, but as temporal ruler no more.

It was to the Pope a humiliation, and, perhaps, prepares the way for his destruction. Without an army, without support, he turned to the only power in the world in which he could trust to do the work of conspirators, assassins, and revolutionists, the Jesuits. He reinstated them. They be came the right arm of his strength, and have been seeking his restoration to temporal power. Every one who knows what their principles and history are, will feel satisfied that, like the Indian boomerang, they are much more likely to injure the hand that uses them than those whom they are employed to oppose. The condition of the Pope is pitiable. He lives, as it were, on sufferance ; no longer the mighty and powerful ruler of the past, but influential simply because of his power outside of Rome, not inside. The Bible has entered Rome, the Word of God is not bound.

We have been accustomed to bless God for that fatherly care of Divine Providence, which neither allowed the era of American colonization to be hastened, nor that of the Reformation to be deferred. Had these events been differently arranged, it has been said had Spanish blood, and not English, flowed in the veins of our first settlers, or had the Mayflower borne to our shores the foundations of a Catholic colony, and had Roger Williams been a Jesuit missionary or had the schemes of French conquest, that would have made Canada but the starting point of North American empire, been successful, how different had been the annals of the country, and the entire race ! All that reads well. But when we remember that Providence, R. I., is almost a Roman Catholic town that a bishop was recently installed there in the presence of all the magnates of the state, and that Washington is in the lap of Rome, it becomes us not to boast of deliverance, but to recall our peril and prepare to resist the encroachments of liberty’s foe. Remember, that the Jesuits ruling Washington may dispense with all laws, human and divine, dissolve all oaths and vows, and free men in the Cabinet of the President from the obligations which bind other men. So soon as a city or country is under their control, no member of the community can promise to himself security, either to his life, honor, or estate. Nay, the person of the President is not exempted from danger, when he is once the object of Jesuitical spleen.

Shall Jesuits be welcomed or expelled? is the question which is yet to agitate the people of the United States. Up to the present time, so great has been the love of liberty in the hearts of the people, that they have tolerated with impunity anarchists, revolutionists, and Jesuits. The idea of suppression for opinion’s sake has been repugnant to the sentiment of the majority. But a reaction is setting in. The people begin to see that it is cowardice to throw up the hands at the dicta of this blood-stained crowd, and permit them to scuttle the ship on which we are making a common voyage. Self-preservation, if nothing else, will compel the people of the United States to take the most stringent measures against the evil of the time, and to give even clearer scrutiny to the methods and principles and conduct of the Jesuits. They work in darkness, and they oppose the truth. Seven millions of people in free America, and 250,000,000 throughout the world, are ruled by their mandate. The Pope has enthroned them in power and reinstated them in all their former possessions. With the people over whom they have control, argument goes for nothing. The needs of the country are cast aside as unworthy of regard. The requirements of the church is their all and in all. Oaths are valueless, if to keep them imperils the Order, or the church. Their history is a continued series of associations, massacres of innocent people, conspiracies and machinations against existing laws and orders. The masses they have incited to revolt, and the rulers to bloody and fruitless wars. Corruption they sow broadcast over the land in order to further their doctrines of treason, perjury, falsehood, and murder. Brazen as they are, they use their power of religion as a cloak to hide their sins against God, and their sins against man. Today their one object of detestation is the public school system of the United States. They see that the education of the masses is their ruination. In the South there are millions of freedmen growing up in ignorance, owing to the inability of the several States to educate them. Well has the Hon. Henry W. Blair, in the Senate, called attention to the duty of the nation to educate the rising generation. “It is of very little consequence,” said the Senator, ” relatively, what becomes of the present generation. What we are, we are, and are likely to be ; but it is of great importance what shall be the fate of the future, which depends so largely upon the conduct of the present. The real question is, whether this generation, with natural powers for the control of the destiny of the country for the time being, is to make that provision for the generation to come which has been made for the generation existing by those who have preceded it ; whether this generation, so far as it has the capacity to do so, is to make better preparation for the discharge of its duties on the part of the coming generation, so far as it should be made, than was made by those who preceded us.” If the Christian and intelligent people of the United States are not awake to the importance of this measure, the Jesuits are. They saw from the first that Romanism is doomed, if the people of this land are to be educated. Jesuitism understands that a great fight is already out lining itself for the future between the common schools of the United States and Romanism. Jesuitism is not afraid. She fights education openly and secretly. Said Senator Blair: “Upon this very floor, soon after we had passed this bill, full two years ago, and while it was in the hands of a packed committee in the House of Representatives, where it was finally strangled, on this very floor, a senator showed me a letter which I read with my own eyes, the original letter of a Jesuit priest, in which he begged a member of Congress to oppose this bill and to kill it, saying, that they had organized all over the country “for its destruction ; that they succeeded in the committees of the House, and they would destroy the bill inevitably ; and if they had only known it early enough, they could have prevented its passing through the Senate. They have begun in season this time ; but they will not destroy this bill.

“Twelve years ago, when I was a member of the House of Representatives, and when we were under taking to enact a constitutional amendment which was to prevent the appropriation of public money to the support of sectarian schools in this country, a friend of mine pointed out to me upon that floor nine Jesuits, who were there log-rolling against that proposed amendment of the Constitution. There in Washington is that Jesuit organization which has set out to control this country, which has been repudiated by every free country, Catholic and Protestant, in the Old World : they have come to our borders ; they are among us today, and to stay ; and they understand that they are to secure the control of this continent, by destroying the public school system of America. They are engaged in that nefarious, wicked work. And as Jesuits have been expelled from the Old World, let me say, the time is soon coming when the Jesuits will be looked upon as more the enemy of this country than is the Anarchist today. And the process either of their expulsion, or of their conversion, will be the one in which the American people will sometime be engaged, unless the Order change their programme and their work.”

Brave words were these of Senator Blair, the bravest spoken for many a day ! The Senate passed the Bill. When it went to the House, the Jesuits again showed their hand. The Presidential election being near, made men careful. The usual Jesuit lobby was present, and the bill was referred to a committee appointed by the Jesuits servant, the Speaker of the House, where it will lie until the citizens awake to their peril, and send men to Congress less susceptible to Jesuitical influence. The speech was delivered Feb. 15th, 1888. On May 25th, 1888, Mr. Blair introduced the following joint resolution ; which was read twice, and ordered to lie on the table :

“Resolved by the /Senate and House of Representatives of the United /States of America in Congress assembled (two-thirds of each House concurring therein) , That, the following amendment to the Constitution of the United States be, and hereby is, proposed to the States, to become valid when ratified by the legislatures of three-fourths of the States, as provided in the Constitution :

ARTICLE

” SECTION 1. No State shall ever make or maintain any law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.

” SEC. 2. Each State in this Union shall establish and maintain a system of free public schools, adequate for the education of all the children living therein, between the ages of six and sixteen years, inclusive, in the common branches of knowledge, and in virtue, morality, and the principles of the Christian religion. But no money raised by taxation imposed by law, or any money or other property or credit belonging to any municipal organization, or to any State, or to the United States, shall ever be appropriated, applied, or given to the use or purposes of any school, institution, corporation, or person, whereby instruction or training shall be given in the doctrines, tenets, beliefs, ceremonials, or observances peculiar to any sect, denomination, organization, or society, being, or claiming to be, religious in its character, nor shall such peculiar doctrines, tenets, beliefs, ceremonials, or observances, be taught or inculcated, in the free public schools.

” SEC. 3. To the end that each State, the United States, and all the people thereof, may have and preserve governments republican in form and in substance, the United States shall guaranty to every State, and to the people of every State and of the United States, the support and maintenance of such a system of free public schools as is herein provided.

” SEC. 4. That Congress shall enforce this article by legislation when necessary.” Another plot. The Jesuits have formed a colonization scheme, with a capital of $2,000,000, to aid Romanists in getting control of the South.

THE CONVENTION.

All the Southern States were represented except Florida, Texas and Arkansas, and most, if not all the great Southern railroad corporations were like wise represented by their Presidents or other officers. The following is taken from the Atlanta Evening Journal of April 26th, being part of the report of that paper :

“ Gov. Fitzhugh Lee, of Virginia, was selected as President. Committees on business and resolutions were appointed by the delegations from the respective States. Col. W. P. Price was made the chairman of the Georgia delegation, and Mr. Sandy Cohen, of Augusta, selected as secretary. Governor J. B. Gordon, Bishop Becker, Patrick Walsh, and E. P. Howell, were chosen as the Committee for Georgia. Interesting addresses were made by Cardinal Gibbons, Rt. Rev. Bishop Kane of West Virginia, Rt. Rev. Bishop Northup of South Carolina, and Governors Gordon of Georgia and Richard son of South Carolina. The speech of Gov. Gordon is especially highly commended.

“At the night session, the Immigration Committee adopted the following resolutions : “Resolved, That an Immigration Society be established, with headquarters in the city of New York, to be styled The Southern Immigration Association.

“Resolved, That this Association be placed under the care of a board of directors, composed of one member of each Southern railroad or other corporation, trade, industrial or other organization in each state, county, city or town, situated east of the Mississippi river, that will contribute the sum of $1,000 towards the expenses of said Association on or before July 1st next, and that on the second Tuesday of July, 1888, the board so constituted shall meet in New York, and proceed to organize, and adopt such by-laws, rules and regulations as may be necessary for its government.

“Resolved, That until such organization is perfected, Major John D. Kelly, Jr., be constituted chief of the Association, with power to call the board together whenever said contributions from railroads or other corporations, trades, industrial or other organizations of states, cities, counties and towns, shall have reached the aggregate sum of $20,000 ; and when such call has been made, the board of directors shall proceed immediately to perfect a permanent organization, as provided for in the second resolution.

* Resolved, That immediately upon adoption of these resolutions, the Secretary of the convention shall give notice of the same to the Governor of each of the Southern States, to the President of each of the Southern railroads, and to the Mayor of every city, and to every town in the Southern States east of the Mississippi River, having a population of 5,000 or more, and to solicit the co-operation of said officers in furthering the objects of this convention.”

The central office of this association is located at New York.

Concerning this convention, it is meet that all should be informed. It met April 25, 1888, at Hot Springs, North Carolina. There were present the cardinal, bishops, priests, politicians and railroad men. The object for which the conference was called was the consideration of Catholic immigration to the South.

Slavery, whatever were its evils, fenced off Roman immigration from Europe, and threw it North, so that, of the 16,000,000 foreigners who have come to the country, not more than 600,000 have settled in the Southern States.

It is known that the negroes in the South are Republicans ; and if their votes are counted they will become a power. The Jesuits attempt to offset this by a foreign vote. Romanism is advancing through our open gates like a mighty force, bulldozing and corrupting our legislators, and demanding privileges and exemptions for itself which no other sect would do. How long will it be before the Jesuits shall engineer bills through the halls of Congress as they have done in New York?

CARDINAL GIBBONS VIEWS ON THIS PUBLIC QUESTION.

Cardinal Gibbons has just returned from the South. Regarding the immigration convention held recently at Hot Springs, N. C., he says: “The class of immigrants that the convention wants to bring among the people of the South are thrifty and well-to-do natives of Ireland and Germany. We do not want anarchists or paupers. The South needs development badly, and I know of no better way than to offer inducements to honest emigrants. I deny that the movement is one to increase the power of the Catholic Church in the South, other than what legitimate increase may follow from such. The Church upholds the law, and that should be sufficient guaranty to any intelligent mind of the sincerity and honesty of our purpose.” Will the American people be deceived by this Jesuitical special pleading for this Romish scheme ?

CAN THE JESUITS BE EXPELLED?

A recent writer has said, that in expelling the Jesuits, not alone all Protestant Americans would unite, but thousands upon thousands of the most intelligent members of the Roman Catholic Church would join hands. Jesuitism is almost as dangerous to them as to Protestants. There is no religion in Jesuitism. It is foreign to the principles of the gospel, inimical to liberty, and a conspirator against the State. Because of their insatiate greed for power and influence, they have been feared, hated, driven out. It is believed that it will be so in this, free land. Some deed will be performed, some word spoken, which shall uncover the traitor ; when the American people will arise and make short work of the invader that seeks to crush out freedom, that despotism resting on ignorance, on superstition and error, may thrive. The cry will yet be heard : “Expel the Jesuits.” Then, vox populi shall be the vox Dei.

CHAPTER IV. How Washington came to be Washington.

The few seem to know ; the many reckon, it happened so. Such are oblivious to the fact, that before even Washington was even a dream in the minds of men, Rome had plotted to hold the continent. By Rome, we mean the power that makes Rome what she is, and what she is to be, ” the prince of the power of the air,” who has incarnated himself in Jesuitism, as Christ is incarnated in Christianity ; the power that works in darkness, and plans the suppression of the the truth and the overthrow of the rule of Christ. ” For we wrestle not,” says Paul, “against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers, and against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.”(Eph. 6:12) John said: “He that committeth sin is of the devil, for the devil sinneth from the beginning. For this purpose was the Son of God manifested, that he might destroy the works of the devil. “(1 John 3:8) In this manifestation of Christ through the proclamation of the truth, lies the hope of the world. If then we charge Romanism with being cunning, subtle, and sly, the reason for the charge is supplied in the words quoted, which inform us of the cunning craftiness whereby Rome lies in wait to deceive.

THE POWER IS UNSEEN.

It is shadowy. It inhabits the air and infects it. Romanism is the malaria of the spiritual world. It stupefies the brain, deadens the heart, and sears the conscience as with a hot iron. It stands across the track of the world s life, with gifts in its hands, offering rule, supremacy, power and wealth to all who will fall down and worship her.*

They who yield have peace and praise. They who refuse must fight a desperate foe. The many do not believe this. They are blinded by ambition and fear, and they see it not. Deaf are they and they hear not the truth, and yet the truth remains. The what is, is the outgrowth of the what has been. Don t forget it. A wise, astute, cunning, comprehensive intellect has helped Romanism in the past, and is helping it now.

Washington is in the lap of Rome, because of influences which stirred the hearts of people and made them to act worse than they knew.

A few facts will make all this plain. Columbus was actuated by a desire to promote the interests of Romanism, when he traversed an unknown sea and discovered this Western World. Cortez and Pizarro went to Mexico and Peru, and captured them for the same purpose. Their lives were full of cruelty, but that did not hurt them with Rome. Lord Baltimore came to Maryland to find a refuge for persecuted” (2 Thess. 2:8,9) Romanists and named the place of retreat Mary’s land.

To escape the fangs of Romanism and priestly intolerance, the Puritans forsook their homes beyond the sea, came to New England, and on Plymouth Rock built an altar to liberty, sought on bleak New England shores freedom to worship God. They have been called narrow in their thought, and it is claimed they meant by liberty, liberty for themselves, and the right to banish all who thought differently.

Roger Williams, in the furnace fire of affliction and persecution, had the fetters of slavery to creed burned away, and came forth, through the wilderness and the sleet and snows of winter, to ” What Cheer Rock,” where he became the champion of liberty for all.

Archbishop Hughes once said : “Far be it from me to diminish, by one iota, the merit that is claimed for Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, and perhaps other states, on the score of having proclaimed religious freedom, but the Catholics of Maryland, by priority of time, had borne away the prize.” This is untrue, both as regards time and character of what purported to be religious freedom. The Roman Catholic colony sailed up the Potomac in 1634. In Maryland the boasted law was passed in 1649, two years after the doctrine of religious freedom was proclaimed in Rhode Island. Bancroft, in speaking of what was done in Maryland, says : “The controversy between the king and the parliament advanced, the overthrow of the monarchy seemed about to confer unlimited power in England upon the embittered enemies of the Romish Church ; and, as if with a foresight of impending danger, and an earnest desire to stay its approach, the Roman Catholics of Maryland, with the covert countenance of their governor and of the proprietary, determined to place upon their statute-book an act of guaranty of religious freedom, which had ever been sacred upon their soil. This is the language of the Act : And whereas the enforcing of the conscience in matters of religion had frequently fallen out to be of dangerous consequences in those commonwealths where it has been practiced, and for the more quiet and peaceable government of this province, and the better to preserve mutual love and amity among the inhabitants, no person within this province professing to believe in Jesus Christ, shall in any ways be troubled, molested, or discountenanced for his or her religion, or the free exercise thereof.” This, then, is their law poor as it is. In Rhode Island , their code of laws passed in 1647, closes with the following noble avowal of religious liberty to all: ” Otherwise than this what is herein forbidden, all men may walk as their consciences persuade them, every one in the name of God. And let the lambs of the Most High walk in this colony without molestation, in the name of Jehovah their God, for ever and ever.”

At a time when Germany was the battle-field for all Europe, in the implacable wars of religion ; when even Holland was bleeding with the anger of vengeful factions ; when France was still to go through the fearful struggle with bigotry ; when England was gasping under the despotism of intolerance ; almost half a century before William Penn became an American proprietor ; and two years before Descartes founded modern philosophy on the method of free reflection Roger Williams assisted the great doctrine of intellectual liberty. It became his glory to found a state upon that principle ; and to stamp it upon its rising institutions, in characters so deep that the impression has remained to the present day, and can never be erased without the total destruction of the work. The principles which the first sustained, amid the bickerings of a colonial faith, next asserted in the general court of Massachusetts, and then introduced into the wilds of Narragansett Bay, he soon found occasion to publish to the world, and to defend as the basis of the religious freedom of man kind ; so that, borrowing the rhetoric employed by his antagonist in derision, we may compare him to the lark, the pleasant bird of the peaceful summer, that, affecting to soar aloft, springs upward from the ground, takes his rise from pole to tree, and at last surmounting the highest hills, utters his clear chorals through the skies of morning. He was the first person in modern Christendom to assert, in its plenitude, the doctrine of the liberty of conscience, the equality of opinions before the law ; and in its defense he was the harbinger of Milton, the precursor and the superior of Jeremy Taylor. For Taylor limited his toleration to a few Christian sects ; the philanthrophy of Williams compassed the earth. Taylor favored partial reform, commended lenity, argued for forbearance, and entered a special plea in behalf of each tolerable sect : Williams would permit persecutions of no opinion, of no religion ; leaving heresy unharmed by law, and orthodoxy unprotected by the terrors of penal statutes.

Without comment, let us notice what Bancroft says of the Maryland statutes :

” The clause for liberty in Maryland,” he says, ” extended only to Christians, and was introduced by the proviso, That whatsoever person shall blaspheme God, or shall deny or reproach the Holy Trinity, or any of the three Persons thereof, shall be punished by death. Any person using any reproachful word or speeches concerning the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of our Saviour, or the holy Apostles or Evangelists, or any of them, for the first offense, were to forfeit five pounds sterling to the lord proprietary, or, in default of payment, to be publicly and severely whipped and imprisoned, as before directed ; and for the third oflfense to forfeit lands and goods, and be forever banished out of the province. ”

Cardinal Gibbons defines religious liberty to be the free right of worshipping God according to the dictates of a right conscience, and -of producing a form of religion most in accordance with his duties to God.” In other words, religious liberty is the free right of worshipping according to the commands of [Vol. 1, p. 256] the church of Eome, and of producing a form of religion in accordance with the commands of the Pope. Behind such a definition the Inquisitorial tortures of Torquemada in Spain were practised, the Waldenses and Albigenses were exterminated by fire and sword, Ridley and Latimer were burned at the stake, the fires were kindled at Smithfield for the burning of the Word of God, and the inhuman barbarities witnessed in convents and elsewhere where Rome has control, are sanctioned and endorsed. Full religious liberty means perfect liberty in our relation to God, to believe or not to believe, to worship or not to worship, as conscience may dictate. In the realm of religious liberty, suasion is the only weapon to be used. God alone is the Lord of the conscience. For this principle Roger Williams, Isaac Backus and others contended, and the doctrines they enunciated have shed a light which causes the thrones of despotism to stand out in horrid contrast with the altars of Republican hope.

After the proclamation of religious liberty came the formation of the Republic. A nation was born. A capital became a necessity. It has been said : The American capital is the only seat of Government of a first-class power which was a thought and the performance of the Government itself. It used to be called, in the Madisonian era, “the only virgin capital in the world.” {Geo, Alfred Townsend, in his Washington City, Outside and Inside} St. Petersburg was the thought of an emperor, but the capital of Russia long remained at Moscow, and 31Peter the Great said that he designed St. Petersburg to be only a window looking into Europe. Washington City was designed to be not merely a window, but a whole inhabitancy, in fee simple, for the deliberations of Congress, and they were to exercise exclusive legislation over it. So the Constitutional Convention ordained, and in less than seven weeks after the thirteenth State ratified the Constitution, the place of the Capital was designated by Congress to the Potomac River. In six months, the precise territory on the Potomac was selected under the personal eye of Washington. The home of the so-called Father of his Country was Mt. Vernon. Virginia was then the Empire State. Her population outnumbered both New York and Pennsylvania. Baltimore was then the Queen City, and Annapolis offered a safe retreat for Congress, who had been insulted in Philadelphia, and the Pennsylvanian authorities neglected to afford adequate protection. Then Congress resolved to have a place of its own.

Maryland was an early applicant for the seat of Government, and so was Michigan, Kentucky, Indiana ; but the Federal City came to Maryland and was located on the banks of the Potomac, very largely because of the munificent offer made by Virginia, and of the paramount influence of Washington. At that time Georgetown was a port of entry, and was a slave- market, and largely settled by Romanists. The Jesuit College had been established there, and priest and people were quick to see the opportunities of advancement placed within their reach. The influence of Roman Catholic Maryland has been noticeable in the “City of Magnificent Distances” from the first. Behind Maryland, and in league with Jesuit and Priests, was and is the power referred to, “The Prince of the power of the air.” This fact must be kept in mind. It explains the mysteries that envelop the city.

Does it not tell us another truth, that God is not afraid. Though Satan is potent, he is not omnipotent. Though Rome is very prudent and wise, she has not all wisdom. Up above us all is a Being who sees the end from the beginning, and though “the lot is cast into the lap, the disposal thereof is with the Lord.” Let us believe this. “He that hath a dream, let him tell a dream, and he that hath my word, let him speak my word faithfully. What is the chaff to the wheat? saith the Lord. Is not my word like a fire? saith the Lord, and like a hammer that breaketh the rock in pieces ? ” (Jer. 23:28, 29)

It was July 16th, 1790, that President Washington approved the bill in six sections which directed the acceptance of ten miles square for the permanent seat of the Government. Georgetown had been laid out for forty years. The Jesuit mission of Maryland, began by Father Andrew White, Father John Grovernor and Father Timothy Hayes, in 1633, antedates the settlement of all the original thirteen states, except Virginia and Massachusetts.

The Jesuit College had been founded in 1789, one year before the capital was located on the Potomac. It was chartered as a University in 1815. It had been weak. In 1872, though ten Jesuit professors taught, there were but fifty-six students. The Convent of Visitation was founded in 1799. Virginia was called ” the Mother of Presidents, and the Mother of States.” She had then a population of 750,000; Pennsylvania had 434,000 ; and New York 340,000. North Carolina, with 394,000, outnumbered Massachusetts with 379,000. It was not until 1820 that any state passed Virginia ; but in 1830 New York and Pennsylvania had bidden her good bye ! ”

The Capitol was staked out the year after Frank lin died, thirty years before the death of George III., in Goethe s 52nd year and Schiller s 32nd ; sixteen years before the first steamboat, two years before Louis XII, was guillotined, when Louis Phillippi was in his 19th year, when George Stephenson was a boy of ten, the year John Wesley died, in Napoleon’s 22nd year, the year Morse was born and Mirabeau was buried, in the third year of the London Times, just after Lafayette had been the most powerful man in France, three years before the death of Edward Gibbon, while Warren Hastings was on trial, in Burke s 61st year, in Foxe’s 42nd, Pitt s 32nd, in the Popedom of Pius VII.

The laying-out of the city was taken in charge by Major L Enfant. In the survey, the little creek called the Tiber a name so significant to Romanists ; though it designates a little creek, long afterwards the eyesore of the city obtained significance in the estimation of Roman Catholics.

So much for history. Rumor has it that the Southerners voted against a Northern town, that slavery might find protection beneath the shadow of the Capitol, where she reared her Auction Block, and did her best to perpetuate her infamies. Is it not possible that Rome, the foster-parent of slavery, hoped to find in slaveholders allies and helpers to promote the interests of this twin-relic of mediaeval barbarism, which it is hoped may be removed with out a civil war and without compelling the nation to wade through a sea of blood? Victor Hugo, in his Les Miserables, describes the devil-fish. Its long, floating arms envelopes its victim, and silently bears it to the vortex of ruin. The devil-fish of Victor Hugo s imagination is matched by the skill displayed by Rome in Washington, which it seeks to hold.

Mighty as is Rome, it has been baffled and beaten elsewhere, and can be beaten again. At this hour, it looks as if an untimely surrender had been made. The truth proclaimed will awaken the people to the infamy of the deed, and they will take back what belongs to them, and Washington shall be free.

CHAPTER V. Jesuits climb to power in Washington

Jesuits sue for the favor of the great and powerful. To obtain this, they decry faith in God, join in attacks on Rome, play the atheist or the infidel. Jesuitism permits its votary to do what pleases him. Submission to God is not in their creed. Jesuitism, in its practice, pays a premium on talent, on trickery, on cunning. It glories in subtlety. It is “all things to all men.” Falsehood, theft, murder, none of these things stand in its way. According to the compendium published in Strasburg in 1843, it is written as follows :

“Perjury Should it be asked how far a man should be bound, who has taken an oath in a false manner, and for the purpose of deceiving, the answer is, that in point of religion he is not bound at all, because he has not taken a true oath; but in point of justice he is bound to do that which he has sworn fictitiously and in order to deceive.” There is honor for the people in America ! Robbery is permitted, and so is murder ! Jesuitism is free to accomplish its designs. Among the wants of mankind may be reckoned an appetite for deception; a desire inherent in our depraved natures to bring to an agreement the claims of the Deity with the indulgence of our frailties; a mild impatience for the conveniences and splendors of a religious structure in which the history of delusion may be enjoyed to the full. And most prodigally does the Romish church minister to this demand. Ample and complete indeed was the apparatus which she provided for the accommodation of all the various passions and propensities of man.

When the structure which she had reared had reached its perfection, it “had a chamber for every natural faculty of the soul, and an occupation for every energy of the natural spirit.” She there permitted every extreme abstemiousness and indulgence, fast and revelry; melancholy abstraction and burning zeal; subtle acuteness and popular discourse; world renunciation and worldly ambition; embracing the arts and the sciences and the stores of ancient learning; adding antiquity and misrepresentation of all monuments of better times, and covering carefully with a venerable veil that only monument of better times which was able to expose the false ministry of the infinite superstition. {Irving’s Babylon, page 238}

It is needless to add that the sorcery which thus drugged the world, was, from the first, most prodigally patronized by the vices and wants of human nature. In Washington, nothing is done by Romanists to frighten the most timid. Nothing to waken people up. Nothing to scare or alarm. And yet whoever enters Washington is met by this unseen influence. If he surrenders, be he president, department clerk, or minister of the gospel, there is peace. If he refuses to yield, and stands for the liberties of the people, then there is a fight. The powers of hell are evoked. His path is blocked. His limbs are fettered. His words fall like lead, and are no longer winged with power. This is known; and men who wish promotion recognize the truth, and adjust their plans accordingly.

Rome as a machine in politics is a success. The Pope is the church, since 1870. The Jesuits rule the Pope.

It is said that Leo XIII. thought himself to be Pope. The Jesuits thought differently. The Pope was poisoned. His agony was excruciating. A Jesuit approached him; told him the truth : ” You are poisoned. You have so long a time to live. If you surrender, the antidote is ready ” He surrendered to Jesuitism, and lives as their machine, to be worked in their interest, and as the foe of all that is ennobling and improving among men. Does that story seem incredible? It is but a repetition of what has occurred again and again. Jesuitism, that has been banished from every country in Europe, finds in the United States a welcome and a sphere for action. The Cardinal is the mouthpiece and servant of the Order. As a political machine, it is with out a rival. It is not hindered by principle or even pretension. It does what it will pay to have done. It works for its own interest, first, last, and all the time. It helps the party that will do its behests blindly and without questioning. It delivers its goods. If it promises votes for reward, it gives the votes and expects the reward. Powerful at Washington, it is equally powerful outside. Offend the Order at the Seat of Government, and a whispered word brings opposition from every quarter, if that be necessary; while it delivers a single blow with equal force, and is feared everywhere, because of its capabilities to work mischief in any given locality.

In the days of slavery, it was the ally of despotism. It was supposed to be the sure ally of the Confederacy; or, perhaps, the attempt to draw out of the Union never had been made. What it could not do openly, it did in secret. The lovers of liberty not only overthrew slavery, but proved to Romanism that the cohorts of liberty are to be feared. Hence Romanism withdrew from public gaze, and, adopting the tactics of Uriah Heep, served that it might rule. The audaciousness of Rome is only equalled by its industry. It never tires. It is in league with all the forces of evil. Three-fourths of the saloon keepers are Romanists. A politician of Cincinnati declared, “I would rather have the help of one saloon than of five churches.” The probability is, the churches could not be brought to the support of such a man. The saloons could. Rome runs them. They pay for it. Week after week, Sisters, in the service of Rome, visit them and obtain their weekly stipend, and bestow the blessing of the church on the infamous traffic.

Rome climbs to power because it is joined to every form of evil, is in league with the enemy of all righteousness, and runs with the multitude in evil-doing. To Rome Satan said, “Fall down and worship me, and 1 will lift you to places of power and influence.” The deed was done. The result has followed. Place, then, an organism that is utterly unscrupulous at the direction of a party, that controls the press and the plug-uglies,” the pulpit and the penal class, that lays one hand on the homes of fashion and culture, and the other on the tenement-house; one on the banking office, and the other on the workshop and factory, that marshals the aspirants after power and the class that only cries for gain, that steps upon the platform as adviser, and into the caucus as director, that is at all times and everywhere capable of achieving results, and it is not strange that its power is evoked and that its behests are obeyed. Rome has climbed to power in Washington because men have forgotten country and God, and served evil for the sake of gain. It has been said :

“The Inquisition is not only one of the horrors of history, but one of its greatest lessons also. It is the greatest argument to prove that the only safety of nations is in justice and liberty.”

In a few years Rome will become able to establish the Inquisition here, unless a speedy change for the better comes over the spirit of our people. When I looked upon the cells of solid masonry standing back to back in the cellar of a Catholic church in New Jersey, and noticed the size of them, and that they were exactly such ones as are described in history, in which human beings were walled up alive, I said to myself, Who is to be walled up to die in there ? ” I stood upon the wall of an unfinished church, to take my observation that wall was several feet thick. A woman was wheeling a baby-carriage upon it, and she had plenty of room. Not the cry of a hundred men could be heard through such a wall when finished. What do innocent churches want of such walls in a free country ? Ah ! the not distant future will tell, if “the Catholics become a considerable majority.”

That kind of a cell is not confined to New Jersey. The cells and underground passages in the cellar of the Jesuit college in Washington would alarm the American people, if they were not case-hardened and dead to reason. In one cellar beneath a Roman Catholic church is a cell in which is an iron cellar. It can be closed air-tight. What horrid crimes have been committed there, God only knows. Rome is not changed, in spirit or in purpose. She boasts of her intolerance, and practices her inhumanity when ever she can. Let a member of Congress determine, because of public opinion, and perhaps because of the intrinsic merits of a bill that obtains the approval of his judgment and because he believes it will advance the interests of his constituency to refuse a vote to advance a scheme upon which Rome has set its heart, or to pass an appropriation bill in which Rome has an interest, and presto ! he finds himself antagonized by a spirit that infects the air and confronts and destroys his influence. An unseen hand is found directing affairs at the nominating convention and manipulating ballots at the polls. Because of this, the power of Rome is dreaded and courted in Washington and throughout the country.

ROME IS WELL SERVED.

Cardinal, archbishops, priests, brothers, monks, nuns, sisters of charity and of the poor these, and an innumerable multitude beside, do her bidding. They will tell the truth, or a falsehood, in accordance with the needs of Rome. They will cringe and crawl as beggars, or frown and threaten as masters. They will deceive the very elect.

PAUL DESCRIBES THEM.

They are “lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, without natural aifection, truce breakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good, traitors, heady, high minded, lovers of pleasure more than lovers of God; having a form of godliness and denying the power thereof. . . . For of this sort are they which creep into houses and lead captive silly women, laden with sins, led away with divers lusts, ever learning and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth; from such turn away.” ( 2 Tim. 3:2-7)

Beyond what are called the sacred orders, Rome has a vast constituency, which are being organized by the Jesuits into a great number of secret societies, the principal of which are : “The Ancient Order of Hibernians” , “ Irish American Society “, “Knights of St. Patrick”, ”Knights of the Red Branch” etc., etc.; while it is said, and believed, there are 700,000 men enrolled under the name of U. S. Volunteers, Militia, and officered by some of the skillful generals and officers of the Republic. These are trained to antagonize the most sacred principles underlying the Constitution of the United States; such as, the equality of every citizen before the law, liberty of conscience, independence of the civil from ecclesiastical power, freedom of worship, etc., etc.

The United States have established schools, where they invite the people to send their children, that they may cultivate their intelligence and become good and useful citizens. The church of Rome has publicly cursed all these schools and forbidden their children to attend them, under pain of excommunication in this world and damnation in the next. Not only does she antagonize our school system, claiming at the outset that it bore a religious character, because the Bible found in it a welcome; but having been the cause for banishing the Word of God, she pronounces the schools godless, and sends forth the decree to have all her children housed in the parochial school, and then, with an effrontery and inconsistency that is simply astounding, she seeks to officer the schools of Protestants, so that in some of the public schools in which there is hardly a single Roman Catholic child, and where there is a parochial school in the immediate neighborhood, Rome, through suffrage, obtains control of the School Board in our large cities, and then fills the schools with Roman Catholic teachers to instruct the children of Protestants. In one such school are forty-one teachers, thirty-nine of whom are Roman Catholics.

The Constitution of the United States finds in the people the source of civil power. Rome proclaims this principle impious and heretical, and claims that all governments must rest upon the foundations of the Catholic faith, with the Pope alone as the legitimate and infallible source and interpreter of the law. The Hon. Richard W. Thompson, late Secretary of the Navy, said : “Nothing is plainer than that, if the principles of the church of Rome prevail here, religious freedom is at an end. The two cannot exist together. They are in open and direct antagonism with the fundamental theory of our Government everywhere.”

This statement would not convey any news to an intelligent and an instructed Romanist. The Roman Catholic Bishop Ryan, speaking in Philadelphia recently, said:

We maintain that the Church of Rome is intolerant; that is, that she uses every means in her power to root out heresy. But her intolerance is the result of her infallibility. She alone has the right to be intolerant, because she alone has the truth. The church tolerates heretics when she is obliged to do so; but she hates them with a deadly hatred, and uses all her power to annihilate them. If ever the Catholics should become a considerable majority, which in time will surely be the case, then will religious freedom in the Republic of the United States come to an end. Our enemies know how she treated heretics in the Middle Ages, and how she treats them today, where she has the power. We no more think of denying these historic facts, than we do of blaming the Holy God and the princes of the church for what they have thought fit to do.”

This, though not a cheerful view, tells the truth, and prepares us, with renewed interest, to study the proofs, showing that Washington is in the lap of Rome, that we may better be prepared to under stand the terrible tyranny there exercised, and the unscrupulous uses to which the results of this power is applied.

CHAPTER VI. Rome in the lap of Washington

No sooner had the District of Columbia been designated as the seat of the Capital of the United States, than Rome entered it, not as master, but as servant. Pius VII. had just reached the Papal chair, while the Continent about him was quaking beneath the resounding tread of Napoleon’s embattled host. Romanism was having a hard struggle in Europe. She was not yet at home in America. She was on sufferance. Clement the Fourteenth had issued the bill abolishing the Society of Jesuits, just previous to the Declaration of Independence by the United States of America, saying, as he did so : ” I sign my death-warrant; but I obey my conscience.” ” Watch the pot,” became his watchword, as he dismissed one cook supposed to be under Jesuit control, and appointed another, a monk by the name of Francis, whom he thought he could trust.

The active prudence of the good monk did not disconcert the Jesuits; it only rendered them more ingenious in Europe, and coaxed them in great numbers to find a home and a theatre of operations in the regions beyond.

The following was the infernal trick they employed to attain their ends in Rome: “A lady of the Sabine, entirely devoted to them, had a tree in her garden which bore the handsomest figs in Rome. The reverend fathers, knowing that the Pope loved this fruit very much, induced the lady to disguise herself as a peasant, and go and present these figs to Brother Francis. The devotee did so several times, gained the confidence of the Franciscan, and one day slipped into the basket a fig larger than the others, into which a subtle poison, called aquetta,FF was injected. Up to this time the Holy Father had enjoyed perfect health; he was well made, though of the ordinary height; his voice was sonorous and strong; he walked with the activity of a young man, and everything presaged a long old age to him. From that day his health failed in an extraordinary manner; it was remarked with alarm that his voice was sensibly failing. To those first symptoms of his sickness was joined so violent an inflammation of his throat that lie was obliged to keep his mouth constantly open; vomiting then succeeded the inflammation, accompanied by pains in his bowels; finally, the sickness increasing in its intensity, he discovered that he was poisoned. He wished to make use of antidotes, but it was too late; the evil was beyond remedy, and he had only to wait the close of his life. For the three months that he endured this terrible agony, his courage never failed him for a moment; one day only, after a more violent crisis than all the others, he said : “Alas! I knew well that they would poison me, but I did not expect to die in so slow and cruel a manner.” Remember, a woman was the instrument of the Jesuits, as was Mary Surratt, a century later, in the taking off of the great Emancipator. The Pope was changed into a shadow. His flesh was eaten out by the corrosive action of the “aquetta” his very bones were attacked and became softened, contorting his members and giving them a hideous form. At last, worn out with suffering, the poor victim of the execrable Jesuits died, Sept. 22nd, 1774. Something of this was known by the builders of the Republic in America. In Assam missionaries are compelled to get accustomed to snakes. They climb up their door-jams; they find sleeping places in the roof and ceiling above them; They look down upon them, while they rest in bed. Sometimes a poisonous reptile is touched, and bites and kills. This is bad. Thousands of natives fall a prey to the reptiles, who live, and move, and have being in the country; yet, after all, missionaries get used to snakes. They learn to tolerate them. Some learn to pet them. They see natives who become snake-charmers, and boast of their ability; indeed, get their living by handling and sporting with snakes. The story is matched by the way Roman Catholics have come to be not only tolerated, but finally petted, courted, if not loved, in America. At the outset, the people felt a great repugnance towards them. The Christian people of the United States gave Roman Catholics a wide berth. The less they had of them the better. The story of the Inquisition was familiar. Washington dreaded foreign influence, and never saw but one Roman Catholic in whom he had comfort, the immortal Lafayette. Jefferson, Madison and others were afraid of the influence attempted to be exerted by the mischievous, persecuting, unreliable association known and designated as the Roman Catholic Church, which was to them ” The Wicked” – “The Mystery of Iniquity “– “The Harlot of the Tiber” The oppressor and inhuman foe of the Church of God in all ages and all crimes. Hence Rome entered Washington, as else where, as an object of dread. That College in Georgetown, District of Columbia, was regarded as a Jesuit nest. It was let alone by the North, and largely by the South. Then came the convent. Nuns began to appear. Their pious faces, demure appearance, deceived the very elect. The establishments they wanted for eleemosynary purposes, went up silently and almost unnoticed. Here was the Providence Hospital, corner Second and D streets. Beautiful name! All thought well of it. It was founded in 1862. That was in the midst of the war. The nuns wished to help nurse the wounded.” Why not let them? Who can do it better?” men said. The camel got his head in when hospital tents were whitening the hillsides and valleys of the land. Thaddeus Stevens asked and obtained an appropriation of $32,000 for the Providence Hospital. In 1864 it was incorporated. The Sisters of Charity were to have charge. The name Sisters of Charity ” sounds well. In 1867 the present building was commenced. It is now two hundred and eighty feet in length, built of brick, and will accommodate 250 patients, and the government supports seventy-five free beds.

Samuel J. Randall, the son of a Baptist, linked to the denomination by many enduring ties, married a wife in sympathy with Rome, gave his daughter to a Roman Catholic, and found in the hospital the best of care after those terrible nervous prostration attacks which come of too great mental strain when stimulus no longer furnishes relief. There he could go. All that love and care could do for him was done; all that political influence could do for them was done. And so appropriation after appropriation has been smuggled through; until, it is said and believed that, since 1866, over one million of dollars have been given by the nation to support Roman Catholic institutions in the City of Washington. This will be a surprise to many members of Congress now on duty. It will not be believed by some. Yet it is probably under, rather than over the truth. Rome builds her walls in troublous times. It was during the war that she appeared, the war in which she wrought as the traitor to liberty. She obtained a foothold from which it seems almost impossible to dislodge her. She came stealthily and unobtrusively : came as a helper by profession, as a flatterer by practice. Because women, dressed in the garb of nuns, came to strong men and asked for help, it was thought ungallant to deny them. They had been in the hospitals. The surgeons prized them. They gave no trouble. If things were wrong, they never made reports. Physicians and surgeons might be drunken and cruel, the Sisters of Charity gave no sign. The bad had all things in common. So they prospered there, and were rewarded when they needed help in Washington. Rome knows how to employ women in carrying forward her great schemes. Her history shows this.

ROME CAN BE SEEN AND STUDIED HERE.

In presenting Romish splendors and glories we are not compelled to cross the sea, to enter Italy, to pass through the gates of the seven-hilled city, to pass up the Appian or any other way; to enter St. Peter, or wander through the interminable passages and galleries of the Vatican. The Rome in which the Coliseum stands, and churches innumerable are found side by side with ruins sacred to memory and history, is not in our thought when it is declared that Rome found a place in the lap of Washington before Washington came to rest so quietly and contentedly in the lap of Rome. By Rome is meant, the spirit that distinguishes her, and the influences which gathered power in days that were dark and days that were bright. By Rome is meant, the men who serve at her altars; now known as a monk, then as a bishop, anon archbishop or a cardinal, but first and last as a Jesuit.

Lord Robert Montagu, formerly the companion of the Jesuits, says: “The system of the Church of Rome is a wonderful mechanism. Its centre is the Pope. Yet it is independent of the Pope. Many a Pope has been a dotard; very many have been debauchees; and still the machine works on, irrespective of his idiosyncrasies. It is the Cabinet, the Privy Council, the College of Cardinals that governs. That body never dies. One old man and another falls away, like a sere and yellow leaf; but the tree remains; the tradition and knowledge of centuries are still there. The records of the past are added to the daily experiences of the present; and that experience is being ever gathered in every corner of the earth, wherever there is a priest or a missioner. From every race, from every land, from every people, nay, from every family, there stretches a telegraphic wire of secret intelligence to the central section of the Vatican. There the intelligence is used by free minds, who are destitute of family, without all the affections that are natural to men; without a country or a home, without patriotism, without restraint of obligations, oaths, moral principles or divine laws; because the word of the Pope is supposed to tear those holy fetters away as gossamer webs; and priestly absolution is held to wash out even the slightest taint of sin.”

“That is right which is done to advance the power of the Pope. That is true which the Pope may please to assert ex cathedra; that which favors the interests of the church is good. Even crime is commendable if it be done for the church. The advance of the Papacy has always been as the advance of the plague, irresistible, unsparing, remorseless, and deadly. Its myriads of secret agents overmatch armies and dispose of their generals. Its purposes are fathomless as the sea and silent as the grave : its action in every state, setting nation to hamper nation, and exciting one statesman against another; breaking up, dividing, crumbling its enemies, while its own party is always united; conspiring everywhere towards one object. Ever victorious, it will triumph, until the great hour for the doom of the harlot, which sits upon the nations of the earth, has struck, until the warning voice has been heard through the world,

“Come out of her my people.”

Having increased from 45,000 in 1783 in the United States, very largely through emigration and annexation; and having worked in accordance with one fixed and comprehensive plan, viz. : to get all possible in land, in influence, in gifts, and give out nothing and lose nothing, having adopted a system of borrowing money by a kind of saving-bank process, illustrated by Archbishop Purcell of Cincinnati, whereby millions of dollars have been obtained and used for the purchase of real estate, building vast structures, and mortgaging them for all they can carry, Rome has an appearance of prosperity, the result of dishonesty and deception, and entirely misleading. In Cincinnati and elsewhere, these vast sums used have been stolen from the poor, who have no redress except in suits of law, which are expensive, and which result in putting the litigant under the ban of the church.

The Pope claims that the church has an innate, legitimate right to the entire earth. Rome takes, holds, and uses property as if she were master. This property, to the extent of $300,000,000 in the U. S., is vested in the bishops. The people who give the money have no control of it. In England, Rome obtained possession, at one time, of one-third of the Kingdom; and it was only through the statute of mortmain deliverance was obtained. In Spain, in Mexico, in Italy, and in other Catholic countries, the civil power had to resort to confiscation, so that the people might have an opportunity to build; hence Church property should be taxed, and then Rome would be compelled to disgorge. The city of Brooklyn is robbed annually of $100,000 taxes on one piece of property captured by Jesuit cruelty and cunning, and yet there is not a church, nor an ecclesiastical edifice on it. The entire separation of church and state is the principle of our government, and to prevent the possibility of any sect, or combination of sects, from imposing, or even attempting to impose, a state church upon the United States, it was enacted March 4th, 1789, in the first amendment to the Constitution, that ” Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; ” and yet public land and money has been given by the Government to the Roman Catholic church amounting to millions of dollars. The block on which the Fifth Avenue Cathedral stands in New York is valued at $4,000,000. Land has been given in many military posts for Roman Catholic chapels, in direct antagonism to the letter and spirit of the Republic.

This is the Rome that entered Washington, so soon as the wilderness began to bud and blossom towards its present life and state. Let us admit the truth. Rome has silently and stealthily coiled her folds about the capital, and few are aware of the peril which threatens the peace and prosperity of the nation. {See Frontispiece} Into Washington Rome came with exceeding care and grace. She has risen to power and dominion through the instigation of Satan and the instrumentality of designing men. Rome seeks political supremacy at the capital and throughout the nation. Is it not high time that every loyal citizen, and friend of religious and civil liberty, should awake to the importance of firmly withstanding the emissary in those places where she seeks control? No man who is a loyal Roman Catholic is properly qualified to be a representative in our national or state legislatures. No man who truckles to Romanism is not to be a representative of a free people.

Let us not forget that the signal of our nationality was the signal of Rome’s irrevocable decree to crush us in our might; and commencing with the honeyed expressions of the tongue and a sardonic smile upon her face, she has received largely and enjoyed long our national confidence and hospitality. We remembered that it was not the least of America’s glory, that her Roman Catholic sons fought and suffered and periled for her liberty; and we did not thus perceive that the Jesuitism, which then and now absolutely controls the church of Rome in the United States, never had anything in common with our institutions, the Declaration of Independence, or our Republican government. There is an eternal hostility between the principles of Washington and the principles of Popery, between the spirit of Romish priests and prelates and that of the fathers of the Republic, who owned allegiance only to God, and required no intercessor but His well-beloved Son . There were no surpliced traitors, no perfidious prelates, in that great convention which formed the eternal code of our liberties, and wrote our everlasting principles; but God-fearing, God-depending, God-trusting men of robust and manly life. It was no vulnerable conceited popinjay but the spirit which had drawn lightning from the skies who arose in that assembly, and to solve doubt, and difficulty, and danger said : ” We seem to be at our wits ends; we need help from above. Let us pray” They knelt the collected wisdom of America before the God who had given them Independence, that He might guide them to a Constitution wise and holy enough to save it. Let not their work be in vain. Put the trumpet to the lip, and sound the alarm : Papal Despotism has Washington in her grasp! The presence of the dragon is here and is felt; his breath is diffusing its poison; his touch has wounded, and already partially withered our schools, the ballot-box and the Bible. Men claiming to be Protestants are bartering the principles of American liberty for priestly influence and papal despotism. To head against it, truth must be told. Then will the clouds of mental and moral darkness be dissipated, and the poor, blinded Papists, in bondage to priestcraft, will come forth into the freedom of Bible and Republican independence.

The female Jesuit in America, as in Europe, is to be dreaded. No one can follow the trail of the Romish serpent without being convinced that Satan did not turn from women after he wrought the ruin of the father of the race through his seductive power over Eve. Through woman he finds a passage-way to the heart of man. No greater peril confronts us than is found in the readiness with which Protestant young men marry Roman Catholic wives. Gen. Wm. T. Sherman beclouded his life, gave up his hold upon the children God might give him, and so was robbed of his boy, and did injustice to his own high aims, when he took to his heart a woman who had first given herself to the priests of Rome. Because of this, he publicly declared he could not accept the nomination for the Presidency. Whatever he may do, or not do, she has been the willing and untiring servant of Rome. By her wiles another brilliant man lost the Presidency, and is today a broken wreck. There were good reasons why God forbade the children of Israel marrying wives from the heathen about them. When this was done, the woman captured the man and carried with her the children. Solomon, with all his wisdom, could not withstand her wiles. Rome understands this power, and places schools, filled with brilliant and captivating ladies, near the military posts, so as to capture the young men. Major-General Schofield was born into a Christian home, and had an honored father, who was a Baptist minister, but a Romish wife has taken him into the embrace of Rome. Let the warning be heeded. Judge Jesuitism by its infamous conduct towards the amiable Clement. Pius the Sixth came next. We cannot describe the plottings and conflicts which disturbed the church prior to his election. His character is made apparent by the utterance : Pius the Fifth is the last Pope canonized by the church, I wish to walk in his footsteps” Pius the Fifth was the instigator of the St. Bartholomew massacre. Pius the Sixth has been described as enterprising and irresolute, interested and prodigal, suspicious and careless, false in heart and knavish in mind. Pius the Sixth had two children by his own sister! {History of the Popes, by Louis Mare De Gormen, p. 398. Ibid., p. 403} His conduct infected Romanism.

It was during his life as Pope, that Leopold of Tuscany, brother of Joseph Second of Austria, determined to clean out Tuscany by resisting the polluting tendencies of the Papacy. In “Why Priests Should Wed ” there is no more terrible picture than is here set forth. Scipio di Ricci, through investigations, brought out revelations which horrified Europe. From the declarations of the nuns, it was shown that in the convents of St. Lucia and St. Catherine at Pistoria, the female Dominicans received the confessors in the chapter and abandoned themselves to the most unbridled excesses of libertinage on the very steps of the altar; other nuns owned that frequently jealousy, or the inconstancy of the monks, led to serious collisions; that they disputed for the provincial, or prior; that they deprived themselves of their money or effects for their confessors; that several Dominicans had five or six mistresses at once, who formed a kind of seraglio; that at each promotion of a provincial in the monastery of the men, the newly chosen went to the convent to choose a favorite, and that the novices, entirely naked, were ranged in two rows for his inspection; that he placed his hand on the head of her who pleased him most and made her his mistress at once” Why are nunneries in Washington better than these pest houses? Has Rome changed ? Scipio di Ricci, under the direction of Leopold, fought these enormities, and Pius the Sixth fought the Reformer and fulminated bull after bull against him. To clean out the impurities of the Papacy condemned the Pope of Rome.

Then it was Voltaire led the philosophers in their attack upon the church. Free thought in Europe led to untrammeled thinking in the New World. Louis the Sixteenth expiated his crimes upon the scaffold. A Republic was proclaimed in France. It was the out growth of the birth of the Republic of the United States. Pius the Sixth fulminates a bull of excommunication against the French nation, designating it by the names of “impious” ” sacriligeous ” and ” abominable,” and calls doAvn upon it the thunders of heaven and earth. The Convention sends the following letter to His Holiness: “The Executive Council of the Republic to the prince bishop of Rome. Pontiff, You will immediately discharge from your dungeons several French citizens who are detained in them. If these demands are ineffectual, you will learn that the Republic is too bold to overlook an outrage, or too powerful to allow it to go unpunished.”

Then came the fight with Napoleon Bonaparte. Pius the Sixth endeavored to appease the storm; but these conflicts, and, above all, his debauchery with the beautiful Duchess de Broschi, his daughter, gave a, fatal blow to his health. His two bastards, Romnald and the Duke de Broschi, hastened to lay hands on the treasures collected in the Vatican. Up rose the people against the Pontiff kings informing him that he was no longer anything in the government.” And my dignity,” exclaimed the Pope, anxiously; “what becomes of it?” “It will be preserved to you,” said General Cervani; “and a provision of two thousand Roman crowns is granted you to maintain your rank.” “And my person, what is to become of it?” “It is safe,” replied Cervani; “and they will even grant you a hundred men for your guard.” ” I am still Pope, then,” said the destroyer of his sister’s virtue, with a strange laugh. Thus he went on, until the resources of life were used up by age, debaucheries, and excesses. A paralysis, which had at first fallen on his limbs, extended to his entrails, and freed the earth, on the 29th of August, 1799, of the last pontiff of the eighteenth century.

Then came Pius the Seventh. The new pope was elected after one hundred and four days of discussion and strife. To Napoleon he was indebted for his election. To Napoleon he became servile and fulsome, and exhausted all forms of adulatory thanks. He it was who left Rome and went to Paris to consecrate the Consul who had changed the Republic into an empire, and took to himself a crown. Pius the Seventh restored the Jesuits to power. He persecuted the good, and helped the bad; and on the 6th of July, 1822, fell in his chamber and broke his hip, and died April 20, 1823.

The Papacy, weak in Europe, was not strong in America. The Jesuits were alive there and here. They were hated there as here they prospered there as here. Into Washington Rome came, not as a novice, but as an adept in the art of ruling. Every thing was new and untried. Help was welcomed, come from whence it might. The Jesuits were wary and discreet. They represented an organization that joined together ancient civilizations. Truly has Macaulay said : “No other institution is left standing which carries the mind back to the times when the smoke of sacrifice rose from the Pantheon and when camel-leopards and tigers bounded in the Flavian amphitheatre. The proudest royal houses are but of yesterday, when compared with the line of supreme pontiffs. That line we trace back in an unbroken series from the Pope who crowned Napoleon in the Nineteenth century, to the Pope who crowned Pepin in the Eighth; and far beyond the time of Pepin the august dynasty extends, till it is lost in the twilight of fable.”

Rome was full of life and vigor. Republics had been throttled in Europe. The attempt was to be made to destroy the one being established in America. There is much about Rome to give it prestige. Age does much. Pretension does more. She assumes apostolical pre-eminence. Few care to prove the falsity of the claims. They tolerate, they endure, and some embrace.

Rome poses as the sole authorized channel of Divine grace to saints and sinners. She has large endowments and accumulated wealth. She holds her church-edifices, monasteries, convents, educational and charitable establishments, by such a tenure as to be independent of contemporary fear or favor. By the skillful use of the political and social influence connected with its wealth and numbers and centralized organizations, it has facilities for advancing to honor, and otherwise repaying, those who sustain and honor her, and for hindering or preventing the prosperity of those who oppose her.

She has also an element of great strength in her grandeur and showy magnificence. Her grand cathedrals and churches, situated in the most desirable situations; her gorgeous ceremonies, and pompous processions, with all the adjuncts of unrivaled music and artistic splendor, produce their effect. Churches went up. They were beautiful to the eye. Priests walked in humility, not in pride. The war was no sooner over, than Rome built for the colored people the handsomest and most stately structure in Washington. That was smart. None knew it better than the priests of Rome. Pictures of the most costly character were hung on its walls. The altar drapery was of the best. White priests ministered at the altar; but schools were established for the education of black priests and black nuns. They call it St. Augustine. The name is good. The blacks and whites bow down together before false images and alike disobey God, and people call it “religion.”

The Jesuits built St. Aloysius. In Washington all regard Jesuitism with favor. St. Matthew’s is the home of diplomats. The great find there a welcome, and bow down to graven images. England disgraces herself and insults this country by sending a Roman Catholic as Minister to our Government; while she attempts to throttle the serpent seeking her life at home.

St. Patrick, on G and 10th Streets; Holy Trinity, Georgetown; Immaculate Conception, N and 8th Streets; St. Aloysius for the Jesuits, St. Augustine for the exclusive use of colored people; St. Dominic, E and 6th Streets; St. Joseph’s; St. Mathew’s, N and 15th Streets; St. Paul’s, 15th and V; St. Peter’s on Capitol Hill; St. Stephen s, Pennsylvania Ave. and 25th Street; St. Teresa’s Anacosta; Visitation Convent Chapel, Tenallytown; St. Ann’s, attended from Georgetown College. The descendants of Luther and Calvin came to America to have a church without a Pope, where they made a government without a throne. Will they fail?

That question must be answered by this generation. The conduct of the American people today is shaping the destiny of the nation’s future. In the past, Some has asked permission to exist. This request it was American to grant. Today she demands the right to rule. This it will be American to repress.

CHAPTER VII. The hospitals under Romish control

In one way or another Rome pushes her way to seats of power and influence. Is it because Protestants are too modest, or too indifferent, to resist? The Romish Priest is in the workhouse caring for paupers because Protestant ministers neglect to do it. He gets a chaplaincy in the prison and jail for the same reason. It is come to be believed that Roman Catholics are adapted to care for our eleemosynary institutions; such as hospitals, houses of refuge, orphan asylums and institutions of kindred character, as are not Protestants. Let us not find fault with Romanists for doing what Protestants neglect to do. Nothing could be more unfair or unwise. Let us not give over to Romanists work that we ought to do ourselves. It is a surprising fact, that every hospital in Washington is in the hands of Roman Catholics with one exception, and that has the treasurer and three members of the Board, Roman Catholics; that Sisters of Charity are the nurses; and that American citizens are compelled to see these representatives of a faith utterly distasteful to the majority enthroned in power.

As a rule, American citizens do not like the head gear of the “Sisters.” “Why can t they take off those white-winged sun-bonnets in the ward?”asked one poor fellow, reared in a Protestant home, and yet sick in a hospital. “Sun-bonnets! “sneered another of the irreverent critics; “they re a cross between a white sun-bonnet and a broken down umbrella; and there’s no name that describes them.”{Mary A. Livermore, in “The Story of the War,”pp. 219}

This language describes the feeling of very many in the hospitals in Washington. They do not like the head-gear or the manners of the so-called Sisters of Mercy.”It is theory that there are no nobler and no more heroic women than those found in the Catholic sisterhoods. The fact explodes the theory. They are like other women: some are good, some are bad. Some kind, some cruel.

Rev. J. W. Parker, D.D., pastor, at one time, of the E-Street Baptist Church, of Washington, D.C., related, that his own brother was in a Washington hospital, and that nuns were the nurses. He desired a drink of water in the night, and asked for it, and overheard them say, “He is a heretic; let him choke.”

A friend in such a hospital, with nuns as nurses, found herself in a constant worry, because she would keep her New Testament by her side, and would have her pastor visit her. The nuns did every disagreeable thing possible, until the minister told them that if such conduct did not cease, it would be reported at headquarters, and punishment would be demanded.

Another woman, who had been at one time a Roman Catholic, and who had been converted to Christianity, found herself in the hospital ministered unto by the Sisters of Mercy. They brought to her bedside a priest. She declined to see him. He persisted in coming. Her Protestant friends and the minister were told that she had gone back to the Church of Rome and that she did not wish them more. They believed the story, and stayed away for the time. They insisted on administering “extreme unction,”daubed her with oil and drenched her with holy water, leaving her to die. The minister forced his way by the guards and got into the room.

“Why have you left me to the pitiless persecutions of these enemies of Christ?”

“They told me you wished it; that you had gone back to the idols of Rome, and turned your back on Christ.” “It is a lie, a Popish lie; I have asked for you daily, I turned with loathing from their mummeries, but was compelled by weakness to endure this oil and holy water. Take me out of here.”

The woman was removed to a home of love, where she was cared for. Why is such cruelty tolerated?

Clarence was the brother of the architect who supervised the construction of a large addition to the most important public building in Washington. Clarence had won the heart of a daughter of a member of Lincoln’s Cabinet. Her sister was married to an eminent lawyer, who was afterward a member of Garfield’s Cabinet. The lady insisted upon a reformation of life, and his taking up and following some honest occupation. He accepted a position under his brother, but soon fell into his former ways. Worn out with a debauch which lasted several weeks, he entered the Providence Hospital, which deserves to be styled “The Drunkard’s Retreat.”Then he professed the Roman Catholic religion, without a reformation of life, and without giving up his cups even for a brief period, and in that faith lived and died a drunkard, and was buried in consecrated ground.

Another and a sadder scene. A lady, beautiful in face and form, was upon her death-bed. The priest came to administer extreme unction. He had, of course, the room to himself, and while with the lady alone, attempted an assault. She shrieked for help. The daughter, despite the rules of the church, burst into the room. “Turn the wretch out, “exclaimed the mother, “and promise me, that come what will, you will never allow a priest to approach you, nor have more to do with the Church of Rome. “The promise was made. Years passed. The daughter grew sick. Her friends were Roman Catholics. Her money was gone. She was compelled to be ministered unto by a Roman Catholic nurse, and because she would not suffer a priest to come and administer extreme unction, and die in the faith of Rome, they drew the bed from beneath her dying form, and left her upon the bare slats to lie, until a Protestant friend, now living in Washington, brought pillows and placed beneath her and took her to her own house, where she died. Then they would not let her rest, but dug up her body, carried it to consecrated ground, and boasted that she died in the Church of Rome.

Because such conduct is possible, Roman Catholic surgeons oppose the employment of Protestant nurses and declare they will not have them in the service, and that only the Sisters of the Catholic Church shall receive appointments. “I sought,”said Mrs. M. A. Livermore, “for the cause of this decision.” “Your Protestant nurses are always finding some mare’s nest or other, “said one of the surgeons, “that they can t let alone. They all write for the papers, and the story finds its way into print, and directly we are in hot water. Now, these sisters never see anything they ought not to see, nor hear anything, and they never write for the papers, and the result is, we get along very comfortably with them. It was futile to combat their prejudices, or to attempt to show them that they lacked the power to enforce their decisions.”

Does not this explain why the * Sisters of Mercy “are preferred in Washington? “There is not a hospital in Washington where a Christian can go and feel that he or she is not confronted by Roman Catholics. Columbia Hospital for women, supported by Congress, has a drunken, brutal, Roman Catholic surgeon in charge. Priests are banqueted, and given full sway in the house; all the illegitimate children are christened by them, and the influence of Rome pervades “every department. The hospital erected in memory of the sainted Garfield is infested by them, because of the idea, so prevalent, that Romanists are the only people who can do charity work. Alas for humanity, when such ideas prevail!”

Miss Mary A. Livermore, in her “Story of the War,”speaks of the persistent effort to fill hospitals with “Sisters of Mercy,”and exclude good, trained, excellent Protestant nurses. They would not be daunted or turned back. “Our husbands, sons and brothers need us and want us. If the surgeons are determined to employ Roman Catholic nurses, to the exclusion of Protestant, we shall contend for our rights, and appeal to the Secretary of War.”They carried the day, and filled the land with their forces. Had the Protestant ladies of Washington manifested equal courage and persistency, they could have held control. The United States Hospitals got clear of the head-gear of the nuns, and filled their places with trained Protestant nurses.

On the tenth of June, 1861, Secretary Cameron vested Dorothea Dix with sole power to appoint women nurses in the hospitals. Secretary Stanton succeeding him, ratified their appointment. Miss Dix desired women over thirty years of age, plain almost to repulsion in dress, and devoid of personal attractions. Many of the women whom she rejected, because they were too young and too beautiful, entered the service under other auspices and became eminently with her work of relief. To their honor, be it said, the “boys”reciprocated her affection most heartily. “That homely figure, clad in calico, wrapped in a shawl, and surmounted with a * shaker bonnet, is more to this army than the Madonna to a Catholic,” said an officer, pointing to her as she emerged from the Sanitary Commission headquarters, laden with supplies.”

Mary A. Bickerdyke was born in Knox County, Ohio, July 19, 1817. She came of Revolutionary ancestors, and was never happier than when recounting the stories told her when a child by the grandfather who served with Washington during the seven years struggle. Her husband died two years before the breaking out of the war. She was living in Galesburgh, 111., and was a member of the Congregational Church when the war broke out. Hardly had the the troops reached Cairo, when, from the sudden change in their habits, sickness broke out, and the ladies sent down Mother Bickerdyke. After the battle of Belmont she was appointed matron of the large post hospital at Cairo. The surgeon was given to drunkenness; he had filled all the positions in the hospitals with surgeons and officers of his sort, and bacchanalial carousals in the “doctor’s room “were of frequent occurrence. “Sisters of Mercy”in that hospital would have been quiet. Soldiers might suffer. Officers and surgeons might drink to drunkenness, especially if they were Roman Catholics; but they would be mute and observing. They are this way in the hospitals in Washington, where drunken surgeons revel, priests christen their illegitimate children, while Government supports the concern, and all goes merry as a marriage bell.

Not so with Mother Bickerdyke. In twenty-four hours surgeon and matron were at swords points. She denounced him to his face; and when the garments and delicacies sent her for the use of the sick and wounded disappeared mysteriously, she charged their theft upon him and his subordinates.

He ordered her out of the hospital, and threatened to put her out, if she did not hasten her departure. She replied that she would stay as long as the men needed her, that if he put her out of one door she should come in at another. When anybody left, it would be he, and not she. She told him she had lodged complaints against him at headquarters. Finding a ward- master dressed in the shirt, slippers and socks that had been sent her for the sick, she seized him by the collar in his own ward, and disrobed him “saws ceremonie”before the patients. Leaving him nude, save his pantaloons, she uttered the parting injunction, Now, you rascal, let’s see what you ll steal next.”

To ascertain who were the thieves of the food she prepared, she put tartar emetic in the peaches left on the table to cool. Then she went to her own room to await results. She did not have to wait long. Soon the sounds from the terribly sick thieves reached her ears, when, like a Nemesis, she stalked in among them. There they were, cooks, table-waiters, stewards, ward-masters, all, save some of the surgeons suffering terribly from the emetic; but more from the apprehension that they were poisoned.

“Peaches don t seem to agree with you, eh?”she said, looking at the pale, retching, groaning fellows, with a sardonic smile. “Well, let me tell you, that you will have a worse time than this, if you keep on stealing. You may eat something seasoned with rat-bane one of these nights.”Colonel Grant was then in command. The thieves were returned to the regiments, honest men were substituted in their places, the drunken surgeon was removed, and one of the noblest of men was put in charge. That is the value of having an honest Christian woman.”

“I never saw anybody like her,”said a volunteer surgeon who came on the boat with her after the battle of Fort Donelson; “there was really nothing for us surgeons to do but dress wounds and administer medicines. She drew out clean shirts or drawers from some corner whenever they were needed. Nourishment was ready for any man, as soon as he was brought on board. Every one was sponged from blood and the frozen mire of the battle-field, as far as his condition allowed. His blood-stiffened, and sometimes horribly filthy uniform, was exchanged for soft, clean, hospital garments. Incessant cries of Mother! Mother! Mother! rang through the boat in every note of beseeching and anguish. And to every man she turned with a heavenly tenderness, as if he were indeed her son.”(pp. 484). Next we see her at Savannah, Tenn., among the sick and perishing. One of the surgeons went to the rear with a wounded man, and found her wrapped in the gray overcoat of a rebel officer; for she had disposed of her blanket shawl to some poor fellow who needed it. She was wearing a soft, slouch hat, having lost her inevitable Shaker bonnet.

“Madam, you seem to combine in yourself a sick- diet kitchen and a medical staff. May I enquire under whose authority you are working?”

Without pausing in her work, she answered him, “I have received my authority from the Lord God Almighty; have you anything that ranks higher than that? “and went on with her work without looking up.

Later on, at Memphis, she found a medical director who was a Catholic, who nationally gave preference to the Sisters of Mercy as nurses. He disapproved of nearly everything Mother Bickerdyke did, and tried to get rid of her. He abused her, thwarted her, and sought to dismiss her attendants and assistants. Through the storm she went to the General, got an order in her favor, and then told the director : “Its no use, for you to try and tie me up with your red tape. There’s too much to be done down here to stop for that. And doctor, I guess you hadn t better get into a row with me; for whenever anybody does, one of us always goes to the wall, and taint never me!”They became the best of friends, and Protestant nurses came to be rated in accordance with their value. A drunken surgeon hindered her work; she got him discharged. Officers of the highest rank believed in her, and cheerfully granted her request. The surgeon went to General Sherman and asked to be reinstated. “Who put you out?”An old meddlesome woman by the name of Bickerdyke.” “Ah! Mother Bickerdyke! If she put you out, you must stay out; for she ranks me.”

At Chattanooga her life reads like a romance. We cannot describe her versatility of talent and genius displayed in saving life. General Sherman had issued orders forbidding agents of sanitary stores, or agents of any description, to go over the road from Nashville to Chattanooga. Mother Bickerdyke was their only hope. She could influence Gen. Sherman as could no other person. Her pass from Gen. Grant would take her to Chattanooga, despite Gen. Sherman’s prohibition.

“Halloa! How did you get down here?”asked one of the General’s staff officers, as he saw her enter Sherman’s headquarters.

“Came clown in the cars, of course; there’s no other way of getting down here, that I know of,”replied the matter-of-fact woman; “1 want to see General Sherman.”

“He is in there, writing,”said the officer, pointing to an inner room; “but I guess he won’t see you.”

“Guess he will; “and she pushed into the apartment.

“Good morning General; I want to speak to you a moment. May I come in?” “I should think you had got in,”answered the General, barely looking up, in great annoyance. “What’s up, now?”

“Why, General,”said the earnest matron, in a perfect torrent of words, “we can t stand that last order of yours, nohow. You ll have to change it, sure.”

“Well, I m busy to-day, and cannot attend to you. I will see you some other time. “She saw the smile in the corner of his mouth, and replied : “General! don t send me away until you fix this.”He fixed it, and for weeks all the sanitary stores sent from Nashville to Chattanooga, and the forts of that road, were sent, directly or indirectly, through this mediation of Mother Bickerdyke.

This woman, distinguished for common sense, for devotion to the soldiers, is left without employment, and nuns that never saw a battle-field, and Sisters of Charity that never had any sympathy with the soldiers, are placed in charge of Government hospitals, because Protestants are dumb when they ought to speak, and blind when they ought to see.

This wonderful woman was for years without recognition from the Government, and is now in the pension office of San Francisco, when she belongs to the best hospital position in the gift of the Government. As when Moses and Aaron appeared before Pharaoh and used their wonder-working rod the magicians imitated them, so when the white wings of hospital tents were brightening the vision in various portions of the land Rome saw her opportunity and began her work in Washington.

The Providence General Hospital, corner of 2d and D streets, is famed in Washington. It was erected in the midst of the war.

Enter this hospital. Nuns have charge. The patients, be they Protestant or Roman Catholic, are expected to attend service in accordance with the forms of Rome. Proselyting is a business, and when this is impossible, the patient suffers.

Capt. Amos Cliff was in the Pension Bureau. He was sick. He carried to the hospital a watch and money, and after paying his board for a week, died. All his effects disappeared, as is the custom. The Grand Army Relief Committee, at the head of which is Capt. Frank A. Beuter, having learned of his death, went with Capt, D. A. Denison to inquire for him. No intelligence was furnished. He was a dead soldier. They knew where to look for his remains. His body was found in the Medical College, being cut- up by the surgeons. The Grand Army boys took the mutilated remnants of a brave soldier, and, purchasing a coffin, sent what was left of an honored father to his friends. They who are so particular about giving a Roman Catholic burial, surrendered the body of a Grand Army soldier to the surgeon, not caring what was done with it or where it went, to a pauper’s grave or a surgeon’s table.

Imagine Mother Bickerdyke in such a position, and how different would be the treatment received!

It is fashionable to bow down to Rome. All seem aware that there are seven millions of Roman Catholics in this country. The many forget that there are fifty millions who are not Roman Catholics, who have some rights in this free land, which all are under some obligation to respect. The Protestant element waits for a leadership. American citizens should be jealous of their rights. They should be, not only self-respecting, but self-asserting. God has planted, preserved and grown this nation, not to bow down to the worst despotism the world ever saw ; but to lift up the enslaved, and cause them to read their possible destiny in the lines of promise written by God’s providence in the marvellous possibilities placed within their reach. The Republic of the United States is to be the educator of the world. American citizens must keep this thought in mind, and so develop a higher type of humanity, better hospital service, a broader Christianity, and a nobler living than has hitherto blessed the world.

CHAPTER VIII. The Jesuits in Washington and elsewhere

How Rome crept into Washington has been described. Stealthily, slowly, meekly, but surely, she came; and she came to stay. Long before the Revolution Rome was here. Washington saw her, and warned against her insidious influence. She came among us in poverty of spirit and in the ashes of humiliation. Anna Ella Carroll, of Maryland, a descendant of Charles Carroll of Carrollton, recited the story of Papal aggression, told of the holy confidence of the Pope, how the Jesuits determined “to convert every house in America into a fort, and to keep the gates open and the houses without defence.”Protestants came and went freely, their honor, piety and loyalty to the Government was everywhere highly esteemed; and soon American Protestants placed their children in their hands for safe-keeping; helped them build their churches and public institutions because of their avowed purpose to enjoy our free institutions. They paraded in biblical plainness, and shut up the mystery of their pages from all sensitive readers. But while they wrote with a crow-quill for American liberty, they were making shoes to pinch the feet of the children whom they seduced to enter their schools, colleges and convents. They captivated women with little holy playthings, sympathized with their weaknesses, and ministered to their ills. They shut up the beautiful and innocent to make vows for Papal Jesuitism in free America. When they get the daughters, they want the sons, and in the name of liberty ask for the children. Their Propaganda of Rome, of Lyons, of France, of Vienna and Austria, build colleges, nunneries and monasteries, in which they offer education almost without money and without price, that they may stifle the hopes of the youth entrusted to their care.

Religious toleration has given welcome to a Jesuit priesthood that is making a religion without God and a state without liberty. They denounce the public schools, curse the Bible, murder history, and maim and mutilate literature. They teach American children, that all the founders of this Republic were Papists; that Washington, the father of his country, died a Roman Catholic, and in his last moments, it is asserted, confessed and communicated by the Romish Bishop of Baltimore; and that the relations of this great American patriot, fearing Americans would repudiate their hero, desired the secret never to be disclosed. The Romish community claim that they know of this conversion, and the Washington who wanted none but “Americans on guard,”is a candidate for beatification by the Pope of Rome. Of course Columbus, the discoverer of America, was a Catholic. Lafayette, who came to our help, was brought here, it is claimed, through the interposition of Bishop Carroll, the Catholic, who in the interests of the Republic went to France to plead our cause. The best Republicans, they teach, are all Romanists. The writers of their school books exclude the history of distinguished Protestants, and fill their pages with the biographies of men and women who were loyal to Rome. This Papal influence came seeking little by little; it assumed, then boasted, and now denounces us. They say, Out of the church is no salvation. The monk says, Pray and read; while he stalks forth as though he had all America on a string of beads, carrying a pent-up fire to burn up the suspected and reviled intellects which come near him. Jesuitism was born in Spain, reared in France, developed under Papal Rome, and diffused in the United States of America. The Company of Jesus, now in the United States, is great, powerful, and oppressive. It is mysterious and demoniacal, defying our science and weaving its malice over the brightest hopes of the world.

To describe Jesuitism, that was regarded as too foul and devilish to be borne even in Roman Catholic countries, seems to be a duty. Founded in 1534, and sanctioned by Pope Paul III. in 1540, it was expelled from England, 1581; France, 1594; Portugal, 1598; England again, 1604; France again, 1606; Russia, 1717; Portugal again, 1759; France again, 1762-3; Spain, 1767; Genoa, 1767; Venice again, 1767; Sicily, 1767; Naples, 1768; Malta, 1768; Parma, 1768; all, with the exception of England and Russia, being strictly Roman Catholic states. Eventually, the Order was suppressed by Pope Clement XIV, in 1773; but continued to exist under other names, and disguised under the title of “Brothers of the Faith.”It re-entered France, and had there several colleges in its hands, which were closed in 1828; some of them have since been reopened, and within the last twenty years, the number of persons belonging to the Order has been doubled. The Society was re-established by Pope Pius VII. in 1814, and finds free scope to carry out its treasonable designs under the American flag. Though it has stifled free thought wherever it could, introducing as their first injunction in all their schools, “Let no one, even in matters which are of no danger to piety, ever introduce a new question; “though it persecuted Galileo and oppressed Columbus; yet this Jesuit priesthood walks the soil of the Republic as a benefactor and finds in presidents and congressmen willing subjects of its will.

Henry IV. of France admitted to Sally, that he allowed the Jesuit priesthood to enter Catholic France only because he feared them! Philip II. of Spain, said: The only Order of which I know nothing is the Jesuit.”This, interwoven with Popery, is the Roman Catholic church of the United States. The federal compact, formed by the New England colonies in 1643, to resist the Indians, was the first Union made by the Anglo-Saxon upon our soil, and prepared the way for their Declaration of Rights later on. Jesuitism fought liberty amid its birth-throes. On the 10th of June, a resolution was adopted by a bare majority, and to obtain the unanimous sentiment of all the colonies a postponement was made until July, after securing the committee to draft the Declaration of Independence. Difficulties like mountains towered in the path of the Fathers. A spirit of opposition and discord pervaded their councils. They were driven to seek God’s help. Congress paused to ask His guidance and blessing; and until He gave strength, union seemed impossible. The Committee reported on the twenty-eight of June, and on the 4th of July, 1776, by the final decision of Congress and the vote of every colony, this Declaration was engrossed; when, on the second of August, all the members present, and some who became so after the fourth of July, signed it in behalf of all the people. The bells then pealed the advent of Independence. But Romanists were then, as now, opposed to the upgoing structure. The Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union between the thirteen original States were not ratified until 1781, because the Roman Catholics of Mary land opposed and refused to unite; so steadfast has ever been the opposition of the Romish priesthood to our liberty. {Etudes Religeuse}

Attention has recently been turned to where the Jesuits are at work and what they are doing. “In the Balkan Peninsula there are forty-five Jesuit missionaries; in Africa, and especially Egypt, Madagascar, and the Zambesi region, 223; in Asia, especially Armenia, Syria, and certain parts of China, 699. In China alone the number is 195 all of French nationality. In Oceanica, including the Philippines, the Malay Archipelago, Australia, and New Zealand, the number is 270; in America, including certain specified States of the Union, portions of Canada, -British Honduras, Brazil and Peru, 1,130; the total number of Jesuits scattered over the Globe, in purely missionary work, being 2,377. These are of various nationalities: but the vast majority are French. In the distribution great attention is paid to nationality; thus in Illyria, Dalmatia, and Albania, they are all Venetians; in Constantinople and Syria, Sicilians; in Africa, Asia Minor and China, French; while no French Jesuits are to be found in any part of the American Continent. In the Bombay and Bengal Presidencies, they are Germans and Belgiums, respectively; in the Philippines, Spanish; in the Malay Archipelago, Dutch; in Eastern Australia and New Zealand, Irish; in the United States, Germans, Neapolitans, and Piedmontese, are found working in specified and distinct districts; those laboring among the Indians of Canada are Canadians; in the British West India Colonies, they are English; in Central America, Spaniards; in South America, Italians, Spaniards and Germans, the Italians and Germans having all Brazil to themselves, doubtless because of the enormous Italian and German immigration to Brazil. It will be understood that the spheres of labor of the different orders, are carefully laid down at Rome.”

During the war, Washington saw the peril. While the American Eevolution was progressing, our Continental Congress forbade any but her native sons to be employed in the foreign service of the country. Said George Washington: “You are not to enlist any person suspected of being an enemy to the liberty of America.”One hundred chosen men were to be enrolled to form a corps to be instructed in the manoeuvres necessary to be introduced into the army, and serve as models for the execution of them. “They must be American-born. “”Put none but Americans on guard “came, because of the fear of foreign influence. “I do most devoutly wish that we had not a single foreigner amongst us, except the Marquis de Lafayette.” { Letter to Governor Morris, White Plains, July 24, 1778, by Geo. Washington} Thomas Jefferson recommended to the Postmaster General “to employ no foreigner, or revolutionary tory, in any of his offices.”This was in the olden time. Notwithstanding this,– concession followed concession, until the offices of the land were filled with foreigners, and American- born citizens were at a discount. Said Archbishop Hughes: “Irishmen in America are learning to bide their time. Year by year the Irish are becoming more and more powerful in America. At length the propitious time will come some accidental, sudden collision, and a Presidential campaign at hand. We will then use the very profligacy of our politicians for our purposes. They will want to buy the Irish vote, and we will tell them how they can buy it, in a lump, from Maine to California.”{Pp. 352}

At present, Washington is in the toils of Rome. The serpent has entwined its folds about the Capitol, and all who would have honor, peace or promotion must bend the neck. It was in 1855 a writer declared, that the National Administration was in the hands of a foreign, Roman-Catholic hierarchy. The Postmaster General was an Irish Roman Catholic at the dictation of the Pope of Rome, to obtain direct access to the postal concerns and dearest rights of the American people.”

In the State Department at Washington, not only a majority of the subordinates were foreign Roman Catholics, but they occupied the most important posts in the trust and confidence of the American Government. “Are you a Roman Catholic foreigner?”is the question put to the applicant, and, if answered in the affirmative, the sons of Revolutionary officers, who gave their houses to the flames and their bodies to the bayonet, are indecently thrust aside. Our naturalization laws are evaded criminals and paupers vote down Americans at the ballot-box. Public and free schools are antagonized, the Bible driven out, expelled and burned. The police of our large cities are largely foreigners; while at one time thirty-nine on the police force of New York were branded as criminals from the prisons of Europe. These are the hordes which rush to our shores for democratic liberty, and have imposed upon them by the Jesuit masters the obligation to go armed to the ballot-box, and vote for Rome at the dictation of the Pope, and against liberty – against the public school, and the best interests of their adopted country.

At least four-fifths of these aliens come to our shores to escape the persecution of the Papal despots at home, and to find refreshment in pastures green beyond the sea. These fill our poor-houses, our jails, prisons, and lunatic asylums; and why not? Jail birds are promised liberty if they will emigrate to America. In 1837 the Mayor of Baltimore detected a shipload of 260 persons, at Fort McHenry, who as criminals were brought into port in irons. The Mayor remonstrated, and asked Martin Van Buren to order them back; but he replied, that there was no power to prevent their landing, and so these miserable wretches were permitted to join the party that flattered the Rebellion and attempted to break up the union of States by breaking up the union of hearts. Through out Germany, as throughout Ireland, agents in the pay of steamship lines, who desired freight, advised the maimed, deformed, and crippled to take passage to Baltimore, New Orleans and Quebec, instead of New York, because in those places no laws exist to prevent their landing. Father Chiniquy relates, in his “Fifty Years in the Church of Rome,”these facts (pp 668-687):

“It was in the spring of 1852, a large assembly, composed principally of priests, met at Buffalo, to confer with D Arcy McGee, then editor of the free man’s Journal, in regard to peopling the prairies of the West with Irish Roman Catholics. He published several able articles to show that the Irish people, with very few exceptions, were demoralized, degraded, and kept poor, around their groggeries, and showed how they would thrive, become respectable and rich, if they could be induced to exchange their grog-shops for the fertile lands of the West. A large assembly gathered. Great was the disappointment of D Arcy McGee when he saw that the greatest part of those priests were sent by the bishops of the United States to oppose and defeat his plans.

“He vainly spoke, with burning eloquence, for his pet scheme. The majority coldly answered him: We are determined, like you, to take possession of the United States, and rule them; but we cannot do that without acting secretly, and with the utmost wisdom. If our plans are known, they will surely be defeated. What does a skillful general do when he wants to conquer a country? Does he scatter his soldiers over the farm-lands, arid spend their time and energy in ploughing the fields and sowing grain. No! He~ keeps them well united around his banners, and marches at their head to the conquest of the strongholds, the rich and powerful cities. The farming countries then submit, and become the price of his victory, without moving a finger to subdue them. So it is with us. Silently and patiently, we must mass our Roman Catholics in the great cities of the United States, remembering that the vote of a poor journeyman, though he be covered with rags, has as much weight in the scale of power as the Millionaire Astor, and if we have two votes against his one, he will become as powerless as an oyster. Let us then multiply our votes; let us call our poor but faithful Irish Catholics from every corner of the world, and gather them into the very hearts of those proud citadels which the Yankees are so rapidly building under the names of Washington, New York, Boston, Chicago, Buffalo, Albany, Troy, Cinncinnati, St. Louis, Kansas City, San Francisco, etc. Under the shadows of those great cities, the Americans consider themselves as a giant and unconquerable race. They look upon the poor Irish Catholic people with supreme contempt, as only fit to dig their canals, sweep their streets, and work in their kitchens. Let no one awake those sleeping lions, to-day. Let us pray God that they may sleep and dream their sweet dreams a few years more. How sad will be their awakening, when, with outnumbering votes, we will turn them out forever from every position of honor, power and profit! What will those hypocritical and godless sons and daughters of the fanatical Pilgrim Fathers say, when not a single judge, not a single teacher, not a single policeman will be elected if he be not a devoted Roman Catholic? What will those so-called giants think of our matchless shrewdness and ability, when not a single senator or member of Congress will be chosen, if he be not submitted to our holy father the Pope? What a sad figure those Protestant Yankees will cut when we will not only elect the President, but fill and command the armies, man the navies, and hold the keys of the public treasury! It will then be time for our faithful Irish people to give up their grog-shops, in order to become the judges and governors of the land. Then our poor and humble mechanics will leave their damp ditches and muddy streets, to rule the cities in all their departments, from the stately mansion of Mayor of New York, to the humble, though not less noble, position of teacher.

Then, yes! then, we will rule the United States, and lay them at the feet of the Vicar of Jesus Christ, that he may put an end to their godless system of education, and sweep away those impious laws of liberty of conscience, which are an insult to God and man! D Arcy McGee was left almost alone when the votes were taken. From that time the Catholic bishops and priests have gathered their legions into the great cities of the United States, and the American people must be blind indeed, if they do not see that, if they do nothing to prevent it, the day is very near when the Jesuits will rule this country, from the magnificent White House at Washington, to the humblest civil and military department of this vast Republic. They are already the masters of New York, Baltimore, Chicago, St. Paul, New Orleans, Mobile, Savannah, Cincinnati, Albany, Troy, Buffalo, Cleveland, Milwaukee, St. Louis, San Francisco. Yes! San Francisco, the great queen of the Pacific, is in the hands of the Jesuits.

“From the very first days of the discovery of the gold mines of California, the Jesuits had the hope of becoming masters of these inexhaustible treasures, and they secretly laid their plans with the most profound ability and success. They saw at once that the great majority of the lucky miners, of every creed and nation, were going back home as soon as they had enough to secure an honorable competence to their families. The Jesuits saw at a glance that if they could persuade the Irish Catholics to settle and remain there, they would soon be masters and rulers of that Golden City, whose future is so bright, so great! And the scheme, worked day and night with the utmost perseverance, has been crowned with perfect success. The consequence is, that while you find only a few American, German, Scotch and English millionaires in San Francisco, you find more than fifty Irish Catholic millionaires in that city. Its richest bank (Nevada Bank) is in their hands, and so are all the street railways. The principal offices of the city are filled with Irish Roman Catholics. Almost all the police are composed of the same class, as well as the volunteer military organizations. Their compact unity in the hands of the Jesuits, with their enormous wealth, make them almost supreme masters of the mines of California and Nevada.

When one knows the absolute, abject submission of the Irish Roman Catholics, rich or poor, to their priests, how the mind, the soul, the will, the conscience, are firmly and irrevocably tied to the feet of the priests, he can easily understand that the Jesuits of the United States form one of the richest and most powerful corporations the world ever saw. “It is well known that fifty Catholic millionaires, with their myriads of employees, are, through their wives and by themselves, continually at the feet of the Jesuits, who swim in a golden sea.”No one, if he be not a Roman Catholic, or one of those so-called Protestants who give their daughters to the nuns and their sons to the Jesuits to be educated, has much hope, when the Jesuits rule, of having a lucrative office in the United States, to-day. It is to San Francisco that you must go to have an idea of the number of secret and powerful organizations with which the Church of Rome prepares herself for the impending conflict, through which she hopes to destroy the schools, and every vestige of human rights and liberties in the United States. Washington is the nerve-centre of the organism. Baltimore is the city in which the machinery of Rome lies concealed. If it is true that from this centre the war was planned to disrupt the Union, it ought to be known.

The Jesuits are a military organization, not a religious order. Their chief is a general of an army, not the mere father-abbot of a monastery. And the aim of this organization is Power power in the most despotic exercise; absolute power, universal power, power to control the world by the volition of a single man. Jesuitism is the most absolute of despotisms, and at the same time, the greatest and the most enormous of abuses. The General of the Jesuits insists on being master, sovereign over the sovereign. Wherever the Jesuits are admitted they will be masters, cost what it may. Their Society is by nature dictatorial; and, therefore, it is the irreconcilable enemy of all constituted authority. Every act, every crime, however atrocious, is a meritorious work, if committed for the interest of the Society of the Jesuits, or by the order of its General.

In the allocution of September, 1851, Pius IX. said: “That he had taken this principle for a basis, That the Catholic religion, with all its votes, ought to be exclusively dominant in such sort, so that every oilier worship shall be banished and interdicted.””You ask, if the Pope were lord of this land and you were in a minority, what he would do to you? That, we say, would entirely depend upon circumstances. If it would benefit the cause of Catholicism, he would tolerate you; if expedient, he would imprison or banish you, probably he might hang you. But be assured of one thing, he would never tolerate you for the sake of your glorious principles of civil and religious liberty.”

The Rambler, one of the most prominent Catholic papers of England, Sept. 1851, says: ” Without Romanism, the last awful civil war would have been impossible. The South would never have dared attack the North, had they not had the assurance from the Pope that the Jesuits, the bishops, the priests, and the whole people of the Church of Rome would help them. Because of this, the Roman Catholic Beaure-guard was chosen to fire the first gun at Sumter. The Pope of Rome was the only crowned prince in the whole world who recognized the Southern Confederacy, and the pirate ship Alabama was commanded by Admiral Semmes, a Roman Catholic. Rome has not changed. The enemy of liberty before the war, it seems inexplicable that the defenders of liberty, and the victorious champions of freedom, should so far forget history, and so utterly ignore the rights of the Republic, as to play into the hands of Rome, the eternal foe of the principles embodied in the Republic.

“Another fact, to which the American Protestants do not sufficiently pay attention is, that the Jesuits have been shrewd enough to have a vast majority of Roman Catholic generals and officers to command the army and man the navy of the United States.”

“Rome is a constant conspiracy against the rights and liberties of man all over the world; but she is particularly so in the United States. The laws of the church of Rome are in absolute antagonism to the laws and principles which are the foundation- stones of the Constitution of the United States.”

The United States affirm the equality of all citizens before the law. Rome denies it. Liberty of conscience is proclaimed by the United States. Rome declares it to be a godless, unholy, and diabolical thing. Separation of Church and State is an American doctrine. Rome is for the union. The State is but the annex. The church is all in all.

The Constitution of the United States fights persecution for opinion’s sake; Rome champions it.

The United States seeks, through the public school, to secure the education of all the children. Rome curses the public schools, and seeks to supplant them with others in which Romanism shall be taught.

The United States recognizes in the people the primary source of civil power. Rome proclaims this principle heretical and impious. She says that “all government must rest upon the foundation of the Catholic faith, with the Pope alone as the legitimate and infallible source and interpreter of the law.”

All this shows that Rome is the absolute and irreconcilable foe of the United States. Being entrenched in Washington and feared there, it is feared throughout the Republic. Beaten there, its defeat will not be difficult elsewhere.

CHAPTER IX. Romanism the assassin of Abraham Lincoln

THE charge that Romanism was the assassin of Abraham Lincoln was first brought to the attention of the American people by Rev. Charles Chiniquy in his “Fifty Years in the Church of Rome.”The proofs are there. Rome has answered the charges in the old way, by fire. Again and again have her minions tried to destroy man, book, and plates by burning the place where the book was printed and stored. Over and over again they have tried to kill the great apostle, but he still survives, and the light he kindled is shedding its glad radiance upon the world.

In 1851 he removed with a colony to St. Anne, Illinois, to begin the cultivating of the prairies of the West with Roman Catholics. His experience there was terribly sad. Born in Kamoraska, Canada, July 30, 1809, converted to Christ by reading the Scriptures when but a child, as a priest his life shows that a pure man in the Church of Rome has a hard time. No sooner had he begun his life in Illinois than he found a dissolute priesthood in antagonism to him and his work. They plotted against his reputation, and charged him with crimes which, if not disproved, would have incarcerated him in the State penitentiary for life.

It was then he turned to Abraham Lincoln, who, first as a lawyer and afterwards as a friend, served him with matchless ability. Because of this, when Mr. Lincoln became President of the United States, and was threatened by Romish priests with assassination, Father Chiniquy came to Washington to warn him of his peril, and give him proof of a friendship that through years remained unchanged. As an evidence of their close intimacy turn back a little. We are in Urbana, Illinois. Behold Abraham Lincoln as the champion of the betrayed priest.

A priest had accused Father Chiniquy of assaulting a woman, and had offered to give one of his dupes a large sum for swearing to the charge. Twelve men had proven the accuser to be a drunkard and a disreputable man; and yet it seemed impossible to secure any testimony that would disprove the charge.

Said Abraham Lincoln: “There is not the least doubt in my mind that every word this priest has said is a sworn lie; but the jury think differently. The only way to be sure of a verdict in your favor is, that God Almighty would take our part and show your innocence. Go to him and pray, for he alone can save you.”

All that night he spent in prayer; at three o clock in the morning he heard knocks at the door. On opening it, he saw Abraham Lincoln with a face beaming with joy. The story of the trial had been published in the Chicago papers. His condemnation was prophesied.

Among those who bought the papers was a man named Terrien. He read the story to his wife. She was much affected, and declared that it was a plot against a true man, saying: “I was there when the priest, Le Belle, promised his sister 160 acres of land if she would swear to a false oath and accuse Chiniquy of a crime which he had not even thought of, with her.”

“If it be so,”said Terrien, “we must not allow Father Chiniquy to be condemned. Come with me to Urbana.”Being unwell, Mrs. Terrien said: “I cannot go; but Miss Philomene Moffat was with me then, she knows every particular of the wicked plot as well as I do. She is well, take her to Urbana.”

This was done, and Father Chiniquy was saved. The joy of his deliverance was mixed with sorrow, because of what he feared his deliverance would cost his friend. Tears ran down his face. “Why weep? “asked Abraham Lincoln. “Because,”said Father Chiniquy, “of what it may cost you.”There were ten or twelve Jesuits in the crowd who had come from Chicago and St. Louis to see me condemned to the penitentiary, but it is on their heads you have brought the thunders of heaven and earth; nothing can be compared to the expression of their rage against you, when you not only wrenched me from their cruel hands, – but made the walls of the court – house tremble under the awful and superhumanly eloquent denunciation of their infamy, diabolical malice, and total want of Christian and humane principle in the plot they had formed for my destruction. What troubles my soul just now and draws my tears is, that it seems to me I have read your sentence of death in their bloody eyes. How many other noble victims have fallen at their feet. He tried to divert my mind; then became more solemn, and said: “I know the Jesuits never forget nor forsake. But man must not care how or when he dies at the post of honor or duty.”

A few years pass. Abraham Lincoln is President of the United States. On his way to Washington a Roman-Catholic plot to assassinate him was frustrated by his passing incognito, a few hours before they expected him. In August, another plot was concocted; which, coming to the ears of Father Chiniquy, caused him to go to Washington. The story of his experience and the relation of what the President said to him is of thrilling interest.

President Lincoln then told him: We have the proof that the company which had been selected and organized to murder me was led by a rabid Roman Catholic named Byrne; it was almost entirely composed of Roman Catholics. More than that, there were two disguised priests among them to lead and encourage them. Professor Morse, the learned inventor of electric telegraphy, tells me that recently, when he was in Rome, he found the proofs of a most formidable conspiracy against this country and all its institutions. It is evident that it is to the intrigues and emissaries of the Pope we owe, in great part, the horrible civil war which is threatening to cover the country with blood and ruin.”

Mr. Lincoln had been astonished by the statement published in the Roman Catholic papers that tie had been born into the Roman Catholic church and had been baptized by a priest. They called him a renegade and an apostate on account of that, and heaped upon his head mountains of abuse.

“At first,”said Mr. Lincoln, “I laughed at that, for it is a lie. Thanks be to God, I have never been a Roman Catholic. No priest of Rome has ever had his hand upon my head. But the persistency of the Romish press to present this falsehood to their readers as a gospel truth must have a meaning. What is it?”

“It was this story,”said Father Chiniquy, “that brought me to Washington. It means your death. It is told to excite the fanaticism of the Roman Catholics to murder you. In the church of Rome an apostate is an outcast who has no place in society and no right to live. The Jesuits want the Roman Catholics to believe that you are a monster, an enemy of God and of his church; that you are an excommunicated man. Gregory VII. decreed that the killing of an apostate is not murder, but a good Christian act. That decree is incorporated in the canon law which every priest must study, and which every good Catholic must follow. My dear Mr. President, my fear is that you will fall under the blows of a Jesuit assassin, if you do not pay more attention than you have done up to the present time to protect yourself. Remember, because Coligny was a Protestant, he was brutally murdered on St. Bartholomew s night; that Henry IV. was stabbed by the Jesuit assassin, Rev-aillac, the 14th of May, 1610, for having given liberty of conscience to his people; and that William, Prince of Orange, the head of the Dutch Republic, was stricken down July 10th, 1584, by Girard, the fiendish embodiment of all that was crafty, bigoted, and revengeful in Spanish Popery. The church of Rome is absolutely the same today as she was then; she does believe and teach today as then, that it is her duty to punish by death any heretic who is in her way, or an obstacle to her designs.

“My blood chills in my veins when I contemplate the day which may come, sooner or later, when Rome will add to all her iniquities the murder of Abraham Lincoln.”

“Yes,”said Abraham Lincoln, “Professor Morse has already opened mine eyes to this subject. He has truly said: Popery is a political system; despotic in its organization, anti-democratic and anti- republican, and cannot therefore exist with American republicanism.

“The ratio of the increase of Popery is the exact ratio of the decrease of civil liberty. “The dominion of Popery in the United States is the certain destruction of our free institutions.””Popery, by its organization, is wholly under the control of a foreign, despotic Sovereign.””Popery is a union of Church and State; nor can Popery exist in this country in that plenitude of power which it claims as a divine right, and which in the very nature of the system it must continually strive to obtain, until such a union is consummated. Popery is, therefore, destructive to our religious and civil liberty.”

“Popery is more dangerous and more formidable than any power in the United States, on the ground that, through its despotic organization, it can concentrate its efforts for any purpose with complete effect; and that organization being wholly under foreign control, it can have no real sympathy with any thing American. Popery does not acknowledge the right of the people to govern, but claims for itself the supreme right to govern people and rulers by divine right. Popery does not tolerate the liberty of the press. It takes advantage, indeed, of our liberty of the press to use its own press against our liberty; but it proclaims in the thunders of the Vatican, and with a voice which it pronounces unchangeable, that it is a liberty never sufficiently to be execrated and detested. It does not tolerate liberty of conscience or liberty of opinion. They are denounced by the Sovereign Pontiff as a most pestilential error, a pest of all others to be dreaded in the State. It is not responsible to the people in its financial matters. It taxes at will, and is accountable to none but itself.” {Foreign Conspiracy of the United States, by S. F. B. Morse, p. 129. }

These utterances were based on undisputed facts. Abraham Lincoln believed them, hence he said: “If the Protestants of the North and the South could learn what the priests, nuns, and monks, who daily land on our shores, under the pretext of preaching their religion, were doing in our schools and hospitals, as emissaries of the Pope and the other despots of Europe, to undermine our institutions and alienate the hearts of our people from our Constitution and our laws, and prepare a reign of anarchy here, as they have done in Ireland, in Mexico, in Spain, and wherever there are people that wish to be free, they would unite in taking power out of their hands.”

If Abraham Lincoln had said this to the American people rather than to an individual, they would have taken this power out of the hands of Rome, and buried slavery and Romanism in a common grave.

It is now known that the conspirators against liberty relied upon the support of Romanists in the North and in the South. But when the echoes of the guns of Sumter flew over the land, it called into active life the slumbering patriotism of a great people; the tide swept everything before it; the people would brook no opposition. Romish priests and people bowed to the supremacy of the patriotic sentiment. Flags were unfurled from church-spire and from house- top. No Romish conspirator in the great cities of the North dared show his hand; the people ran away from their priests; their conduct was a revelation. It showed to papal emissaries that a people who had fled Europe because of despotism, were not ready to betray liberty in America, the land of the free. Hence Romanists who had enjoyed the blessings of liberty enrolled themselves under the star-spangled banner, and went trooping off to the war* for the Union. Romish priests were taken by surprise; they bent before the swelling current. Flags floated from cathedral spires and parish steeples until Rome was heard from, and then flags were pulled down, lest their church should ignore its sacred calling. They forgot that the Pope lived in Rome because of the help, not of spiritual power, but of the support of French bayonets; that in St. Louis, Mo., when the great cathedral was dedicated, the host was elevated to the music of belching cannon, flags were unfurled and lowered before the wafer- God of Rome, and that soldiers with drawn swords stood on each side of the high altar during service, claiming that in Roman Catholic St. Louis, or in Spain, the military is recognized as the right arm of the church.

Romanism opposed the North because Romanism is the foe of liberty. Romanism encouraged the South because the corner-stone of the Southern Confederacy rested upon human slavery. How the colored people of the South or the North can forget this and unite with the Roman Catholic church is a mystery. It is the theory of Rome that the toilers should be kept in ignorance. Gentlemen for the palace and serfs for the field, is the spirit of Romanism, incarnated in every despotic government where its power is supreme.

Louis Napoleon, the ally of Pius IX., expected to build up in Mexico a Roman Catholic kingdom, and unite it with the Southern States, and so establish a Latin Empire in the new world.

The Emancipation Proclamation spoilt the programme. How strange, how inexplicable are events, when studied in the light of an over-ruling Providence! For months, Abraham Lincoln had a vow registered before Almighty God to issue the Emancipation Proclamation, and give freedom to the negro, providing a victory was won at An tie tarn. The victory came. But Wm. H. Seward and S. P. Chase objected to the issuance of the Proclamation at a time of general depression in military affairs. The President waited until he could wait no longer. He called a Cabinet meeting, read his paper, and declared his purpose to send it forth. Suggestions were made. Some were received, some were rejected. The Proclamation went forth, and winged its way over the world. It reached France at the time when Louis Napoleon had proposed, and was about sending forth a letter recognizing the Southern Confederacy.

That morning the Proclamation of Liberty appeared. Paris was ablaze with excitement. Vivas of liberty filled the air, and Napoleon, knowing that a recognition of the Southern Confederacy was impossible, Maximillian was surrendered to his fate, and the dream of a monarchy in Mexico was exploded,

Claiming that Abraham Lincoln was an apostate, the plot was laid to destroy him. On Dec. 3rd, 1863, Pius IX. uncovered his hand and heart in his letter to Jefferson Davis. That letter, after all that Abraham Lincoln had borne and was bearing for the brotherhood of man, was a severe sword-thrust at his heart and hope.

“Illustrious and Honorable President: We have just received, with all suitable welcome, the persons sent by you to place in our hands your letter, dated the 23rd of September last.” He then takes ground, not for liberty, not for the deliverance of 4,000,000 bondsmen from the hell of human slavery, but for peace; which meant, building up the Confederacy on slavery as a corner-stone.

“We, at the same time, beseech the God of mercy and pity to shed abroad upon you the light of his grace, and attach you to us by a perfect friendship,”

“Given at Rome at St. Peter s, the 3rd day of December, 1863, of our Pontificate, 18. Pius IX.”

This letter came like a clap of thunderin a clear sky. Let us keep a few dates in mind. The Emancipation Proclamation was issued Sept. 22, 1862. This was followed by another, issued Jan. 1st, 1863, giving freedom to all slaves, and also that such persons of suitable condition would be received into the armed service of the United States, to garrison forts, and man vessels of all sorts in said service. And upon this, sincerely believed to be an act of justice, warranted by the Constitution, upon military necessity, “I invoke the considerate judgment of mankind, and the gracious favor of Almighty God.”

Deliberately and ostentatiously, the Pope on the December following recognizes the Southern Confederacy, sides with despotism against liberty, and takes under his protection the chief conspirator against the Republic of the United States! “Have you read the Pope s letter?”said Abraham Lincoln to Father Chiniquy, “and what do you think of it?”(p. 701).

“That letter is a poisoned arrow thrown by the Pope at you personally, and it will be more than a miracle if it be not your irrevocable death-warrant.

“That letter tells logically the Roman Catholics, that you, Abraham Lincoln, are a bloody tyrant, a most execrable being, when fighting against a government which the infallible and holy Pope recognizes as legitimate.”

In reply, Mr. Lincoln spoke with great feeling, saying: “You confirm me in the views I had taken of this letter of the Pope. Prof. Morse is of the same mind with you. It is indeed the most perfidious act which could occur under the present circumstances. You are perfectly correct when you say that it was designed to detach the Roman Catholics who had enrolled in our armies. Since the publication of that letter, a great number have deserted their banners and turned traitor; very few comparatively have remained true to their oath of fidelity.”

There are some terrible facts hidden from the people. “It is known that when Meade, a Roman Catholic, was to order the pursuit of Lee, after the battle of Gettysburg, a stranger came in haste to head-quarters, and that stranger, said Mr. Lincoln, was a distinguished Jesuit. After ten minutes conversation with him, Meade made such arrangements for the pursuit of the enemy that he escaped almost untouched, with the loss of only two guns.”(p. 702.)

“This letter of the Pope has changed the nature of the war. Before they read it, Roman Catholics could see that I was fighting against the Southern Confederacy, with Jefferson Davis at its head. But now they must believe that it is against Christ and his holy Vicar the Pope that I am raising my sacreligious hands. We have daily proof that their indignation, their hatred, their malice against me, are a hundred fold intensified. New projects of assassination are detected almost every day, accompanied with such savage circumstances that they bring to my memory the massacre of St. Bartholomew, and the gun-powder plot. We find on investigation, that they come from the same masters in the art of murder, the Jesuits.

Then Mr. Lincoln declared that the New York riots were a Popish plot, and that

was their instigator. When told by the President that he would be held responsible if they were not stopped, Archbishop Hughes faced the rioters, addressed them as friends, and invited them to go back home peacefully, and all was ended, after the most fiendish manifestations of hate, seen in the burning of the Colored Orphan Asylum and the trampling out of the lives of helpless children in their mad fury. We will not recount the bloody deed, though in the terrible treatment of John A. Kennedy and the murder of Col. O Brien and his mutilation, we are reminded of the horrid barbarities inflicted upon Coligny in Paris, which shows that the spirit of Popery is unchanged.

furnishes a terrible count in this indictment against Rome.

“I have,”said Abraham Lincoln, “the proof that Archbishop Hughes, whom I had sent to Rome that he might induce the Pope to urge the Roman Catholics of the North at least to be true to their oaths of allegiance, and whom I thanked publicly when under the impression that he had acted honestly, according to the promise he had given me, is the very man who advised the Pope to recognize the legitimacy of the Southern Confederacy, and put the weight of his Tiara in the balance against us and in favor of our enemies. Such is the perfidy of Jesuits”(p. 70-4) .

Two cankers are biting the very entrails of the United States, the Romish and the Mormon priests. Both are aiming at the destruction of our schools, to raise themselves upon their ruins. Both shelter themselves under our grand and holy principles of liberty of conscience, to destroy that very liberty of conscience. The more dangerous of the two is the Jesuit priest, for he knows better how to conceal his hatred, under the mask of friendship and public good. He is better trained to commit the most cruel and diabolical deeds for the glory of God.

Abraham Lincoln had learned much, and unlearned much more. He declared himself to be of Roman Catholics. “Once I was; now, it seems to me, that, sooner or later, the people will be forced to put a restriction to that clause of unlimited toleration toward Papists.””I am for liberty of conscience in its truest, noblest, broadest, highest sense. But I cannot give liberty of conscience to the Pope and his followers the Papists, so long as they tell me, through their councils, theologians, and canon laws, that their conscience orders them to burn my wife, strangle my children, and cut my throat when they find an opportunity”(p. 705).

“This does not seem to be understood by the people,”continued Mr. Lincoln. “Sooner or later, the light of common sense will make it clear to everyone, that no liberty of conscience can be granted to men, who are sworn to obey a Pope who pretends to have the right to put to death those who differ from him in religion “(p. 706).

69is beginning to be discussed. Father Hecker says: “The Roman Catholic is to wield his vote for the purpose of securing Catholic ascendency in this country.”They vote as servants of the Pope, not as patriots.

It was stated by Pius IX: “The Catholic religion, with all its votes, ought to be exclusively dominant in such sort that every other worship be banished and interdicted.”

We are putting into hands those potential ballots which will be, and are being, used against liberty. A theocracy controls them against which there is no protection. Emile DeLaveleye, the celebrated Belgian Liberal, has shown that an extended suffrage gives unlimited power to Rome in all those countries where her religion is the religion of the large mass of the people, and Gambetta s last letter contained this: “Do not adopt universal suffrage in your country; it will put you under the yoke of the clergy.”

“From the beginning of the war, there has been, not a secret, but a public alliance between the Pope of Rome and Jeff. Davis, and that alliance has followed the common laws of the world s affairs. The greater has led the smaller; the stronger has guided the weaker. The Pope and his Jesuits have advised and directed Jeff. Davis on the land, from the first shot at Fort Sumter, by the rabid Roman Catholic Beauregard. They were helping him on the sea, by guiding and supporting the other rabid Roman Catholic, Pirate Semmes.”

was ever present. Warnings came to him from friends in America, and beyond the Sea. Secretary Stanton placed guards about him, at the Soldier’s Home and at the White House. The President did not believe that these could secure him from harm. He lived with Christ and for men, and went on. Opening his Bible to Deut. 3:22-28, the words made a profound impression upon his mind: “Ye shall not fear them; for the Lord your God shall fight for you.” Then came the assurance that he was not to pass into the Canaan of peace. “Get thee up unto the top of Pisgah; look abroad; see the land and rest: for thou shalt not go over this Jordan.”

His drawing near to God did him good. It is what we are, not what we profess, that tells the story. As Abraham Lincoln drew near to God, the people drew near to him. No longer was he called the horrid names which once characterized the opposition press. The God in him was conquering the devil about him. Each morning he gave a certain hour to reading the Scriptures and prayer, and came forth from his room ready for duty, with that light shining in his face which glorified Moses as he came down from the mount. This, while it made him friends with the soldiers and the people, maddened the Romanists.

In the light of what was to come so soon, we delight to go back and read statements like the following:

“When little Willie Lincoln died, the mind of the bereaved father was deeply affected by the thoughts of death. It was during the battle of Gettysburg that he shut himself up with God, and then such a sense of the presence of God and of his own unworthiness came to him and took possession of his soul, as to overwhelm him. From that day he dated his entrance into a new life. A Christian friend delighted to relate how, in the carriage, Mr. Lincoln begged the visitor to describe as clearly as possible what was the peculiar evidence which one might rely upon as assurance that he had become a Christian.”

The simple story, as furnished by John, was repeated. It was explained, that when a poor sinner, conscious that he could not save himself, looked to Jesus Christ, saw in his death a full atonement for the sinner’s sin, and believed that Christ’s death was accepted as a substitute for the sinner’s death, he felt himself to have been delivered from the Divine wrath, and to be at peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.”The President, in a tone of satisfaction, said: “That is just the way I feel.”All this paved the way for what was to come. The war was over,”The soldiers of the Confederacy were going to rebuild their homes and to re- cultivate their fields, with blessings instead of cursings following them. Soup-houses had been placed for the starving at the base of flag-staffs, where the stars and bars had usurped the place belonging to the flag which is the ensign of hope for all lands and climes.

Friday, the 14th of April, 1865, had come. It was a day memorable in many ways. On this day, Beauregard had fired on Sumter. On this day, General Anderson, amid the thunder of cannon and the cheers of loyal hearts, had again raised the flag over the ruins of Sumter.

is noteworthy. He had written to a friend that he was going to use precaution. He had said: “The Jesuits are so expert in their deeds of blood, that Henry IV. said it was impossible to escape them, and he became their victim, though he did all he could to protect himself. My escape from their hands, since the letter of the Pope to Jeff. Davis has sharpened a million of daggers, is more than a miracle.”

He breakfasts with his son, Captain Robert. Lincoln, who was on General Grant’s staff, having just returned from the capitulation of Lee, and the President passed a happy hour listening to all the details. At eleven o clock he attended his last cabinet-meeting. When it was adjourned, Secretary Stanton said he felt that the Government was stronger than at any previous period since the Rebellion commenced; and the President is said, in his characteristic way, to have told them that some important news would soon come, as he had a dream of a ship sailing very rapidly, and had invariably had that same dream before great events in the war, Bull Run, Antietam, Gettysburg.

THE invitation for President and Mrs. Lincoln, General and Mrs. Grant, Speaker Colfax and wife, to attend the theatre, is now known to have been a part of the plot. Lincoln, not because he loved the theatre or cared for the play, but to please the people and obtain needed rest, yielded to the persuasion of his wife, and to the sentiment which rules very largely the crowned heads of Europe, when the king goes to his box in the theatre that the people might see him and that he might see the people. General Grant did not go, nor did Mr. Colfax, and other invited guests. Lincoln was disappointed; rode around with his wife and invited Colonel Rathbun and his wife to seats with them: they accepted the invitation and saw the horrid deed performed.

The box of the theatre was made ready for his assassination. John Wilkes Booth, an illegitimate son of his father, had been boasting for days in drunken moods of what he was to do. He had united with the Roman Catholic Church, though he was drinking to excess and plotting the murder of America’s noblest citizen, with Roman Catholic priests, who instructed him and inducted him into the Church, and promised him protection and support in his nefarious crime.

In the book of testimonies given in the prosecution of the assassins of Lincoln, published by Ben Pitman, and in the two volumes of the trial of John Surratt, 1867, we have the legal and irrefutable proof that Rome directed the movements of Booth; that the plot was matured in the house of Mary Surratt, 561 H Street, Washington, D. C.; that Father Lehiman, a priest, made her house his home; that Father Wiget and other priests were constantly going in and out: and that all the details of the conspiracy were planned there and provided for. Booth was made to feel that he was the instrument of God in ridding the world of Lincoln. The day before his death, he wrote: “I can never repent, though I hated to kill. Our country owed all her troubles to him, Lincoln, and God simply made me the instrument of his punishment.”So thought Ravillac, the assassin of Henry IV. Both were trained to believe that there was no sin in killing the enemy of the holy church and of the infallible Pope.

Let us draw aside the curtain:

The evening came. The President is sitting in his box in the theatre. He is resting in a rocking chair. A man enters the door of the lobby leading to the box. He closes the door behind him. He draws a pistol, and shoots the President in the back of his head. The shriek of Mrs. Lincoln pierces the ears of all. Booth leaps upon the stage, brandishing a dagger, and flies, saying as he does, “Sic semper tyrannis.”His horse at the door is held by a Roman Catholic. He leaps upon, it and rides away.

Proof that Rome directed the arm of J. Wilkes Booth is seen:

First. In the fact that the house of Mrs. Surratt, a Roman Catholic, where the plot was laid, swarmed with priests.

Second. The Mr. Lloyd, who kept the carbine which Booth wanted for protection, was a Roman Catholic.

Third. Dr. Mudd, who set the leg of Booth, was a Roman Catholic.

Fourth. Garrett, in whose barn Booth took refuge and where he was shot, was a Roman Catholic.

Fifth. All the conspirators, says General Baker, the great detective, were attending Roman Catholic services, or were educated as Roman Catholics.

Sixth. Priests sheltered and spirited away John Surratt, and Pope Pius IX. gave him a place among his guards,

Seventh. The plot was known as far away as St. Joseph, Minn., 40 miles from a railroad, and more than 80 miles from a telegraph. Rev. F. A. Conwell, late chaplain of a Minnesota regiment, was told at that place at six P.M. on April 14th, the night of the assassination, by the purveyor of the monastery filled with priests, that President Lincoln and Secretary Seward had been killed, four hours before the deed was attempted. How was it known? There is but one answer. The conspiracy which cost Abraham Lincoln his life was resolved upon by the priests of Washington and communicated to priests in far-away St. Joseph. Charles Boucher, a priest in Canada, swears that John Surratt was sent to him by Father Lefierre, the canon of the bishop of Montreal. For months he concealed him, and then shipped him to Rome. Why? Because it was in the bond. They promised the murderers protection on earth, so far as they could give it to them, and a crown in heaven if they died in the attempt.

Eighth. The rejoicing of Romanists* at the outset, and until they saw their peril. Mrs. Surratt, the day after the murder, said, without being rebuked, in the presence of several witnesses: “The death of Abraham Lincoln is no more than the death of any nigger in the army.”

Why is not more made of it? Cowardice explains it all. Fear was on every side. The leaders declared, We are just through with one war; if we make an attack on the Roman Catholic church and hang a few of their priests, who could be proven guilty of participating in the plot, a religious war would be the result. Nothing would have been easier than to have proven the criminality of the priests; but this was carefully avoided, from the beginning to the end of the trial. When their eyes were opened to their peril, the fear of the priests was pitiable. They say that their damning deed had frozen the milk in the breasts of millions. Jesuitism, with the tread of a panther and the cunning of a sleuthhound, shrank away, and hid from sight for the time. Alas! politicians seemed smitten with the same dread. Father Chiniquy declared that, when, not long after the execution of the murderers, he went incognito to Washington, to begin his investigations about the true and real authors of the deed, he was not a little surprised to see that not a single one of the men connected with the Government to whom he addressed himself would consent to have any talk with him on that matter, except after he had given his word of honor that he would never mention their names in connection with the result of the investigation. He says: “I saw with profound distress that the influence of Rome was almost supreme in Washington. I could not find a single statesman who would dare face the nefarious influence, and fight it down.”This was the policy of Lincoln. On this rock his bark struck, and went down.

The Romanism that assassinated President Lincoln is in our midst, unchanged in spirit and in purpose. Upon the American people devolve fearful responsibilities,

First. “We can tell the truth about Romanism.”

Second. “We can tell the truth to Romanists.”

Third. “We can hold America for Americans.”

Had Abraham Lincoln voiced the utterance, it would have made him the evangel that would have carried hope to the millions of earth. The work he left undone we must undertake, and then shall Romanism find here a grave, into which the roots of liberty shall go and find nutriment, while above shall tower the hardy trunk, from whose wide branches shall hang fruits which, gathered by God’s best children, shall fill the garners of hope, and make this Immanuel;s Land.

CHAPTER X. Fifteen thousand slaves to Rome in Washington; or, Americans under the surveillance of Rome

It will surprise the people of the great free republic of the United States to learn that

FIFTEEN THOUSAND DEPARTMENT CLERKS

are under the surveillance of Rome. This seems like a strange statement. The many will say it cannot be true. The fact remains. Romanism is the dominant power in the Capital of the United States. The war which Rome helped to bring on, and which she hindered as best she could when she saw it was to eventuate in liberty, resulted in her advantage rather than to her detriment. The reason for it is difficult to explain. Had Abraham Lincoln told the truth about Romanism to the people, the curse would have been wiped out. The reason he did not, and gave for not doing it, influences thousands at the present time, viz. : fear of a religious war.

It seems inexplicable that the power which assassinated Abraham Lincoln should have been fostered and aided by the people who slew slavery and who recognized the fact that Romanism was its chief ally. Who can think of Thaddeus Stevens patting this monster that slew the great Emancipator, without a shudder of horror, mingled with a feeling of incredulity. A strange fear of Rome came upon the politicians of all parties after the civil war was over. Proofs abounded of the disloyalty of this life-long foe of liberty. They were unheeded. They remain unheeded. From dozens of letters, and from unnumbered clerks in the departments, information is furnished that, after the 1st and 15th of every month, nuns have the free run of the departments, and can ask every clerk and every head of a department for money to help on the Church of Rome. Some of these letters are sad beyond expression. The wife of a Union soldier writes :”I am in —- Department. There are nine Irish to one American. The persecution to which I am subjected, in hopes of driving me out, is difficult to describe and hard to bear. They preach their religion and their politics. If a word is said against it, the air is made blue with profanity, and such words as, Get out, you heretic; we ll make it hot for you, are heard on every hand.”

to any of the Departments, and can do what she desires. Any one without the black robe and bonnet would be thrust out by the door-keepers. These are admitted by special order. Must this be borne? Is not this an outrage to Christian employees in a free Government? Drop the word”Christian.”Is it not an outrage on American citizenship? Has Rome any claim upon these clerks in the service of the Government? Suppose Baptists or Presbyterians should ask the privilege of going through the departments to solicit funds for church purposes, would the request be granted? Most assuredly not.

We have said the clerks were under the surveillance of Rome. Suppose they do not like it? What can they do about it? Seven men, members of the Grand Army of the Republic, some from Northern states, some from Southern, told how they were not only asked by these nuns to give twice a month, but that they were afraid not to give. They related how the heads of the departments are very largely either Roman Catholics, or afraid to antagonize them, and because one of their number expressed his mind in regard to the outrage of having these black-robed minions of Rome tramping through the departments and asking American citizens to contribute to the support of”The Harlot of the Tiber”his name was handed in as a man who had insulted a saintly nun, and at the close of the month his dismissal came, and no reasons given. They who refuse to give are reported, and when vacancies are required, their names are ready for use. The result need not be described. Fear of losing their places is everywhere apparent. It affects society, muzzles the press, and chains the pulpit.

If there is one doctrine distinctively American, it is that there must be a separation between church and State. If there is one doctrine distinctively democratic, it is that the State must support the representatives of the Church of Rome.

for Ireland, we need it in Washington. The Capital, the Departments, the President s House, the Post Office, the Foreign, and now the Interior Department, are under the domination of Roman Catholics, the instigators of the Civil War and the assassins of Abraham Lincoln, the life-long foe of liberty here, and throughout the world.

lies in the fact, that the men in office live, when at home, in different places, which are also under the dominance of Rome.

Several members of Congress related that it is the custom of the nuns to visit every member of Congress soon after he arrives : they ask for a contribution. If they give, well. If not, it is reported.

A Northern lady, a good Baptist, whose husband is independent of public patronage, rented rooms to a member of Congress. Hardly had he got his trunk unstrapped, before two nuns came. The girl let them in. They were asked to call again after the gentleman got settled. They were no sooner out, than the lady of the house said:”If those women come again, seat them in the hall, and don t let them in until I see them.”The next day they were seated in the hall, and she came down. The lady is utterly fearless, and has no respect for, nor fear of black-robed Sisters of Charity.

“What do you want?”

“To see the Member of Congress”

“What for?”

“To see him.”

“He has a wife, and don t need the attentions of other women.”

“We wish to see him for the church.”

“He is not a Roman Catholic, and has a better church, which he helps support.”

Then the old nun claimed she wished to go into a private room to fix her shoe.”Fix it here : you are not afraid of me, are you?”

Then she spoke up, and asked :”Do you refuse to let me see a Member of Congress in this house?”

“I do.”

“Then we will take the number of this house, and it may be to your injury.”-

“All right; take it, and advertise it, if you choose; my house cannot be made a run-way for Romish hirelings.”

It is a simple fact, that the house is always full of occupants, and is felt to be a retreat from the incursions of Romanists.

Is there any good reasons why the Roman Catholic church should become a universal beggar, and yet house the Pope in the largest palace in the world, and feed her cardinals, bishops, lady-superiors, priests and nuns on the fat of the land?

Was there ever a set of dupes like Romanists, who, as a rule, live in squalor, while the money drawn from the poor is placed on the largest structures of the land.

More wealth is under her control than is possessed by the representative of any nation, sect, or faith. Her wealth is a secret. Out of Peter s Pence comes a great patrimony. Rome claims to be beneficent, and so becomes the recipient of bounty from the State, as well as from individuals. No sect is less so. No people give so little to any object outside of their own communion.

fifteen hundred feet in length, eight hundred in breadth, with twenty courts, miles of galleries filled with pictures and statuary, two hundred stair-cases, eleven hundred rooms, the construction of which has cost more than one hundred millions of dollars, and yet he is the pensioner of the whole world!

As a rule, the people who belong to the Church of Rome are poor. In Roman Catholic countries where Romanism rules supreme, they are very poor. In Ireland, in the Roman Catholic districts, the men and women sleep in ditches and herd with pigs. It is surprising that, in New York, Romanists, living in tenement houses, in garrets and cellars, are content to abide in squalor, while the archbishop, whose iron hand was laid on every free impulse, and all who sympathized with it, lives in a palace, and is fed on food that befits the table of a king. The Pope has for his own use four Palatine cardinals, three prelates, and a master, ten prelates of the private chamber, amongst whom are cup bearers and keepers of the wardrobe, two hundred and fifteen domestic prelates, and more than four hundred women. Then follows two hundred and forty-nine supernumerary prelates of the private chamber, four private chamberlains of the sword and cloak, Roman patricians, a quarter-master, major, a correspondent-general of the post, one hundred and thirty fresh private chamberlains of the sword and cloak. Next come two hundred and sixty-five honorary monsignori, extra urbem, six honorary chamberlains of the sword and cloak, then eight private chaplains; then two private monsignori of the tonsure, or, barbers in short, but monsignori just the same; then eighteen supernumeraries. In all, one thousand and twenty-five persons; besides the Palatine administration and the tribunal of the major-domo, the Swiss guards the gens d arms, and a legion of servants. Does it not need a brazen effrontery, which is astonishing, to send priests and nuns all over the world to extract the pence from the pockets of the poor, to keep in luxury this army of men, for the most part privates, who earn not a dollar, and are utterly worthless as aids to humanity? If it be difficult for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of heaven, how shall he who inherits the Vatican enter there, who has treasures of all sorts, many precious gems, countless works of art, vessels of silver and gold, and more than a thousand servants? On his head is not one crown, but three. He is borne on the shoulders of men. He compels his votaries to kiss his toe, and enjoys an income of millions.

In the United States, the attempt is being made to rival Europe. The Cardinal s palace in New York, built of marble, tilled with choice works of art, cost an immense sum. The dwellings of bishops and priests are planned on a magnificent scale. The gate into Rome is not strait, and the way is not narrow. They can carry with them bad politics, bad principles, bad practices and bad lives, and yet if they will give their consciences to the priests, and believe what they are taught concerning penance, absolution, forms and ceremonies, the conditions of becoming a Roman Catholic are met. A change of heart is not in the programme. A blameless, pure life is not in the bond. It is not strange that error thrives beneath the shadow of Romanism. Rum-selling is not a sin, and if rum-drinking were even a disgrace, few are the priests who would be respectable. Mormonism fattens on polygamy, and Mohammedanism, that painted a heaven in which lust should have full play, and the bestial nature supremacy, won a large following, and holds it, because the carnal heart can there find full play for passion and desire. Romanism is a match for either Mormonism or Mohammedanism. The priests practice polygamy under another name, and find in the church a carteblanche for the promptings of the natural heart.

A deception, because it claims to have been built on St. Peter in Rome; when there is not a scintilla of evidence that Peter ever saw Rome. He was the apostle of the circumcision. He went to Babylon, and from there wrote his epistles. Paul went to Rome, and called the names of the prominent ones he met; but never mentioned Peter, who lived and died in the East. But Romanism without Peter in Rome is a failure; and so the lie, that he came to Rome, lived there twenty-five years, was in the Marmantine Prison over which St. Peter s towers, and died crucified head downwards, in the place upon which the Vatican stands, where the Pope lives, all this is unblushingly lifted into prominence as if it were a truth, when all history knows it to be false.

Romanism is a fraud because it pretends to have power which does not belong to it. Tradition usurps the place of Scripture, it subordinates the inward and spiritual to the outward and visible; it obscures and stifles the life of faith and love, by its absorbing attention to the things of sight and show; instead of relying on Jesus, who is the Christ, and was offered once for all, it makes a new Jesus and a new atonement at every Mass; instead of having one mediator between God and man (1 Timothy, 2:5), it makes the mother of Jesus both a mediator and a God, and treats, likewise, its thousands of other canonized (real or unreal) saints as mediators, to be prayed to and honored for their superhuman merit and power. By its connected doctrines of confession and penance, and absolution and indulgence, it places the consciences, persons, and property of many women and children in the power of the priest; it speaks lies in hypocrisy, sears the conscience as with a hot iron; it changes the truth of God into a lie, and worships and serves the creature more than the Creator; it turns the consolations and comforts of religion, the means of grace, and the hope of glory, into so much merchandise, to be disposed of according to the vender, and the ability or necessity of the purchaser; in fine, it sets forth another gospel than the free gospel of Christ, another standard than the perfect law of God, other ordinances and other conditions of salvation than those which the Lord Jesus has established. It has fellowship with darkness .rather than light, and is in affinity with Satan and his angels, rather than with Jehovah. And yet, bad as it is in character and in practice, the Republic of the United States gives to this assassin of President Lincoln, to this enemy of all righteousness, to this instigator of the civil war, rights denied to the representatives of Jesus Christ s Gospel, and compels fifteen thousand employees of the Government to give to its support, or to have their places endangered, and their living confiscated!

Romanism is a fraud, because it claims to be in line with apostolic succession, when there have been at least thirty schisms in the church. Two popes have claimed St. Peter s chair at one and the same time, and fought and led armies to maintain the supremacy. In 1414, the Council of Constance cashiered three popes, John XXIII., Gregory XIII. and Benedict XIII. as deserving the deepest execration, and as guilty of most horrible crimes.

Popes have been guilty of the most horrible practices. What matters it though Pope Joan was taken with the pains of childbirth on a public parade, though mistresses and harlots had control of the Chair, Rome as unblushingly holds out her pauper hand and cries Give! as if she had a good history, and was backed by a decent life! Romanism is indifferent to Scripture and public opinion.

Romanists want a Peter for Rome, and they get him. In spite of Scripture, they will hold on to him; and for all Scripture can do, Peter may yet become a second Romulus, suckled by a wolf, and the founder of the Eternal City. It would be as true as much of the history they are making for the youth of America.

Is it not enough to tolerate Romanism? Shall the free people of America be compelled to give to its support? Shall this church be permitted to dominate the State? This is being done in many portions of the Republic. Shall a halt be called?

This question must be answered. Romanism is for the first time uncovering its intent in America, and revealing the fact that the spirit of hellish hate which dominated the organism in Spain, and also in Italy, characterizes it in the Republic, where, it was said, free institutions were to change its purpose and modify its nature. A good time to answer the question has come. Freemen are at last beginning to understand that freedom is in peril. Romanists who hope for better things are tiring of the old despotism, and are beginning to seek for the new life.

CHAPTER XI. In the lap of Rome

In a city cursed with malaria is a cesspool, so large that it spreads contagion through many cellars, up into offices, into stores, and infects the town. In winter, they do not clean it out, because of the cold. In summer, they have another excuse. It is covered with boards. Ever and anon one rots. A horse breaks through and is ruined. A man falls in and dies. Then comes a spasm of indignation, and many declare the cesspool must go; but it stays; it is working mischief.

Romanism is much like it. It poisons the air and affects the health, wherever its virus is inhaled. It is bad, and bad continually. Few care to touch it, or describe it. The cesspool is covered over. It ought to be cleaned out, but it is not. There are reasons why the many fail to attack the error or fight the sin. It controls votes how many, few know. The leaders of the Romish cohort are astute, far-seeing and brave. They work together, strike an organized blow, are conscienceless, and so are never hindered by principle or restrained by honor, rightness or righteousness. They are a bandit against virtue, education and progress. They are not ashamed of it. They will shut the best histories out of the school. There is a spasm. Meetings are held; Rome is attacked, and Rome is silent; but the books stay out, and Protestant teachers turn Catholics for place and pelf, and Rome laughs and moves on, securing the acquiescence, if not the favor, of politicians. So in regard to morality. A man breaks through into the cesspool. He is covered with filth. Romanism is revealed, and the people declare now it must go; but a new board is laid over the hole; lime is thrown in; the stench is killed for the moment, and Rome increases in power. Rome stands by Rome as true men would do well to stand by true men, but as true men seldom do, while the emergency is on, and help is needed.

Why Priests Should Wed,”was written to save women and girls threatened by the filth of the Confessional. Much that is vile, and too filthy to be read with pleasure or profit to the individual perusing it, has been omitted. For this, the author has been blamed by good men and women.”We do not know about it,”they say.”You say, there is a cesspool. You say it is beyond human belief for vileness. We do not have more than the words of men like you. The offensive matter is locked up in Latin. It is beyond our reach. This thing of Romanism concerns Americans. Romanism is doing all in its power to capture the United States. It will succeed, unless the truth be told concerning it.” Such is the view of good Christian men. Romanism is bringing forth as bad fruit in Washington as elsewhere. Assaults are made on virtue. Nunneries are used as assignation houses there as elsewhere, because Romanists live there as elsewhere. This ought to be brought to the attention of the people, if they are to be delivered. It is fashionable to speak of Romanism as a part of the Christian world.

Encyclopedias do it; so do ministers of Evangelical denominations. It is a shame that this is true, yet true it is. Romanism is the”mystery of iniquity.” It is a horrible stench in the nostrils of humanity, borne because of the lack of power to remove it. Hated of God, it is yet to be hated of man. But, in the meantime, the people have a battle to wage with error, and a duty to discharge. Roman ism must be exposed. Uncover the cesspool, and it shall bring upon itself destruction.

In”Why Priests Should Wed,” Dens and Liguori were quoted, and all that could be decently written was put into type, and a challenge was sent forth asking Romanists to deny it, if they could; or for Congress to appoint a Commission to investigate the charges brought against the priesthood of the Roman Catholic church because of the practice of Auricular Confession, and to demand persons and papers competent, in evidence, to declare whether such confessional is calculated to pollute the minds of the people, and undermine the foundation of our Republican institutions. Thousands and tens of thousands of these petitions were signed and sent to and read in the Senate and House of Representatives, and nothing has been done about it.

In the meantime, the author congratulates himself as having”built better than he knew,” because Romanists know what is left out in the blank spaces as Protestants do not, and the effect of the book has been helpful to Romanists, great numbers of whom, because of its appalling revelations, have abandoned Rome forever. It has been charged that, in”Why Priests Should Wed,” the quotations are largely from Dens and Liguori, and not from theologians of the Roman Catholic Church in America. This was because Dens theology has been endorsed by the prelates in Ireland as”the best book on the subject that could be published, as late as Sept. 15th, 1808, and by the Archbishop of St. Louis, Mo., in Feb. 1850,, by Bishop Kenrick of Philadelphia, in 1861 . A thousand dollars reward was offered in 1873 to any Accredited Roman priest or bishop y^ho will disprove the horrible disclosure contained in a book translating the Latin into English and German, from the Secret Theology of Peter Dens and Francis P. Kenrick, published in Chicago, 111. No reply has been made, because a refutation is impossible.

The truth is not hidden; but it is not scattered. Show what Romanists are, what they teach, and how they live, and decent people will cut loose from it; and the President, unless he be lost to all self-esteem and sense of decency, and the respect of mankind, would as soon walk the streets with a painted representative of the house which is”the way to hell, going down to the chambers of death,” as to lock arms with the Red-Robed Cardinal, the representative of the Harlot of the Tiber.

It is not necessary to confine attention to the works of Dens and Liguori. John Hughes, archbishop of New York, and Francis Patrick Kenrick, arch bishop of Philadelphia, have sanctioned all the vileness of the past, and sent forth contributions as vile as any that preceded. These are accessible. In the book,”Theology in Use in the Theological Seminary and Sacred Theology for Students,” by Francis Patrick Kenrick, are descriptions of”adulterers with the mouth” (p. 130) , of the manner in which the marriage bed is to be used and is defiled (1. vi., n. 917), and suggestions concerning intercourse too filthy to be written; of the sin of evading offspring, and the means employed to produce the result; of the guilt of Sodomy, and how the sin is committed between husband and wife (1. vi., n. 916); of the sin of rendering one s-self impotent, and much more in the same strain. PARISH PRIESTS AND OTHER CONFESSORS PROVIDED FOR. Because this is frequently denied, we quote in full;”VIII. Of Luxury. If, however, it should be foreseen that pollution will ensue from some cause that is necessary, or useful, or advantageous to some body, although the mind is averse to it, there is no sin, so long as there is no danger in consenting to it. Hence, even though involuntary pollution should be foreseen, it is proper for

• “1. Parish Priests, and also other confessors, to hear the confessions of women, to read treatises on obscene subjects, to touch the parts of a sick woman, to accost, kiss or embrace women according to the custom of the country, to wait on them in . bathing, and other things of a similar character.
• “2. It is lawful for any one who suffers great itching in the privates, to relieve it by touching, although pollution may follow.
• “3. So also it is useful to ride on horseback for a person, even though pollution should be foreseen,”and much more of the same character.
• “4. It is lawful to lie in any position to rest more conveniently.
• “5. To take warm food or drinks, in moderation, and to lead in decent dances.” {Francis Patrick Kenrick’s Theology, vol. 3, p. 172} Into this lap of Rome, look. The Parish Priest is given absolute control of the bodies of the women of the Roman Catholic church, and of all others he may capture. Liguori grants a priest two women a month. Kenrick permits a lascivious scoundrel to gratify his lustful inclinations. When wife or daughter is the victim, does not the permission given in the theology place the entire church under suspicion? Somebody’s daughter, somebody’s wife shut up with the priest in the Confessional, or in his home, is his victim.

Let us turn now to the”Garden of the Soul,” a prayer-book commonly used in the Roman Catholic churches, and for sale at all Roman Catholic book stores, and commended by Archbishop Hughes, and on pages 213 and 214 are these questions, to be asked by a Roman Catholic priest of any female, from seven up to seventy.

“Have you been guilty of fornication, or adultery, or incest, or any sin against nature, either with a person of the same sex, or with any other creature? How often? Or have you designed or attempted any such sin, or sought to induce others to it? How often?”Have you been guilty of pollution, or immodest touches of yourself? How often?

“Have you touched others, or permitted yourself to be touched by others immodestly? or given and taken wanton kisses, or embraces, or any such liberties? How often?”Have you looked at immodest objects, with pleasure or danger? read immodest books, or songs, to yourself, or others? kept indecent pictures? willingly given car to, and taken pleasure in hearing loose discourses? or sought to see or hear anything that was immodest? How often?

“Have you exposed yourself to wanton company? or played at any indecent play? or frequented masquerades, bulls, comedies, with danger to your chastity? How often?”Have you been guilty of any immodest discourse, wanton stares, jests, or songs, or words of double meaning? and how often? and before how many? and were the persons to whom you spoke or sung married or single? For all this you are obliged to confess, by reason of the evil thoughts these things are apt to create in the hearers.

“Have you abused the marriage-bed by any action contrary to the order of nature? or by any pollutions? or been guilty of any irregularity, in order to hinder your having children? How often? (Ways to ascertain all this are pointed out by Bishop F. P. Kenrick, in the theology which every priest must study) . Have you, without just cause, refused the marriage debt? and what sin followed from it? How often?

“Have you debauched any person that was innocent before? Have you forced any person, or deluded any one by deceitful promises, etc.? or designed, or desired to do so? How often?

“Have you taught any one evil that he knew not of before? or carried any one to lewd houses?” etc. How often?”

“Have you willingly taken pleasure in unchaste thoughts or imaginations? or entertained unchaste desires? Were the objects of your desires maids, or married persons, or kins folks, or persons consecrated to God? How often?

“Have you taken pleasure in the irregular motions of the flesh? or not endeavored to resist them? How often?

“Have you entertained with pleasure the thoughts of saying or doing anything which it would be a sin to say or do? How often?

“Have you had the desire or design of committing any sin, of what sin? How often?” Can an unmarried priest ask these questions of the women of his flock, full of life, of blood, of impure thoughts, without finding out all he wants to know to ascertain where victims for his lust abide? These questions are asked in every town where is a Roman Catholic church, and lives growing out of them are lived; and this places the cesspool, full of contagion, in juxtaposition with us all. Paul asked:”Shall I then take the members of Christ, and make them the members of a harlot? God forbid. What! know you not that he which is joined to a harlot, is one body?”(1 Cor. 6:15,16.) The fact is apparent, whoever tolerates Romanism tolerates harlotry of the worst and vilest descriptions.

TURN NOW TO DENS, WHO IS AUTHORITY.

“A confessor has seduced his penitent to the commission of carnal sin, not in confession, nor by occasion of confession, but from some extraordinary occasion. Is he to be denounced?” A. No. If he had tampered with her from his knowledge of confession, it would be a different thing, because, for instance, he knows that person, from her confession, to be given to such carnal sins.”

Imagine a girl, fallen through the misconduct of a priest. She becomes alarmed. She goes to another confessor; tells her story. Confessors are advised not lightly to give credit to any woman whatsoever accusing their former confessor, but first to search diligently into the end and cause of the occasion, to examine their morals and conversation. In other words, break doiun the witness.”For which reason, observe, that whatever person, either by herself or by another, falsely accuses or denounces a priest as a seducer, incurs a case reserved for the supreme Pontiff.” (Antoine, p. 428.) There is no protection for virtue in the Roman Catholic Church. The priest tells the woman she does not sin by yielding. He confesses to a priest and is absolved. All unite against virtue. Is not the window open? Cannot men see the character of Romanism to which the Republic and the United States surrenders?

WHAT WILL CITIZENS OF THE REPUBLIC DO ABOUT IT?

This is the question which must be answered by Christian men and women. Nuns walk the streets of Washington in procession, with smiling faces, and defiant, don t-care look: sleek priests dwell in palatial residences, and have things their own way. Members of Congress surrender their wives and daughters to their care. Vast sums are given to propitiate the favor of Rome. The peril increases; not because Romanists outnumber Protestants, but because Protestants are silent who ought to speak.

THERE IS THE LAP OF ROME, in Washington! The Nation’s Capital has fallen into it, and ministers are as silent about it as if there were no peril. For shame!!!

All this shows, as was said in”Why Priests Should Wed,” that Francis Patrick Kenrick and John Hughes, who wrote, must have had an acquaintance and a practice in indulgence entirely opposed to the profession of celibacy or the existence of virtue. The book of Kenrick and the”Garden of the Soul”ought to be suppressed by legal enactment, and Auricular Confession should be banished from the Roman Catholic Church in America. Polygamy among Mormons is virtue personified, in comparison. Auricular confession is now the prolific source of gross licentiousness, and is destructive of virtue in the hearts of the priests who officiate in the Confessional. These infernal questions, framed by Bishops Kenrick and Hughes, propounded by bachelor priests to females of all ages, from seven years and upwards, and the obligation of the Confessional, binding them under pain of Eternal Damnation to eternal secrecy, is bringing forth a terrible harvest of lust and crime.

Rome does not preach, she plots. Rome cares not for public opinion or public remonstrances, so long as she can control votes, and get on increasing in wealth and power. In Eugene Sue’s”Wandering Jew,” Jesuits are uncovered in their hellish plottings and intrigues. The American of to-day ought to read that book of yesterday, for it reveals what practices, what machinations, what slavery, what abject ruin confronts the young men who shall give themselves to the control of the Jesuits in the American University now being built at Washington. One of the most beautiful characters in literature is”Gabriel the priest .” An orphan, placed in the care of good and honest Catholics if such there are is surrendered by them to the Jesuits, because of facts which came to them concerning property on the way to a certain family, which the Jesuits determine to obtain and hold. As a result, for years, the plottings go on, that orphans may be robbed, and good and innocent people may be deprived of their rights.

Of the general course of education, it is not necessary to speak. It has been described a, thousand times. It is the same at this time as in the days that are gone. But of the training much ought to be said. Gabriel enters the college. He says:”On the day of my joining it, the Superior said to me, in pointing out two of the pupils a little older than myself, These are the companions with whom you are to associate: you will walk with them always, but all three together; the rules of the House forbidding any conversation between two persons alone.”The students from the Jesuit College in Washington go in threes, not in twos. Americans see it, and do not fight it.

TRAINED TO BE SPIES.

“The same regulation enjoins, that you should listen attentively to what your companions may say, in order that you may report it to me, for those dear children may have, unknown to themselves, evil thoughts, or may contemplate the committing of a fault; but if you love your comrades, you must apprize me of their evil inclinations, in order that my paternal remonstrances may spare punishment, by preventing offence; for it is always better to prevent a fault than to punish it.

It happened sometime after, that I myself had been guilty of an infraction of the rules of the House; on which occasion the Superior said to me: My child! you have deserved a severe punishment, but you shall be pardoned, if you will promise to detect one of your companions in the same fault that you have committed.” And all this is done in the name of all that is most holy.

Gabriel ashamed of such conduct, asked if it were wrong to be an informer. The answer:”A student has no right to discriminate between right and wrong, but only to obey; that to the confessor belonged the responsibility,” uncovers the fetters that binds those under the control of Jesuits. His life was spent in an atmosphere of terror, of oppression, and suspicious watchings. Every effort is made to close the heart against all the gentle and tender emotions; to make of every young man a sneak, a hypocrite, a traitor. Lying follows in the wake of such teaching. According to the Constitution of the Society of Jesus, this is trivial. Now let us see the outcome. The education in the college is finished. Into the semi nary Gabriel went, comparatively innocent. He was now to be prepared for the holy ministry. Let us see how the work goes on.

“You placed in my hands a book, he said, “containing the questions that a confessor should put to young men, to young girls, to married women, when they presented themselves at that tribunal of penitence.”” My God,” exclaimed Gabriel, trembling,”I shall never forget that terrible moment. It was in the evening, I withdrew to my room, taking that book with me, composed, as you told me, by one of the fathers, and revised by a holy bishop.””It is impossible,” said Eugene Sue, writing for the French,”to give even in Latin an idea of the infamous book.”

Said Mr. Given, in his bold, excellent work,”Of the Jesuit and the University:””I experience considerable embarrassment in commencing this chapter, as it has to treat of a book that it is impossible to translate, and difficult to cite from its text; because the Latin insults modesty by its plain speaking. I must, there fore, crave the indulgence of the reader, and will promise him in return to withhold as much obscenity as I can.” Further on, in reference to the question imposed by the compendium, Mr. Given exclaims, with generous indignation:”What then must be the conversations that pass, in the retirement of the Confessional, between the priest and a married woman? I forbear to say more.”

The author of the”Discoveries of the Bibliophilist,” after having literally cited a great many passages from this horrible catechism, says:”My pen refuses to proceed further in this encyclopedia of every baseness, and I am sorry that it has gone so far; but I can only say, that though a mere copyist, I feel as much horror as if I had been touching poison. And yet, nevertheless, it is this horror that gives me courage. In the church of Jesus Christ, agreeably to the order established by the Divine will, that evil is good which leads one from error; and the more prompt the remedy the more it is efficacious. Morality can never be in danger so long as truth raises its voice and makes itself heard.”

Gabriel describes the effect upon him as he read the book:”Full of respect, confidence and faith, I opened its pages. At first, I did not understand it; but at last I did. Struck with shame and horror, and overcome by astonishment, I had hardly strength to close, with trembling hand, this abominable textbook. I immediately came to you, my father, to ask pardon for having involuntarily cast my eyes on its pages, which, by mistake, I supposed you had put into my hands.”

“You may also remember,”said the priest, “that I quieted your scruples, explaining to you that it was necessary that a priest, who was destined to hear all things under the seal of confession, should know all, with the power of appreciating it; that the Society imposed the reading of the compendium as a text-book on you deacons, seminarists and priests, who might be called to the sacred duty of confession.”

“I believed you, my father; the habit of passive obedience was too strong upon me, discipline had so utterly deprived me of all self-examination, that spite of my horror, for which I then reproached myself as for a heavy fault, in remembering your words, I returned with the book into my room. I read it! Oh! my father, what a revelation was there of the excessive refinements of criminal luxury! Then in the vigor of youth, I had been alone upheld by my ignorance, and the assistance of God, against sensual struggles. Oh, that night, that night! in the midst of the deep silence of my solitude, trembling with fright and confusion, I spelt over that catechism of monstrous, unheard-of, unknown debaucheries; in proportion as its obscene pictures of frightful lust were presented to my imagination till then chaste and pure, you know, oh God! that it seemed as if my reason had become weakened; yes, and had entirely gone astray; for although I desired utterly to fly from this infernal book; yet, I know not by what awful, frightful attraction, by what devouring curiosity, I was still held breathless over its infamous pages. I felt as though I should have died from shame and confusion; and yet, in spite of myself, my cheeks were burning and a corrupting warmth circulated through my veins, and these terrible allusions assisted to complete my wanderings; it seemed as though lascivious phantoms were starting from its accursed pages, and I lost my recollection in seeking to avoid their burning embraces.

“The terms in which you speak of this book are highly blameable, said the priest; you were the victim of your own excited imagination, and it is to that alone that you ought to ascribe those fatal impressions, instead of imputing them to a book, excellent and irreproachable for its purpose, and authorized by the church.

“Truly, my father,”replied Gabriel, with the most profound bitterness,”I have no right to complain that my mind, till that time innocent and pure, should henceforth be polluted with deformities that I should never even have dreamt of; for it is not likely that any who could have given themselves over to such horrors would have asked pardon from them of a priest.”These are matters on which you are not competent to judge, angrily replied the Father d Aigrigny.

“Then I will say no more on that subject,” said Gabriel, as he proceeded.

“A long illness succeeded this awful night.”

After it, he went as a missionary to America. It is refreshing to read his description of his enjoyment of freedom:

“From my childhood, I had always either lived in a college or a seminary, in a state of oppression and continual dejection; and from being always accustomed to keep my eyes upon the ground, I had never known what it was to contemplate the heavens, or the splendid beauties of Nature. Oh, what profound, what religious happiness I enjoyed on first suddenly finding myself transported amongst the imposing grandeurs of the ocean, when, during the voyage, I contemplated myself between the sea and sky! Then it seemed as if I had quitted a place of thick and heavy darkness. For the first time for many years, I felt my heart freely beating in my bosom. For the first time, I felt that I was master of my own thoughts; and I then dared to examine my past life, as one who looks from a precipice into the deep and darkened valley beneath him. Then strange doubts came across my mind. I inquired of myself by what right, or to what end, I had been so long a time oppressed and borne down; deprived of the exercise of my free will, of my liberty, of my reason. Since God had endowed me with all these, then I reasoned, that perhaps the ends of that grand, beautiful and holy work to which I had dedicated myself, would one day be developed, and compensate me for my obedience and resignation.

On my arrival at Charleston, S.C., the Superior of the establishment in that town, to whom I had communicated my doubts as to the object of the Society, took upon himself to clear them up. With a fearful candor he unveiled their ends; not perhaps as understood by all the members of the Society, of whom a great many partook of my ignorance, but such as the principals of it had undeviatingly pursued from the foundation of the Order. I became terrified. I read the casuists. Oh, my father! what a new and frightful revelation for me, when at every page of these books, written by the fathers, I read an excuse indeed a justification of robbery, calumny, violation, adultery, perjury, murder, regicide, as follows:”Violation. He who, either by force, menace, fraud, or importunity, seduces a virgin, without promise of marriage, must indemnify the girl, or her relatives, for the wrong that may result from it, by giving her a dowry, by which she may get a husband; or marrying her himself, if he cannot otherwise indemnify her. If, however, the offense remains an absolute secret, the seducer is not bound to make any restitution” This is Romanism.

“Adultery. If any one has a guilty connection with a married woman, not because she is married, but because she is handsome setting aside the circumstances of her being married such connection, according to many authors, does not constitute the sin of adultery, but merely that of fornication.”

After reading this, Gabriel said:”When I thought within myself, that as a priest of the God of charity, of justice, of pardon, I yet belonged to a society whose chiefs propounded such doctrines and boasted of them, I made an oath before God, to break for ever the bonds by which I was attached to it.”

Is it probable, is it possible, that Jesuitism has improved? Is such a school or university a desideratum in this land? Do we need to have American youth doomed to such a discipline? Father Chiniquy declares, that students in this land seek to escape this sea of nastiness. The effect of such teaching is horrible. It undermines and degrades manhood. It is time that this truth was brought home to the consciences of men. They have got to be made to see that Romanism is not a religion, but a plot an adjunct of hell; and that it has nothing whatever to do with heaven.

Now it is admitted, that the most revolting and degrading scene of the confessional is that of the prescribed treatment of females. On the mind of every Roman Catholic the conviction is fastened, that damnation is sure to come to those who go to confession and do not confess every sin they have committed. Further, that if a female appears modest, the confessor is instructed that her modesty must be overcome, or else he is authorized to deny her absolution.

“But,” it has been well asked,”what modesty in a young lady, or any other person, is in danger of being offended, if the priest’s conduct is directed by God’s Word? For then he would think of and practice naught but whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are pure, what soever things are lovely, and whatsoever things are of good report/ It is, however, because of the opposite of those things, especially in things that are pure, that the modesty of the most hardened sinner must at times be shocked in the confessional; of course, we need not be surprised to learn that a young lady can be offended there. Indeed, in looking over a pamphlet, containing lengthy extracts from theological works used in seminaries, not in Ireland, but in the United States, that part of the confessional having reference particularly to females, in single life, in the marriage state, and in widowhood, it is impossible to conceive of any thing more vile, more outrageously offensive and abominable, to any mind not steeped in the lowest depths of sensualized life.”Ought not these facts to be placed within reach of the fathers and mothers whose children are exposed to such perils because the Roman Catholic Church is permitted unmolested to do its hellish work? Approach it and try to write the words, and the hand pauses, the heart sickens, and it seems impossible to proceed.

How husbands can allow their wives to go to confession, fathers their daughters, brothers their sisters; or how an intelligent and thoughtful people can look with favor upon the building up of an institution in which these debasing and polluting utterances are taught, passes comprehension.

The Rev. Pierce Connelly, a domestic chaplain to the Earl of Shrewsbury, in a letter published in the London Times, says:”I have had experience in the confessional, from princes downwards, and out of it, such as perhaps has fallen to the lot of no other living man; and my solemn conviction is, that a celibate priesthood, organized like that of Rome, is in irreconcilable hostility with all good human interests. I have seen clerical inviolability made to mean nothing less than license and impurity. I have read to the simple-minded Cardinal- Prefect of the Propaganda a narrative written to a pious lady friend, by a respected Roman priest, of such enormities of lust in his fellow-priests around him, that the reading of them took away the breath; to be answered, Caro Mio, I know it, I know it all, and more and worse than all; but nothing can be done! I have known a priest practice Ligouri on his client simply as an amateur of wickedness, apparently without conscious malice, just as he would try poison upon dogs and cats; an Iago, without even an imaginary wrong from anybody, {Letters of Marcus, p. 122.} and I have seen priests of mean abilities, of coarse natures, and gross breeding, practice upon pure and highly- gifted women of the upper ranks, married and unmarried, the teachings of their treacherous and impure casuistry, and with a success that seemed more than human. I have seen these priests impose their pretended divine authority, and sustain it by mock miracles, for ends that were simply devilish. I have had poured into my ears what can never be uttered, and what ought not to be believed, but was only too plainly true. And I have seen that all that is most deplorable is not an accident, but a result, and an inevitable result, of the working practical system of the church of Rome, with all its stupendous machinery of mischief. And the system is irrevocable and irremediable.” {Ibid p.122}

Yet this is not all. It is even not the worst. Man is what woman makes him, and the priest unmakes the woman and subverts the solid edifice by the ruin of the foundation. What shall be done about it? Shall the truth be scattered? The need of it is apparent in this and other lands.

The Chairman of the Chili Mission of the Presbyterian church, writes as follows:”My Dear Brother: I have read your book Why Priests Should Wed, and beg to say it is just what is needed. I wish you had the power of reading the secrets of the greatest secret society in the world the Roman Catholic Church, as these secrets are hidden to-day in the United States. I could give you some live facts of the present moment concerning the great Harlot as this immense institution has developed here.

“I will write my request, and then give you a fact or two illustrative of the BEAST you are trying to destroy: 1. Have you any objections to our translating and printing your book in Chili? 2. Would you object to its coming out in Spanish in an unmutilated form? and if so, would you be willing to supply us the suppressed matter so that it could be restored in the translation? Let me add now a fact or two that will illustrate, 1st: Your theme, Why Priests Should Wed; and secondly, The benumbing influence of this horrid system, on not only the conscience, but also on the moral sense of the Romanist, and the manliness and womanliness of the members of this depraved society.

The Sota-Cura, or Vice-Cura, in Parral, ruined, sometime ago, one of the teachers in the public school. The lady lives now in San Carlos, and the child is in Chilan, and the Cura still performs his functions.

“The Principal Cura of Parral says, that it is of no consequence, that he is ugly; give him but two hours with a woman, and he can destroy her. This beast is in full charge of the parish church of Parral, and had been transferred to that church because of complaints against him for seducing women.

“Another cura came one night to a house where two young men were visiting two young ladies. He called the young ladies to sit one each side, and spreading a manto in front of the three, began under the manto to handle the girls. The young men saw him do it, and had not spunk enough to kick the drunken rake out of doors. The mothers do not seem to make much objection to such actions. The mothers know of the unhappy relations of the priests with their daughters, and say nothing.

“In Cauquenes, the other day, a young woman ran into the chancel, just after the priest had consecrated the wine, and was about to drink it. She snatched the chalice from his hands, and in the presence of the congregation shouted, You are a bad man, and not worthy to drink that cup, and at the word she drank the wine herself. The next Sunday she was in her place in the choir and nothing was done to her; though she had done a deed that would have put her in prison. But the priest retired from the church and went somewhere else. The parents of the young woman say, she was justified in this act. The account was published one week ago in El Sur, a paper of Concepcion. It was not long ago that the Bishop of Concepcion was the cause of the ruin of a young woman of high parentage: the facts were known to all Concepcion, but the Bishop still served. The mouths of friends were hushed. The bishop has since died of cholera. A gentleman in La Serena told me of the fact that a servant girl in his house was found in the family-way , and the author of her shame was an official member of the Bishop’s house.

“This gentleman went to the Bishop and had the delinquent discovered and transferred to some other part. Had the child been born alive, it was his intention to make the priest support it.

“When after a long vacancy the present archbishop was called to fill the See, at the installation or consecration, a woman was observed to hold a child of two years up above the crowd, and was heard say to it,”That man [the new archbishop] is your father.” She was followed to her house, and it was discovered that she was indeed a mistress of the high functionary. This account was published, and the address of the one who noted the fact given, yet no notice was taken of it. Not a single Eoman Catholic paper said a word or referred to it; much less uttered an indignant denial, and demanded proof, or the punishment of the slanderer.

“Your book covers a wider ground, and deals also with fundamental questions in such a way that we would see it in the hands of every intelligent Roman ist, and for this reason have written you.

I am,
J. M. ALLIS.
Santiago, Chili, S.A., May 4th, 1888. Casilla 912.

While it may not be wise to do more than has been attempted in”Why Priests Should Wed,” it does seem important that the truth be given to the men and women of this Western world, that they may judge truly the character of Romanism, the life-long foe of morality, of virtue, and of Christianity.

CHAPTER XII. Connubial felicity enjoyed by priests and nuns; or, what Rome advises may be done

It is idle to dream of the purity of men who are accustomed to mouth words full of vile suggestions. As a man thinketh, so is he.” This had been theory. When the lecture entitled:

“NUNNERIES, PRISONS, OR WORSE,”

was delivered in one of our great cities, a storm of opposition was raised by Rome. The lecture was called ” foul-mouthed” by leading Roman Catholics, and the nuns were spoken of as immaculate and above suspicion. A lady who had been ten years in one of the nunneries of the town, came to a subsequent lecture, and sent a friend to the platform of the crowded hall, who said : “I am authorized by a lady now in this audience, a member of a Congregational church” giving her name, and the locality where she resided ” to say, that she has been ten years in a a convent in this city, and for eight years wore the black veil as a nun ; and she declares that all that has been said, charging incontinency upon priests and nuns, is true, but that the half has not been told.” That was much. This that follows is more. A gentleman occupying a distinguished position in the Christian world, brought the following statement. It seemed incredible, and was not used until it had been attested on oath. With feelings bordering on horror, it was read word for word ; and if after reading this, that is faithfully copied, and the chapter preceding, there are those who claim that Romanism is worthy of regard, should they not be classed with those who gladly “believe a lie that they may be damned ” ?

A young man of seventeen years is walking the deck of an excursion steamer. Two men, dressed as priests, are on the deck. One of them bows to the young man. he returns the salutation. Where upon one of the priests steps up and says : “I am glad, my son, to note your reverence for the fathers of your church.” I said : ” My custom is “to treat with respect any professed teacher of Christian Faith.” He asked me to sit down beside him, and He enquired my name, age, occupation, parentage,, purpose in life, etc. ; and on my telling him that I expected to study law, he gave me much sound and wholesome advice. Finally he asked me if I knew him. I said: “No.” He said he was His Grace the Archbishop of Toronto ; and that the priest who as with him was Father . I expressed my due recognition of the honor of a conversation with His Grace ; whereupon he said, he had taken quite an interest in me, and would like to grant me an absolution for my past sins, if I would confess them to him ; and that he had no doubt he could get the key of the Captain s stateroom for the purpose. I replied that it would be useless, because I had no faith in the efficacy of any such pardoning. He asked me to take off my hat and pray with him ; and the three of us removed our hats, and he offered up a very earnest, brief prayer there upon the deck the place where we were sitting being quite secluded, and we remained sitting during the prayer. After the prayer, he continued talking to me for an hour, giving me excellent advice on my life and habits, especially warning me against the gratification of sensual passions, either by self-abuse or harlotry.

From the steamboat they pass to a parlor-car ; and there, the door being locked, the youth was asked to make himself comfortable on a couch at the side of the Archbishop. He then led the conversation into special lines. For example, he asked me : “If in school I had not often had my passion aroused by the legs of the girls being visible below their short dresses, and if I had not known boys who were seated across the aisle from the girls to deliberately drop pencils or books on the floor, so that, when picking them up, they might look under the skirts of the nearest girl.” This is surprising language for an Archbishop to address to a youth of seventeen. It is but the prelude to the nastiness that follows. This was one of the illustrations upon which he built skilful and forcible arguments against the Protestant public school question.

As a further illustration this time on the line of the open Bible he referred to Luke 2:23 : “Every male that openeth the womb, shall be called holy to the Lord ; ” and he said that he knew of hundreds of instances where young men had twisted that passage into an excuse for immoral connection. And upon this, and other illustrations of a like nature, he erected what he thought an impregnable barrier against the free use of the Bible, apart from priestly guidance.

The Archbishop having attempted to awaken distrust in the mind of the youth in regard to the most pertinent and solid grounds of Protestantism, very quickly developed ” a careful, elaborate and attractive description of the Roman Catholic Church, its universality, the grandeur of its history, its glorious ritual, its magnificent conquests in the past, the sanctity of a priest’s life, the unequaled advantages for study which it offered, the high positions which faithful energy could achieve within its bounds, and particularly did he dilate on the opportunities which there were given for a complete education, a finished course of knowledge.”

He dazzled me with a glorious view of Catholic scholarship, claiming that all truth lay within the reach of a priest, while the wonderful statement which he made of their communion with God seemed to clothe them with a halo of divinity. They were said to be above truth, because they were the companions of God, who was the Author of truth.

His portraiture of the Pope was dazzling. He was the monarch of emperors ; his subjects were numbered by hundreds of millions. He was infallible, and the authorized representation of the Godhead on earth ; and his treasures, whether viewed financially in gold and silver and precious stones, or spiritually in the worship given to him by his subjects in any light, his treasures were infinite ; and this, he said, was possible to me, though, of course, not probable. But he pointed out to me, that in the lawful struggle for ascendancy in the Catholic Church, my ambition could be satiated to its fullest fruition, and the greatest glory of my proudest desires could be more than satisfied; while even if I never became more than a common priest, my power and influence would be far greater than that of the highest judge in the land ; and all these glorious possibilities would be laid open to me then and there, if I would but humbly and penitently become a convert to the truth. I could go straight to Toronto with him, and within twenty-four hours could be safely under the fold of the only and everlasting church of God.

The triune oath required of me, he said, was very simple. Poverty, chastity, and obedience were then described ; and so skilfully was the web laid that he thought my entanglement was complete.

It was at this juncture that I expressed my fear that, with my passionate nature, I could not keep pure the second vow, and that I had a great dislike to any pursuit in life that would quench the lire of my passion. This, I candidly stated to him, was a most serious obstacle ; whereupon he gave me the following explanation of the vow, stating that it followed and was intimately connected with the first vow, and could be only thoroughly understood in that light; and that “when these two vows were properly understood, it was quite consistent with them that the priest and the nun should mutually gratify the sensual desires of the other.”

FIRST ARGUMENT.

(1) All priests and nuns must take the vow of poverty. (2) This vow means, the yielding to the service of the church of God, not only your property, but your body and your mind ; that is to say, your affections and your very thoughts. (3) Therefore, you, as a person, no longer exist; both priest and nun are an inherent part of the church. (4) Hence, physical coition between the two was no more sin than the contact of the opposite organs of an hemaphrodite, or the mingling of the various robes of priest and nun it was simply the contact of various parts of the one organization.

SECOND ARGUMENT.

(1) The Church was the bride of Christ. (2) The priest was the representative or local vicar of Christ. (3) It followed, that every nun, by her marriage with the Church, became a part of the body of Christ s bride. (4) Hence, physical connection between priest and nun is not only the privilege, but becomes the duty, of those connected with the church.

THIRD ARGUMENT.

(1) The Word of God, and especially the epistles of Paul, particularly insist and teach, that every believer in Christ, becomes an organ in the body of Christ. (2) Hence, all members of the true Church of Christ become equal members of the one body. (3) Hence, as stated by Paul, in 1 Cor. 12:21

, ” The head cannot say lo the feet, I have no need of thee.” So neither can the priest or nun. (4) Hence, it follows again, as laid down by Paul in the same chapter, “that there should be no schism in the body, but that the members should have the same care one for another.” (5) Hence, he concluded, that the coition of priest and nun for mutual comfort, was as natural as the chafing together of the right and left hand in cold weather. The Archbishop was ably seconded in the matter by Father , whose role appeared to be the inserting of complimentary remarks concerning the Archbishop, and extolling his wisdom, learning, zeal, etc.

After this came the suggestion that the young man should leave gun and rod in the passenger coach, and drop his hat out of the window ; which would lead his parents to believe that he had fallen from the train; while the non-discovery of his body would always remain with them as a hope that he was not dead and might ultimately return; while he was to proceed with the Archbishop to the city, where, after being admitted into the Catholic Church, he would be provided with a first-class passage to Rome, and a recommendation to an eminent official there ; from which time onward, all the scholarships of Christendom would be within his grasp, while the only limits to his towering ambition would be the energy and ability which he should display to entitle him to it, and the fullest gratification of all natural desires could be accomplished in a manner perfectly consistent with a holy and sanctified life, the service of Christ and his fellow-men, with the certain guarantee, of eternal life. Such was the Archbishop s scheme. If anything more devilish can be devised, it proves great capacity in that line. The youth was earnestly persuaded not to reject the truth. See him ! He is in the car without a friend. The Archbishop and priest are his keepers. All knelt together in prayer. The prelate prayed for his conversion. A few minutes might have sealed his doom ; when, in the mercy of God, the locomotive s shrill whistle blew for his home station. That sudden shriek brought him back suddenly to reality and decision. One thought of home, of mother, of Bible and Christ, and the temptation was gone. Thanking the Archbishop for his kindness, he sprung to the door, turned the key, retired from the car, and in a moment was upon the platform saved from popery and hell !

Does such a statement throw any light upon the conduct of priests? Is it strange that men thus taught so often fall? ” Oh,” said a young priest to Blanco White, with tears in his eyes, after having for four or five years discharged the duties of his station, ” God only knows what I have suffered during this time ! And if I have fallen, it is not with out fighting. Had I been allowed to choose a wife as it is the law of God, who destines man to marriage, whatever our rules teach to the contrary, I should have been the happiest man in the world ; I should be a good, a holy priest ; while now, I am oh, I am ashamed of myself!” This is really the sad history of all their falls ; for, let us be just, no men are tempted like priests. Their passions are often necessarily aroused. The demon of bad thoughts takes possession of them. Their ministry drives them into such relations with women, into whose most secret thoughts they are obliged to enter, that their virtue receives many shocks. Admit that in the beginning they try to be faithful. They nutter, fall, reform again, go on, fall again, and at length, to finish this horrible struggle, abandon faith, and sink into Atheism ; because of the impossibility of reconciling their faith with conduct so vile, and yet so common to the class. If the statement of the Archbishop contains the truth, what a horrid light it sheds upon the conduct of priests !

A gray-haired mother who had fled from Rome to Christ, came and said : “My granddaughter is being wooed and won by Father . She spoke as if the priest was a lover, and not a minister. “Can priests win hearts? Is that their vocation?”

“They were nominally for the church; but really for themselves,” was the sad reply. They had read “Why Priests Should Wed,” and were startled by its terrible revelations. The young lady accompanied her grandmother to the house of God. Beautiful in face and form, attractive in manner, soft-toned in speech, she seemed fitted to make some man a good wife, and to become the centre of a pleasant home. She had determined to become a nun. The cloister was not in her thought, nor was religion. She was in love with the priest, and thought of passing into the cloister that she might have him, so soon as she became a spiritual sister. Then came Gavazzi’s words of warning to the nun. He said: “The Jesuits, too, have nuns. For almost every order of monks there is a corresponding order of nuns. If monks are useless and dangerous, what are nuns ? They are very gentle-speaking ladies, very delicate ladies; but, are they Scriptural ? No ! Christ never instituted nuns ! He came alike to men and women, and all the human race. Among his followers were humble and devout women, Mary Magdalen and Martha and others, to whom he spoke of things eternal ; but did he ever say to any of them : I wish you to become a nun ? Never ! He said : Come and follow me ; but never, Go to a cloister ! {Gavazzi’s Lectures, pp. 87} And yet nuns swarm in Washington. They ride in carriages ; they walk in procession ; they fatten at the public crib, and are treated by Congressmen as if they were worthy of supreme regard. Their names we need not give, nor describe the great establishment. Do parents understand, in the light of the Archbishop s statement, the character, standing, and habits of these “Sisters” so-called, who with the gratification of every passionate desire are promised eternal life?

It is time the iniquitous character of these institutions were made known. If nuns are what the Archbishop describes them, the mistresses of priests, let it be known, Do parents consider the terrible meaning of the conduct of a priest when he makes love to a girl and obtains her consent to abandon home and friends, and immure herself in a convent, and become in her full maturity, in her ripe beauty, the slavish subject of the priest ? In “Why Priests Should Wed,” the warnings of Wm. Hogan and Maria Monk are given, but the words of the Archbishop, and the argument by which the position is maintained, throw light upon this subject. As educators, nuns are failures. They live under the influence of their father-confessors,

These are generally Jesuits, or Jesuitically educated ; the nun will impart to her pupil the same education she receives from her spiritual director, a poor, bigoted, contemptible, anti- American education. This is the education given by those nunned and cloistered teachers, the willing subject of the priests, and who by example, if not by word, make a protension to virtue a play, if not a by-word and a sham.

Beware for your homes. Nuns are to be found not only in monasteries, but abroad ; they travel in disguise, like Jesuits. They enter homes as servants ; and though often deemed a great blessing in a Protestant family, they are at times just the reverse. They know how to peep through the keyhole, and carry all information they can obtain to the father-confessor. Would you have in your families an adroit, consummate spy? Take a servant educated by nuns, and your wish is gratified. It is beginning to be fashionable to think that hospitals and asylums are sure to be well cared for if given into the charge of Sisters of Charity. Before they were introduced, hospitals and schools were well attended ; and were they now extinct, American institutions would be well cared for ; while what good they do is more than outweighed by the unmitigated evil of the general aim and tendency of monastic institutions.

CHAPTER XIII. Jesuits in the parlor; or fashionable life in Washington

It would require the genius of a Disraeli to do justice to the many-sided characteristics of fashionable life in Washington. More and more, throng there, during the winter months, the women of fashion and the men of note, who make Saratoga, Newport, and Long Branch places of attraction and repute during the summer. Washington is becoming a great winter resort. People come there, some for politics, some for office, some for patronage, and others for the rich pickings or plums of party favor bestowed by their representatives in the House and Senate, by the men whom they have been delighted to honor with their support at home, and who feel that obligation and interest alike, compel and command them to do for them all in their power to make their sojourn in Washington a delight.

The receptions at the White House, the spreads given by the members of the Cabinet and other officials of high life, foreign and home, furnish abundant entertainments to which entrance is not difficult, and is within the reach of the deserving. In fashionable life, a re many citizens of Washington who understand etiquette, and are leaders and directors of the movements which bring pleasure or pain. Some ambitious relative- of a distinguished official gets her name on the page of the Court paper, and becomes a ruling star. Round her gather lesser lights. Ambitious young men connected with the army or navy, with foreigners of distinction, or attaches of the ministers who represent foreign countries, rival the young Congressman, the son of a senator, or mayhap a President, or the bright and noble array of newspaper men, who hold in their hands the making or unmaking of reputations, the successful writer, orator, or financier, who are there with an eye to business, and are regarded as a great catch at home, and therefore as objects of regard abroad, share in the pleasures of the dance, chat at the supper, and play their part in the saloon of fashion, brilliant with light, and radiant with the confiscated rays flashing from brilliant diamonds worn in profusion by the attractive American women, who are becoming each year sought after by the titled and great of this and other lands. Among these are Jesuits, without the name, dressed in the height of fashion, capable of conversing in any tongue, and so able to bring together the Cuban and the pride of Paris, the German and the sweet-toned Italian ; standing as an intermediate not only between different nationalities, but different sects and classes. They know life. They have influence with the great. They sport in the light of the Red- Robed Cardinal, who keeps his high place as prince of the church, and as ruler in the political world, to an extent little appreciated by the uninitiated. Ever on the watch to bring a Protestant of influence, or of wealth which in Washington creates influence into association with a Roman Catholic of prominence and position, it is not difficult- to see that on this continent Washington opens to Romanism a field of richest possibilities. Beside them, and working with Brothers of the Order, are female Jesuits, as well-trained ; distinguished for skill in diplomacy, in finesse, always ready to leave any ordinary occupation to further the interests of the church.

At their head for years and years, ranked that cultured and famed wife of a great general who wears on her breast the” Golden Rose,” presented by the Pope of Rome. Associating with her are ladies who rank high in Evangelical associations, and who are always ready to accept a second or a subordinate place on boards of hospitals or homes ; where they vote as they are bidden, and help to place power and patronage under the control of that one great organism which works parties, senates, and supreme courts, with an eye not to God’s glory, but the good and growth of the party of Rome. As proof, read a few well-known facts.

It was at a magnificent party, a beautiful girl, on her father’s arm, paused, and shook the hand of a distinguished gentleman whose prospects brightened every hour as the probable nominee for the presidency. He made a passing and complimentary remark, which brought a blush to the cheek, brightness to the eye, and a thrill of joy to the heart. Not far away stood a young man, the son of a Protestant, a student at Princeton, enamored of her beauty and glad to hear her praises spoken by one so highly esteemed. In a little time he was at her side. They were together evening after evening. Every hindrance was removed. Room was given them. Invitation followed invitation to places where pleasure reigned. There were those who saw the game and wished it well. The Jesuits were delighted. The President had placed the church of Rome under great obligations, by having his Secretary of State address a letter to the Italian government, asking that the American College be saved from confiscation. It was done ; and the name of the President, as his own successor, was taken up on the tongue of the press, and rolled like a sweet morsel for months. He deserved what was said of him. He was an honest, true, and good President, and proved that he was an exception to the rule, that a Vice-President succeeding to the presidency must be a traitor to the party who elected him.

It was thought that he could be used as an instrument in furthering a scheme upon which thought, money, and much planning had been bestowed. He, the son of a Baptist minister, had married an Episcopalian, and had been led by his wife into the more fashionable church, and was one of the most devout of worshippers. The Jesuits saw in that step but the beginning that might lead him into the fold of a church in which apostolic succession was a claimed verity, and not a pretence. Along this path thou sands had marched into the embrace of Rome. Why not this cultured man? Up came the happy couple to this polite and clear- sighted man, who, handsome in face, faultless in dress, dignified in mien, and courteous in speech, is the centre of attraction.

As the young and happy couple pass, a friend to the President remarks:”A most desirable match!”

She is a Roman Catholic,” replied the President.

” What of that?” was the outspoken ejaculation, as a shadow of disappointment swept over the faces of the Jesuitical throng;”surely, that would not form an obstacle in the opinion of a gentleman who allowed his heart-love to rule so much of his life as was shown in his devotion to his wife.”

The President’s face flushed, and his eye flashed, as he replied:”It would make a vast difference. Between a girl professing faith in Christ and a member of the Protestant Episcopal Church, and a Roman Catholic, is a wide remove. Should the young man marry into that home, they will be compelled either to be married in a Roman Catholic church with its attendant display, or an altar must be built in the home, and the bridegroom must consent to having their offspring given up to the church of Rome. This would, in my opinion, be an inseparable barrier to the union.”

A polite acquiescence was given.

In another part of the room was a hurried conversation. That woman distinguished in securing the advancement of any one connected with the Roman Catholic church, from a man who empties ash-barrels to one seeking a Cabinet appointment, spoke warmly and wisely: Sound him. Find out if those are his views. If so, we will have done with him.”

To the girl the words were recited. She would gladly have turned from Rome. She was tired of its empty nummeries, and longed for something better. These men, who know so well the weaknesses of women, knew how to manage her. She soon found herself fenced in to Jesuitical influences, and apart and away from Protestant associations.

A Jesuit took the young man to ride, and there learned that he would stand with his household that he would not surrender to Rome.

The father of the girl, a devout Roman Catholic, believed he could remove the hindrance. The house hold quoted the words of the President in approval. To the President went the Congressman, assured of his power to carry all before him. The son of a Baptist minister, born in the north of Ireland, and knowing Romanism as it is, and hating it because of its deserts, was firm and decided. Archbishop, bishop, priest and Jesuit, tried to persuade, and finally to compel. In vain! Rome had reached a stone wall! It could not go over it. It was difficult to go around it! At this time the President was riding on the high and crested wave of popularity. A second term was an assured fact, in the estimation of the million. His name was on the world’s broad tongue like the sound of the falling of a force. His praises filled the press, and rolled like a tide current over the world. He was honest, capable, industrious, and a mighty manipulator of men. His knowledge of the requirements of high life surpassed all his predecessors. As a club man, he was an authority ; and as a referee in difficult cases, his decisions were marked by sound judgment and fairness, and were not appealed from. To break such a man, seemed like a herculean task ; but the Jesuits said it should be done, if he did not bow to Rome.

The health of the young lady gave way. The Jesuits made the most of it. The father and the magnates of the church grew desperate. There was great commotion in fashionable life. Rome had never been baffled before. Could she be baffled now?

The Congressman, beaten and almost broken, took his daughter to his home, where she died, it is said, with a broken heart. This was as the Jesuits desired. Then came the organizing against the President, and in favor of a man more subtle, more complaisant, more ready to yield.

As was natural, thought turned towards a General of the army, the friend and companion of Grant, and the most popular man in Washington. His tall form ; short, quick, nervous step ; always well dressed, but never gaudily ; a hater of new clothes, and of new ways ; with an extraordinary head, big and full at the top ; with a brain that had been too big for the body, had not the latter been developed into a bundle of iron tissues by the hardest of physical exertions, he was a man to be pointed out as the commanding feature of any gathering. His” great campaigns, in which he generally slept on the ground without a tent, in the earlier part of his military career, gave him a constitution which served him well. His face was rough, and it had a strong expression. He was pat-tongued. Epigrams flew from it like sparks from an anvil. Though nominally a member of the church, he was noted for his profanity. He carried a cigar in his mouth almost as much as Grant. When he smokes he smokes all over, so to speak. He seems to be disgusted with his cigar, and sucks in its nicotine as though it was the hardest thing in the world to get it to draw. He brushes off the ashes with a quick, nervous gesture, and throws away the cigar when it is only half smoked. He uses the weed fully as much as any man in the army.

“The shape of his head was much discussed at the time it was alleged he was a lunatic. This was when he told Simon Cameron and Lorenzo Thomas that it would take 200,000 men to drive the rebels out of Kentucky. These two gentlemen laughed at the idea, and would not accept his advice concerning Kentucky. He then asked to be relieved. He was ordered elsewhere, and another took his place. This was on November 30, 1861 ; and on the same night, the report that he was crazy was sent out by a correspondent of one of the New York papers.

“During the first part of Andrew Jackson’s term he lived in the family of Senator___ , at___ , O___. , a sleepy country-town of perhaps a couple of thousand inhabitants, where the boys loafed about the stores and listened to the older loafers tell stories. His comrades called him * Gump, and one of them says he was among the laziest of them, and that he could always be found at the stores of an evening. 4 He was a different fellow/ says this gentleman, from ___ , who was a great reader, and a sort of plodder. Gump had a great idea of going to West Point, and he talked of it continually. I shall never forget the day his uncle finally got him his appointment. He was so happy he could hardly contain himself, and he almost walked on the air for several days.

“He graduated at the early age of 20, and entered the artillery, serving first in the Florida war, as first- lieutenant during the Mexican war, in California as adjutant-general. Ten years after he graduated he married his patron’s daughter, who was then Secretary of the Interior, and the wedding came off in grand style at Washington. Clay, Webster, Calhoun and Tom Beiiton were all present, as was also the President and his cabinet. He was thirty years old then. His beard was a dingy red, and he had a face bronzed with service in the West. The couple went to New York, Niagara Falls, and then to Washington. He stayed in the army three years after his marriage ; but in 1853 resigned, and went to San Francisco, where he opened a broker’s shop. He afterward had a bank at No. 12 Wall Street, New York City. But neither of these ventures could have paid very well ; for very shortly after, we find he left for Kansas, where his brothers-in-law were practicing at the bar.

“His family are missed, in a social way, for the general was the life of many a dinner table. He lived very nicely here, in a three-story building, on street, very near the White House, Worrnley’s Hotel, and the Riggs. Here he had an office in the basement, where you could find him at odd hours working away. At the War Department he was, perhaps, the most busy man in the great building. He seemed to be always going at lightning speed. In his eyes the department clerk was as good as the long-winded United States senator, and if he were in a good humor, the clerk would be just as well received. If he were in a bad humor and this was by no means uncommon both had better keep away. This quality of the general has tended much to the good of the army. Military men, especially of the lower orders, are inclined to pomp and snobbery. His blunt, off-hand ways, his plain, practical ideas, and his bold way of calling a spade, a spade, has done much to foster common sense among the military men here.

“His habit of sometimes letting his feelings carry him away came near being his ruin in the days following the accession of Andrew Johnson. Johnson, you know, repudiated his agreement with Joe Johnston at the time, though he afterwards practically adopted it. One of the leading war correspondents of the time tells the story. He says:

“Sullen at the repudiation of his agreement with Johnston, angry at the interference of Gen. Halleck with the co-operative movements of himself and ___ , furious at the countermanding of his orders by the Secretary of War, he marched to Washington with his army, breathing vengeance upon Halleck, and hate and contempt upon Stanton. No nation safely before witnessed such a spectacle a victorious general, at the head of 80,000 men devoted to him and jealous of his fame as a part of their own, marching to the capital of the country, with threats against his military superiors breathing from his lips and flowing from his pen. For days he raved around Washington, expressing his contempt for Halleck and Stanton in the strongest terms, and denouncing them as mere non-combatants whom he despised. He wrote to his friends, and through them to the public, comparing Halleck and Stanton to cowardly Falstaffs, seeking to win honor for the deeds he had done, accusing the Secretary of War of suppressing his reports and endeavoring to slander him before the American public in official bulletins. For days his army roamed the streets of the capital with the same freedom with which they had roamed through the fields of war, and no man dared to raise his voice in condemnation of their leader or approval of the superiors who had opposed him. No Republic ever was in such danger before, and yet the danger was hardly suspected.

“This affair, however, blew over, and he never was called to account for his actions. No record was made of the offense against discipline, which in any other country would have cost him, not merely his position, but his reputation, and in many armies his life. Still, in all this he never meditated anything against the Government and never forgot his allegiance.” {Frank G. Carpenter, in Special Correspondence}

The timber out of which to make a President was clearly in this man. The wife being approached was not averse to whatever might give power to the church, and so readily yielded consent. It was believed that the manner in which the father had surrendered his idolized son to the Romish priesthood, was an indication of his readiness to yield compliance to their demands.

He was in St. Louis when the proposition was broached.”It won t do,” replied the great General.”My wife is a Roman Catholic, and most devoted to the interests of the church. That is enough. The country would never give its support to a man who, when elected, would be compelled to see the White House overrun with priests.” That outspoken man was abandoned.

There was another ready. A man born a Roman Catholic, converted to the Protestant faith, professedly, and having united with the Congregational church, and having a wife devoted to Christian work, moving in the first circles, seemed to be fitted, if it could be managed. There was much in his favor. His relatives were all Roman Catholics. His mother died in the church, and he had said that for a”dozen presidencies, he would not say a word against the religion of his mother.” His two sisters were at the head of two convents. His brother was a devout Romanist, and it was said that his father died in that faith. In the town and much in society, was a man sixty years of age, who was noted for wearing on his breast a medal given him by Pio Nono, because he belonged to his Pontifical Guard.

THE JESUITS, MALE AND FEMALE.

Turn to this man as suited to their plan. He is introduced into the family of the senator. He becomes acquainted with the daughter. Barriers are removed. The way is open. Marriage is proposed. The daughter joins the Roman Catholic church, and an altar is built in the home, and the”medal” soldier of Pio Nono marries the daughter of the most magnetic man of the age.

At once his name is taken up. Banners are worked for him.”The dividing of the Irish vote is spoken of as a desirable result. Here is a man, born a Roman Catholic, and becoming a Protestant, and yet supported by Romanists for the Presidency. Is not that a proof that in this land there is no danger from Rome? That Romanists can separate church State, and vote for a man who left them, and yet not so bigoted as to oppose them? It seemed as it the American people were dead to apprehension. The Pope was spoken of as a well-meaning gentleman. Romanists in high positions began to be consulted by politicians. The bargain was made. The goods were not delivered. Never was a more propitious time to act. The guns of Protestantism were still. In all the land, with here and there an exception, those who had fought Romanism had grounded arms. Romanism was a menace, no more. From every altar the nominee was praised, and tickets were given to the faithful to be deposited in the ballot box.

WHY WAS HE NOT ELECTED?

There is but one answer: God was against the sale. At a great reception, which was claimed to be a spontaneous outpouring of the ministry connected with the Evangelical denominations, to offset any fear arising from the statement which was going abroad, that the proposition had been made to the Vicar- Generals of the Archbishop of New York and Brooklyn,”Give me the Roman Catholic vote, and I will do for Romanism what has never been done before”

So the ministry came from far and near. The gentleman expected to deliver the address was called away. The Rev. Dr. Burchard was invited to take his place. He was an old man, given to alliterations. He said, in a low voice, so low that few heard it,” We are Republicans, and don t propose to leave our party and identify ourselves with the party whose antecedents have been Rum, Romanism and Rebellion.”

A reporter of the Press overheard these words, took them down, sold what he claimed would defeat the Republican and elect the Democratic candidate, and having pocketed his money, gave them wing.

The words were caught up and flashed over the world. Had the nominee said, That is true, all would have been well. Why did he not say it? He could not! Behind him was the altar, the giving away of his child, the bargain, the Jesuit host all about, the demand that he prove himself true to Rome, however false he might be to the principles professed when he turned from Rome and gave himself professedly to Christ. The next day it was printed ; and he said: “For a dozen presidencies, would not say a word against the religion of my mother.” Why not? If the religion of his mother was so bad that he decided he ought to turn from it, it was so bad that it ought to be opposed, no matter who professed it.

Defeat came. Why? One paper called it” bad luck.” The candidate said,” It was because it rained ;” and other excuses were given.

Was it” bad luck,” or God? It is a question which Americans will do well to answer.

On the deck of an ocean steamer, men discuss the probable chances of prominent men for the presidency. Among them is a Jesuit, who keeps his own counsel. Just opposite the Never Sink, as they approach the harbor of New York, the Jesuit asks one who has been foremost in the discussion,” Do you know who selects your President?”

“The people,” was the swift reply.

“No!”

“Who?”

“The Pope of Rome. Everyman who succeeds has to have his endorsement.”

“My friend,”said the politician,” your words remind me of a story. A Quaker friend was in conversation with a neighbor who was addicted to falsehood. One day, when he had told a whopper, he said: Friend A___ , I do not like to call thee a liar, but if the Mayor of Philadelphia should ask me to show him the greatest liar I ever knew, I would go to thee and say, Friend A___, the Mayor wants to see thee. And so, sir, though I would not like to call you a liar, this I will say, never was a man more mistaken. Let it be known whom Rome wants, and the American people will want and have the other man, and the history of our late conflict proves it. Rome may conspire against, and perhaps defeat, but cannot elect. She may hinder, but cannot control.”

“As an illustration, who is more popular than this man? For whom was such a welcome ever prepared? True, Home did her best, and pulled the wires well, and the menials who do her bidding thought to throw the nominee of the party into the shade, and foist this man to the chief place again ; but once more a power they could not control took charge of affairs. Seventy-five thousand people looked and waited ; some of them tossed on the waves grew sick and weary, and he did not come. The play came on with Hamlet left out, and once more the Hand which wrote on the palace-wall,” Mene, mene, tekel, apharsin,” appeared, the plan was marred, and the scheme was ruined.

Will this teach the people that it is safe to be true? Jesuitism is potent, but not all-potent. God Almighty has managed the affairs of this world a good while. As a result, the Pope is a prisoner in the Vatican, and Romanism needs only to be exposed to be expurgated from the plans of politics, and the purpose of this great free nation.

CHAPTER XIV. A warning and an appeal; or, the Huguenots, their folly and their fall

Shall Americans contend for the truth or betray it? This is the question of this hour, and of all hours.

Men are created for God’s glory. God does not waste his time or energies in holding up and blessing those who refuse to glorify him. He gives them up. He lets go of them. If they insist on going to the Devil, to the Devil they go, and make out of it what they can.

It is a glorious privilege to know God. It is the manifest duty of those who know him to be thankful for the knowledge, and to use it wisely and well. Whoever fails to do this, makes a loss. The Huguenots, in their folly and their fall, illustrate this truth. There was a time when those who professed the religion of Jesus Christ were in the majority in France. Then they had an open Bible, a Sabbath sacred to holy uses, the wealth, the culture and the government. They lost all because they did not champion and proclaim the truth God had entrusted to their care.

When Henry IV., in 1598, issued the Edict of Nantes, and acknowledged God, and evidenced his gratitude by giving to Christianity, as taught by the Gospel, a place in the lives, thoughts and plans of men, he enriched France.

When Louis XIV., in 1685, revoked the Edict of Nantes, and gave his country over to the black-hearted villainy and terrible despotic hate of Romanism, to be despoiled and degraded, he brought ruin upon the State, and eternal infamy upon his name.

Then France was taken off the list of God-fearing States, and was enveloped in night, shrouded in superstition, that begets ignorance, poverty and death. In 1537 there were eight hundred and six churches in France. A bright future awaited them. France has known three periods in her religious life. Let us name them:

I. The Period of Repression, 1512 – 1559.

The attempt was made to reform the Papal church. It was in vain. As well might the attempt be made to clean out sin. It is ours to come out from it, and bring others out. This we can do. It is what men are within that makes them. It is what Romanists believe that damns them. The cry should be, “Come out from her, my people, that ye be not partakers of her sins.” Protestants hoped that error unrebuked would be dispersed by the truth. This is the dream of thousands in America. It is a false dream, built on a false hope.

II. The Period of Organization, 1559-1562.

This was the hour of battle. The Huguenots named as torch-bearers for Christ Jesus. The ministry and nobility revealed courage, and as the churches followed, effective work was done for God.

III. The Period of Resistance, 1559-1662.

This period deserves a book rather than a paragraph. Figures, some fearless and uncompromising, others devilish and malignant, are on the stage. Gaspard de Coligni, Charlotte Laval, Jeanne d’ Albert, mother of Navarre, how grandly they stand forth for God and the right!

Over against them are, Charles IX., Catherine do Medici, Alva, the Duke of Guise and others, whose deeds blacken the page of history. See them at work! ” Bring out the books and burn them,” is the savage demand of the Duke of Guise, as he reins up his horse in front of the barn where 3,000 have gathered to hear Leonard Morel as he preaches Christ.

“In whom do you believe?” is the question asked of the watchman at the door. ” In the Lord Jesus Christ,” is the brave answer. ” Cut him down.” “Dogs, rebels, Huguenots, heretics, “are the appellations thrown at the worshippers of Christ. The watchman is slain. Leonard Morel is struck with a musket. He falls on his knees and prays for his enemies. “Bring out the book!” The Bible is handed him. He opens and looks at the date. “This the Bible? It is 1500 years and more since this book was written. It was printed within a year. Wonderful truth! The Bible is old and yet new! Huguenot was, at the onset, a term of reproach. Afterwards, it became an honor. About the origin of the name there are various legends.

Davila finds a derivation for the name in the fact that they worshipped in cellars near Hugo’s gate. Others declare, the name came from Hugh Capet, from whom they claimed descent. It was not his origin, but his deeds, that made the Huguenot a power.

He has been described as a “soldier with the Testament in his knapsack, the Psalms on his lips, the name of Jehovah on his banner, the conviction of the Divine Presence as his leader” that made him a power.

On the field of battle the vision of liberated France was ever before his eye. His enemies were the enemies of God, who began each new war for the Papal idolatries. He fought them for Christ’s sake, and fired each shot with a prayer, and saw with thanksgiving a routed foe. He rushed to the charge without fear ; he cut right and left with unsparing severity ; he made it his work until the order was given to desist. He held every truce and treaty sacred. He had mercy for the prisoner, the maimed and the dying. He forgave as generously as he fought grievously. He boasted not of his own valor, if he was the conqueror ; he had no despair if he was the vanquished. He murmured not if he must die for Christ and country. He gave his soul to God, expected his pockets to be rifled, his body left for the eagles, and his bones to bleach under a sun that might yet shine upon a liberated kingdom.

“Honest as a Huguenot,” was the proverb coined in his honor and made current through long generations, because of what he was when he was at his best God’s child, fearless for the truth, the foe of Romanism, the champion of liberty, at any cost or sacrifice.

Gaspard d Coligni was the flower grown on the stem of a Huguenot’s faith. He was born Feb. 16, 1517, at Chatillon sur Laing. He came from good stock. His father was a brave soldier and an incorruptible patriot. He trained Gaspard to be brave. There were three boys, who loved each other, Odet, Gaspard and Francis. The star of the Reformation shone in the mother’s heart. The senior, Gaspard, chief marshal of the army, while hastening to relieve a beleaguered town, became overheated and died. He made a will commending wife and children to the king and brother-in-law Montmorency, and died on the ninth day of his illness.

The grief of the fatherless lads found some solace in their mother’s love, and in their affection for each other. Whoever was loved by the one was loved by the other two, and whoever offended one had an affair to settle with the entire three.

The mother of Coligni, in the home of Margaret Navarre, became the governess of Jeanne d Albert, the mother of Henry IV. It is probable that she made much of the friendship of this wonderful woman, who, for diversion, read the Holy Scriptures, saying, “In perusing them, my mind experiences its true and perfect joy.” His uncle was a rough soldier.

Coligm’s conversion to Christ was the foundation of his strength. It was in the castle at Ghent, while a prisoner, that he received a copy of the Scriptures, while on the brink of the grave. Audelot his brother, a prisoner at the same time, was released because he permitted the mass to be said in his cell. Coligni paid his ransom, and retired to his castle at Chatillon. There Charlotte Laval, his good wife, became his teacher. When urged to profess Christ, he replied:

“It is wise to count the cost of being a true Christian.”

“It is wiser to count the cost of not being a true Christian. In the one case, the cost is temporal. In the other, it is eternal. In the one, the body pays it ; but in the other, the soul pays it for ever.”

“You are right,” replied the Admiral, “and if you are ready for the sacrifice, so am I ; ” and from that time he professed the reformed creed. He gave the Scriptures to his servants, forbade profane swearing, engaged pious teachers for his children, and established schools among the poor. One day, being at Vaterille, listening to the word of God, the truth broke in upon his mind. He then saw that the true preparation for the Supper is not in the elements used, but in the person using them ; he must have faith in Christ. It was then he came into the full fellowship of the church.

The influence of this act was felt far and wide. Happy for France if there had been a John Knox at the head of the Reform, a man bold in the face of royalty, scathing upon usurpers, reading the tendency of political schemes, so that he could march abreast of events, the standard-bearer of the truth!

The Reform-movement went on. Churches multiplied. A fourth of the kingdom became identified with the churches of Christ.

The uprising of (he Huguenots called for Coligni. He hesitated. His wife knew the struggle in his soul. She could not sleep. She thought of them enjoying every blessing in the palace, while their brethren were in dungeons, or on the bare fields with the storm beating on them. He urged that war might only increase the number of the sufferers. Your argument leaves your brethren hopeless. It does not show a strong faith in God,” said the good wife. “He has given you the genius of a great Captain. You have confessed the justice of their cause.”

“Lay your hand on your heart, wife, and tell me: Could you receive the news of defeat without a murmur against God, and a reproach upon your husband?”

“I could.” “Are you prepared to see your husband branded as a rebel and dragged to a scaffold, while your children are disgraced and begging their bread of their enemies, or serving them as scullions and slaves? I give you eight days to reflect upon it, and if you are prepared for such reverses, I will march.” “The eight days are already expired,” said the intrepid wife. “Go sir, where duty calls.” He went. We cannot follow him. From camp to cabinet ; from cabinet to camp: now wounded, now defeated, but always undaunted, he went forth, until August 24, 1572, when, on the night of St. Bartholomew, he was murdered while a guest of the king; his body thrown from the window to the ground, had its head severed, and then was placed upon a gibbet ; afterward his body having been dragged about the streets, put over a fire and scorched, and thrown into the river, taken out again as unworthy food for fish, dragged again by boys and lewd fellows of the baser sort, was hung up again on the gallows, feet upward, where it remained for two weeks.

All this, and volumes more, was the background of 1637.

Now, look forward. Dark grows the night because God’s children withhold the light. Bright grows the day whenever the messengers of Christ have the courage of their convictions.

So long as the Huguenots filled out in their lives, and by their proclamation of the truth, the conception which the world still cherishes of them, they prospered.

Henry IV. illustrates, in his life and in his death, the uselessness of cowardice. He had courage on the battlefield, a rough wit, and in some circumstances would have shone as a leader. But in that age he lacked the faith which was essential to victory. He did not see Him who is invisible. His life was not built on Christ, the corner stone. The trial came. He was weighed in the balance and ” Mene, mene, tekel, upharsin” was as true of him as of Belshazzar. He was found wanting in steadfastness of purpose. He surrendered to Koine when a lad. He dared not be a Daniel. He trifled when he should have been resolute and firm. Brave and skillful in war, he lost the advantage of his splendid victories by trying to serve both parties. At last, he tore himself treacherously from the faith of his mother, and from all the associations of his early years. On the 25th of July, 1593, he knocked on Sunday morning at the Cathedral of St. Dennis. The door was opened, and upon the bishop demanding his errand, he replied, ” To be admitted into the church of Rome.” He bowed at the altar, and swore allegiance to the Roman faith . He acted a lie . He thought the throne of France worth a mass, and consented, because Rome would not assent to his ruling on any other conditions, to become a godless king. He had asked once before, “Could you confide in the faith of an atheist? And in the day of battle would it add to your courage to think you followed the banner of a perjured apostate ?” Brave words, had he followed them ; but he surrendered, and lost all. The Rome he sought to placate, turned from him with fresh aversion in 1598, when he issued the Edict of Nantes, twenty-six years after the massacre of St. Bartholomew. The essence of the edict was limited toleration. Liberty of conscience was permitted to the Huguenots ; but except in special parts of France, they could not exercise their religion. They were declared eligible to office. Their poor were admitted into the hospitals ; but they were required to keep the Romish festivals and pay tithes. For a time the edict was observed, and under its shelter the Huguenots pursued their way, enjoying a measure of quiet and liberty. Then, had they preached the truth, they might have achieved a victory. But they suppressed it. They lacked the courage which was displayed by Antonio Court, who gathered little crowds about him, and went on until there were thousands listening to his voice.

The History of French Protestantism from the promulgation of the Edict of Nantes, by Henry IV., in 1598, to the revocation of the same edict by Louis XIV., in 1685, naturally divides itself into three periods. In the first, extending from that great religious transaction which marks the end of the civil wars of the sixteenth century, to the taking of Rochelle in 1629, the Protestants were at one time by their own fault, and at another by the artifice of the nobles, involved in the troubles which agitated the regency of Maria de Medici ; and in the first years of the majority of Louis XII., beheld themselves deprived of the fortresses or towns yielded to them in pledge for the fulfillment of treaties of their political organization, and of their influence in the State.

Had they resisted this inroad, they could have held Romanism in check. But when the Huguenots allowed a solemn compact to be trifled with, Rome believed her hour had come, and marched boldly on.

God gives everybody a chance. Accept it, and salvation is assured. Reject it, and all is lost.

In the second period (1629-1662), which extends from the taking of Rochelle to the first persecutions of Louis XIV., the Protestants lived as Protestants in America are trying to live. They surrendered their influence as a religious party. Their chiefs pulled down the banner of a protest against the aggressions of Rome and sought for quiet and prosperity and thrift.

They disturbed France no longer, as their ancestors had done, by incessant armed risings, but enriched themselves by their industry.

FOR A TIME THEY PROSPERED.

Deprived of their cautionary fortresses and of their political organizations, gradually excluded from employment at Court and from nearly all civil offices, they turned to agriculture and to manufactures, and amassed fortunes. They redeemed lost provinces from sterility.

The Protestant burgher-class in the towns applied itself to industry and commerce, and displayed a degree of activity and intelligence coupled to integrity such as never have been surpassed in any country. In Guienne it nearly monopolized the wine trade ; in the two governments of Brouoge and Oleron, a dozen Protestant families held a monopoly of the trade in salt and wine which amounted yearly to twelve or fifteen million lives.

Those of Caen, sold to English and Dutch merchants linen and clothes manufactured at Vive, at Falouse, and at Argenton ; thus securing a rich outlet for this branch of national industry. Though bad Catholics, Eomanists were compelled to admit that the Reformed were excellent men of business.

Swamped by a ruinous legislation to which they assented, and tolerated in the midst of a population entirely outnumbering them, which ever regarded them with suspicion, constantly the butt of all calumnies, subjected to the control of imperious laws which compelled them to exercise perpetual constraint upon themselves, they forced public esteem by their austerity of morals and irreproachable loyalty. By the confession of their enemies, they respected law, they obeyed God, loved their fellowmen, and were true to them. They lived as seeing Him who is invisible. “Renowned for their commercial intelligence and activity, they were no less famous for their industry. More devoted to labor than other subjects of the realm, because they could only hope to equal them by surpassing them in the quality of their work, they were still further stimulated and advanced by the principles of their religion.” Those principles forbid their inaction in thought. Compelled to enlighten themselves by diligent study, there came necessarily the superior light, which spread itself over all their actions, and rendered their spirit abler to grasp all ideas the application of which would tend to the advancement of their weal

Besides, the working year of the Protestants contained three hundred and ten days ; because they set aside only the fifty-two Sabbaths and a few solemn holidays, which gave their industry the advantage of one sixth over that of the Catholics, whose working year contained but two hundred and sixty days, in as much as they set apart to rest above one hundred and five days.

They adopted the system of combined labor. They organized their establishments on the principle of the subdivision of labor, directed by skilful directors, who employed thousands of workmen, whom they stimulated by the lure of salaries duly proportioned to their services, thus offering the surest and most ready method of arriving at the most perfect, most abundant, and most economical production. As a result, France possessed the finest manufactories of wool, and shared the rich commerce in broadcloth which belonged to the English, the Hollander, and the Italians.

The invention of the stocking loom increased the number of the manufactories of stockings, of wool, silk, thread, and cotton. The Protestants distinguished themselves in this new art, and propagated it in the district of Sedan and Languedoc. A portion of that province, the upper Gevaudon, a mountainous and sterile region, almost entirely inhabited by the “Reformed” was celebrated for the serges and coddices made. In that region all the peasants had trades. The children spun from the age of four years and upward, and the whole of the family thus found occupation.

It was the Protestants of France who gave the world the best linen cloth. The tanneries of Touraine, the silk factories of Tours and Lyons, were all owned and worked by Protestants.

Nor did the Protestants confine themselves to manufactures and commerce, but entered largely into all the liberal careers. Numbers of the Reformed distinguished themselves as physicians, as advocates, as writers, as well as preachers, and contributed largely to the glory of the age of Louis XIV. The eloquence of the pulpit at this date owed to the Protestants its extraordinary success ; for while with Romanists preaching was but an accessory part of worship, it had become with their adversaries its most important feature.

“They ask only their bellyful of preaching,” said Catherine de Medici, sneeringly, while she was yet vacillating between the two creeds. Having charge to teach the religion of the gospel, culture was essential, then as now. Hence, there shortly arose a rivalry between the two religions, from which the pulpits reaped good results. Because of the power of the pulpit, Bossuet, Massilon, Bourdalue and Fenelon became famed in the Catholic world as preachers more than priests. In all the principal cities of the kingdom, the Protestants maintained flourishing schools of learning. Grand as was this period in many respects, it was wanting in fidelity to the truth. When they knew the truth and had the opportunity, they failed to glorify it, neither were thankful.

The same men who had braved death and torture were found to be unarmed against Court favor. They had not the courage of their convictions. Expediency, rather than principle, ruled them.

In this land a similar state of things exists. Men are silent in regard to the aggressions of Rome, when a proclamation of the truth would overthrow error and cause errorists to flee. The surrender to Rome on the part of politicians was only matched by the conduct of the French when they might have spoken. The consequences of this betrayal can only be described in part.

An edict of the 17th of June, 1681, permitted boys at fourteen, and girls at twelve, to abjure the Protestant religion, and re-enter the bosom of the Romish church.

This law was attended with terrible results. It undermined all parental authority in Protestant families. It is in line with the Romish claim that all sprinkled children are Romanists. It was enough that any one should affirm to the authorities that a child wished to become a Roman Catholic, having joined in prayer, or made the sign of the cross, or kissed the image of the Virgin, to cause his abstraction from the care of his parents, who were forced besides to pay him a pension ; so that the loss of the child was followed by the loss of property.

The synods received an order to accept neither legacies nor donations. The ministers were forbidden to speak in their sermons of the wretchedness of the times, or to attack, directly or indirectly, the Roman Catholic religion. To all this the “Reformed” assented without remonstrance or resistance. They surrendered their liberties, and by so doing were destroyed.

After this, came the systematic attempt for the conversion of the Protestants. Troops were quartered upon them.

In many villages the priests followed the soldiers through the streets, crying, “Courage, gentlemen! it is the intention of the king that these dogs of Huguenots shall be pillaged and sacked.”

The soldiers entered the houses, sword in hand, sometimes crying: “Kill, kill!” to frighten the women and the children. So long as the inhabitants could satisfy their rapacity, they suffered no more than pillage. But when their money was expended, the price of their furniture consumed, and the ornaments and garments of their wives disposed of, the dragoons seized them by the hair to drag them to church; or, if they suffered them to remain in their houses, made use of threats, outrages, and even tortures, to compel them to be converted. They burnt, at slow fires, the feet and hands of some ; they broke the ribs, legs, or arms of others with blows of sticks. Others were cast into damp dungeons, with threats of leaving them there to rot. The soldiers said that everything was permitted to them except murder and rape.

On the 28th of July, 1681, Charles the Second was compelled to sanction a bill which granted the most extensive privileges to those French refugees who should demand an asylum in England. From Holland, and from Germany as well, a cry of indignation arose. Louis XIV. called a halt. The persecutions stopped for a time ; but in 1684 they began again, and then it went from bad to worse.

New tortures were tried. Families were deprived of sleep by the noise of soldiers. The voice of drums, blasphemies, hideous cries, the crash of furniture, and constant shaking, by which they compelled these miserable wretches to stand up at night and keep their eyes open, were some of the means employed to deprive them of sleep. To pinch them, to prick them with sharp instruments, to pull them about, to suspend them with cords, and a hundred other cruelties, were the sport of these executioners, by which their hosts were reduced to such a state that they were glad to promise whatever they wished, to escape these barbarians. The soldiers offered indignities to women. They spat in their faces, they made them lie down on hot coals, and put their heads in heated ovens in which the vapor was enough to suffocate them.

As a result, thousands succumbed. It is a terrible picture, and the sufferings God’s children were compelled to undergo are too horrid to relate.

Is there not a lesson for us? Can we not see the peril in surrendering to such a foe? There was no pity in their hearts. They had no respect for citizenship. Bigotry ruled.

On the 22d of October, Louis XIV. signed at Fontainbleu, the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. The principal provisions of the revocation edict were the following: The Protestant temples were to be demolished, and the exercise of their religious worship was to cease, as well in private houses as in the castles of the nobles, on pain of confiscation of property and personal arrest. The ministers who should refuse to be converted, were warned to leave the kingdom within fourteen days, on pain of being sent to the galleys.

Protestant schools were to be closed ; the children who were born after the publication of the edicts were to be baptized by the priests of their parishes and brought up in the Roman Catholic faith. A term of four months was granted to refugees wherein to return to France and apostatize ; that time expired, their property was to be confiscated. Protestants were formally prohibited from leaving the kingdom and carrying their fortunes abroad, on pain of the galleys for men, and confiscation of their property and personal arrest for the women. All the provisions of the law against relapsed converts were confirmed.

The “Reformed” who had not changed their religion, were to remain in the kingdom until it should please God to enlighten them.

On the same day that the edict of revocation was registered, the destruction of the temple of Charenton, built by the celebrated architect Jacques Debrosse, and capable of containing 14,000 persons, was commenced. Five days afterward, no trace of the edifice remained. The church at Caen, which had so many times re-echoed to the eloquent voice of Dubas, fell in ruins, to the flourish of trumpets and shouts of joy. At Nimes, Cheyrau was permitted to preach a last discourse. He did so, and appealed to his hearers to persevere in the faith unto death. The temple was torn down and became a heap of ruins. In the midst, could long be remarked a single stone, beneath the overthrown front, bearing this inscription:

“HERE IS THE HOUSE OF GOD, HERE IS THE GATE OF HEAVEN.”

The Protestants who had believed Louis XIV. to be the greatest king of the age, and that he would yet see his mistake, had their eyes opened to the actual condition of affairs when they saw 800 temples destroyed, and learned that troops had been ordered into the North of France to complete the work done in the South.

Protestant servants were denied employment, and noblemen were compelled to employ Roman Catholics. These severities bore fruit. The galleys were filled with prisoners. Everybody that could escape, did so. To London, to Germany, to America, they came in uncounted numbers. France was emptied of its best population.

Over 1,300,000 of the good and well-to-do citizens went forth as exiles. In a celebrated memoir addressed to Louvais, in 1688, Voubon deplores the desertion of 1,000,000 men, the withdrawal of $60,000,000 of money, the ruin of commerce, the enemies fleet increased by 9,000 of the best sailors of the kingdom, and their armies by 600 officers and 12,000 soldiers.

The north of France became depopulated, as well as the south. Of 1998 Protestant families who dwelt in the district of Paris, 1202 emigrated.

The priests celebrated the day of revocation by public thanksgiving. What sorrows followed in that train! A law passed by the constituent assembly of 1790, restored to the descendants, now dispersed over the face of the globe, the title of French citizens, on the simple condition of returning to France and fulfilling the civil duties imposed on all Frenchmen ; but it could not bring back to France the loss which it had sustained. For almost a century the Roman Catholic church had full sway in the whole of France. It possessed all the edifices of worship, all the schools, the press, the government. The Protestants had lost the right of possessing their creed and the right of existing.

Treachery never pays, and wrong-doing secures terrible harvests. After St. Bartholomew came remorse to Charles IX. He lived but twenty-one months. He could not get away from the horrid memory. The man who had boasted on the fatal night that there should not be a single Huguenot left to reproach him with the deed, was waited on at his death-bed by a Huguenot nurse. “Alas, nurse, dear nurse,” he would say to her, ” what blood, what murders! Oh, my God! forgive me. What shall I do? I am lost.” And the nurse would point him to God as the only hope.

Henry IV., after betraying his mother’s and his soul’s highest interests, was smitten by an assassin’s dagger, and died as the fool dieth.

Louis XIY. saw his kingdom impoverished, his commerce gone, his name execrated throughout the world, and lay in his magnificent palace at Versailles dying. He is utterly wretched. The people curse him, and hurl stones and mud at his coffin.

The church of Rome gains nothing but infamy. The Revolution struck with awful justice and rent the fetters of French Protestantism, smiting into the dust the throne which had so long oppressed them.

And so Protestantism is revived. There are about 1,000,000 Protestants. Many of them have acquired a distinguished place in the Church and in the State.

1. France lost the light, because Christians hid it beneath a bushel. They forgot that they were the light, and if they refused to let their light shine they increased the gloom. They enjoyed the truth ; but they did not preach it. The aggressive gospel of Luther and Zwingle was set aside. They turned to money-getting and thrift, and left the affairs of State to others.

John Knox, with his words, spoken and written, drove his enemies into their retreats. By his addresses and sermons he made public opinion, roused the popular heart, and directed the popular will. In France there was no such man. There was too little enlightened opinion. The military spirit died with the moral. It was not the call to arms, no more than the call to repentance. It was not the fight for liberty, because it was not the good fight of faith.

2. Their second great mistake was in proclaiming the possibility of a Romanist being saved while he clings to the errors of Rome.

For this the leaders argued, even as men argue it now. In our churches are ministers and men who claim that the Roman Catholic church stands in association with evangelical churches as a church of Christ. In the discussion of the Freedom of Worship Bill, this position was maintained.

Romanists are treated not as errorists ; but as if, despite their errors, they are Christians. In faith and practice they are Pagans. We are not speaking against them as citizens, but denying that they are Christians, while they are Romanists. They are in peril because tradition is preferred to Scripture, Mary to Jesus, and the decrees of the church to the commands of Christ. They must have the Gospel brought to them, and they must believe it to the saving of their souls, or they must be lost.

“Venerable ministers of the Gospel,” exclaimed Rev. Charles Chiniquy, “Rome is the great danger ahead for the church of Christ, and you do not understand it enough. The atmosphere of light, honesty, truth, and holiness in which you are born, and which you have breathed since your infancy, makes it almost impossible for you to realize the dark mysteries of idolatry, immorality, degrading slavery, hatred of the Word of God, concealed behind the walls of that modern Babylon. It is that ignorance which paves the way for the triumph of Rome. It paralyzes the arm of the church of Christ.”

WHY THIS INDIFFERENCE?

The answer of this man, who was fifty years a priest, is: ” Because modern Protestants have not only forgotten what Rome was, what she is, and what she will forever be, the most irreconcilable and powerful enemy of the gospel of Christ ; but while she is striking Christians to the heart, by cursing their schools and wrenching the Bible from the hands of the children ; while she is battering down and scaling the walls and storming the citadel of their faith, they are recognizing her as a branch of the church of Christ.

IT IS A DELUSION AND A SNARE.

Rome, that shed the blood of our forefathers, that refused to keep faith with heretics, that fired the inquisition, and lit its fires with devilish and malignant joy, is in our midst, attempting to chain our people to the feet of her idols.

Romanists, that murdered Henry IV. , that stabbed Coligni to the heart, that burned a Huss, a Ridley and a Latimer, and that plotted the death of Abraham Lincoln, and attempted to stab Liberty, are here to fight with desperation, and do their utmost to destroy the liberty our fathers fought for, and we have defended.

ROME NEVER COMPROMISES.

Upon the ministry of this hour, a fearful responsibility is devolved. Let them reckon Roman Catholics as a part of the religious world, who can be saved while they adhere to the errors of Rome, and the people will see no cause for alarm, and no reason why efforts should be made to rescue the millions in our midst from the grasp of the destroyer.

Let them proclaim the truth, that Rome hates the Bible, destroys the Sabbath, apologizes for crime, and teaches that a criminal coming to the confessional may, by the act of a priest, become white as a saint, and the people will see a reason for jails and penitentiaries being filled with members in good standing of the Roman Catholic church. They will see that honesty and integrity are impelled by such teaching. Romanism is a lie, coined in hell, and built up as a system through the machinations of Satan. It must be resisted, and Romanists must be warned of their peril, because they who believe in such error are damned. It is our duty to preach the gospel to our prisoners. This may be their only opportunity to hear the truth. Romanism cannot usurp the place of Christianity without destroying the foundations of liberty. The Christians of this land must fearlessly proclaim the truth, if they will save the State.

It was the boast of Napoleon that he made way for the talents. But such talents! Talents wriggling to a height where the lion could scarcely find a foothold, or the eagle a place to perch!

It was, and is, the Bible that opens the way for the talents. Because of this redemption has come, and where it is welcomed, and loved and used, there is prosperity. Life tells. God takes care of his own.

III. A third mistake was made when they consented, for any reason, to be silent concerning the errors of Rome.

This peril confronts us. Pulpits are closed against this. Professors of religion apologize for, it they do not champion, the errors of Rome. While the Huguenot consented to be silent, Rome worked on. The result was seen not only in the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, but in the state of affairs which made that revocation a possibility.

It is not safe to forget the drift and trend of Romanism. All who keep their eye on public affairs, know that Romanism is organizing for the battle of Armageddon. The Watchman St. Louis boldly says: ” There are indications that before the next half century has passed, the two great bodies into which Christianity is divided will engage in a real conflict, in which the strength of the seminal principle of each communion will be put to a real test.”

“Finally, my brethren, be strong in the Lord, and in the power of his might. Put on the whole armor of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil.” Someone must fight, if truth shall reign. Americans have great trusts committed to their keeping.

The need of the hour is an awakened church. Luther could not have got on without the Elector of Saxony. John Wycliffe would have been a failure had not the Duke of Lancaster stood by and for him. Pray that some of our mighty laymen, now giving money for colleges and churches, may lay their offerings on this altar, and help us to sow the broad fields of our American life with Gospel seed.

At the battle of Gettysburg, one hundred and fifty cannons poured their leaden and iron hail upon our men. It seemed difficult to live in the galling fire. Our soldiers were burrowing in the ground, hiding behind what they could place before them, when they heard a band of music. At its head rode Hancock, hat off, saying to the men: ” Gentlemen, that cannonade means that our enemies are getting ready to attack us. Be ready. Prove to be men.” Our boys were ready ; and when the battle-wave struck the Rock of Patriotism, it broke, and victory came, in which the South glories now equally with the North.

So shall it be in this fight with Rome. The defeat of Rome is the salvation of the Republic, and the deliverance of Romanists from superstition, that produces the sleep of death. Let us glorify God as God, and work while it is day.

CHAPTER XV. Romish schools our peril

Rome is an old fighter. In the battle now raging for the utter overthrow of the public school system in the United States, Rome is managing her forces and planting her blows in accordance with well-defined plans ; which, having won victories elsewhere, she believes are sure to produce the same results in her present desperate encounter. Thousands in pulpits and in pews, in shops and on farms, think resistance worse than folly. This class are either betraying the youth of America, or are silent while others are doing the infamous work. It is time to call a halt. For more than fifty years, because of this false security which has held the church in the arms of a delusive slumber, and through the cowardice or ambition of party leaders, this nation, with all its unparalleled opportunities and responsibilities has been drifting toward a surrender of the children to the control of the priests of Rome. Rome’s opposition is open and defiant. It has assumed four distinct phases:

1. In 1840, Archbishop Hughes gave this order:”Take the children out of the public schools, as you would take them out of devouring fire ;”that was to get them away from Bible influence. First, denounce the schools because the Bible is read ; then banish the Bible and denounce them as godless is the programme of Rome.

2, The Bible having been removed as a text-book, Rome fought general education, and became the open and avowed champion of illiteracy.

3. In 1884, the Plenary Council ordered the building of parochial schools. The decree was mandatory ; save in cases where a sufficient cause can be shown, satisfactory to the bishop. Neglect of this requirement subjected the offender to the usual penalties of disobedience. This was the beginning of the trouble with Edward McGlynn. Educated in the public schools, he believes in them and fought for them.

4. The children of Roman Catholics have been taken out of the schools, and now they claim the right of giving direction as to how the children of Protestants shall be educated. The inquiry has been raised, If the schools are so bad that Roman Catholic children cannot attend them, are they not too bad for Roman Catholic teachers to teach in them? If Romanists insist on educating their children, ought they not to stop all interference on their part with the educating of children not belonging to them?

Vicar-General Brady, of St. Louis, declares:”We are doing all that we can to prevent our children from going to the public schools. We must educate our own children. They are educated in the public schools merely as animals would be educated. Their souls are not attended to.”

In Monseigneur Segur’s”Plain Talk About Protestantism,”there is this language (p. 98): “The freedom of thinking is simply nonsense. We are no more free to think without rule, than we are to act without one.”Page 105:”We have to believe only what the Pope and the Bishops teach. We have to reject only that which the Pope and the Bishops condemn and reject. Should a point of doctrine appear doubtful, we have only to address ourselves to the Pope and the Bishops to know what to believe. Only from that tribunal, forever living and forever guided by God, emanate true judgment on religious belief, and particularly on the true sense of Scripture.”

The Roman Church, claiming to understand the secrets of God and to have the keys of heaven and hell, and blasphemously presuming that it can control the destinies of men to save eternally or damn forever in a life to come undertakes to bestow for money the joys of the former, and inflict the pains of the latter, on those who refuse credulity and cash. To make this trade prosperous, ignorance is a necessity.”It uses money, mendacity and pretended miracles, to capture and enslave the ignorant. It assails everything tending to enlighten the masses, on whose ignorance it feeds. Italy, Spain, Ireland, Mexico and Lower Canada sufficiently illustrate its terrible work. Human vitality and intelligence have probably been brought to a lower point in Spain than in any other civilized nation on the globe, and the Roman Church is largely, if not solely, responsible for this national degradation and ruin. It seeks to do is most successfully preparing to do is doing slowly for the United States what it has done for Spain. Our free-school system destroyed, political integrity destroyed and parties corrupted, the goal is not far away.”

II. THE CHARACTER OF THE EDUCATION GIVEN DESERVES NOTICE.

The trouble in Ireland today is, that England is dealing with a people who believe that all is right which is done to advance the power of the Church. Hence, there, as here, jurymen utterly ignore the value of their oath where the interests of the Church require it. For this reason alone, the right of”trial by jury”is threatened.

ROMANISM GIVES A LICENSE TO VIOLATE.

in some way or other, every precept of the Decalogue. If men who are Romanists are truthful, honest and upright, it is because they are better than the religion they profess compels them to be.

Rome teaches that the Sabbath may be set aside after hearing mass. Merchandizing and the selling of goods at auction is permitted on the Sabbath. He who performs any servile work on the Lord’s Day or on a festival day, let him do penance three days on bread and water. If any one breaks fasts prescribed by the Church, let him do penance on bread and water twenty days. Three days on bread and water for disobeying their God ; twenty days for disobeying their Church! Absolution is given for stealing small amounts to pay for masses, though the law is, that masses shall be given without pay. The command:”Thou shalt have no other gods before me,”is blotted out of the Bible by papal hands. Children trained in these schools can lie, steal, break the Sabbath, and commit sins of any kind, and obtain absolution from a man no better than the guilty party.

Romanism injures citizenship.

The oath of allegiance, by which the thousands of Romanists have obtained the rights of the ballot, citizenship and office, which, if regarded as obligatory, would bind every one of them to support the principles of Republican Government, is valueless ; because, whenever Roman officials shall see fit to require this oath to be disregarded, every good Romanist, to a man, is bound by his allegiance to the Pope, which he believes more binding than his allegiance to the Government, to disregard it. As proof, we quote from”Abridged Course of Religious Instruction for the Use of Colleges and Schools,”by the Rev. Father F. X. Schouppe, of the Society of Jesus, with the imprimateur of H. E. Cardinal Manning, London Burns and Gates, 1880, p. 203:”The Church can dispense from a promissory oath. This power belongs to the Pope and bishops, who exercise it either themselves or by their delegates.”

Page 278:”The civil laws (of Christendom) are binding in conscience so long as they are conformable to the rights of the Catholic Church.”

This gives a warrant to the false swearing which floods our cities with voters who have passed from their landing in this free country to the courts where they take a false oath, to the polls, where, with another false oath, they swear in their vote, and to the confessional, where their oath is held to be a justifiable,”dispensable”lie for the benefit of the Holy Roman Catholic Church, whenever it shall chance so to regard it, or order him so to regard it. He also is taught,”that the Sacrifice of the Mass remits sins and the punishment due them” (p. 210).”The power to remit sin is judicial. The priests are made judges of the sin and the disposition of the sinner. Their absolution is just as efficacious as would be that of Jesus Christ.”

Educate the youth in this way, and”repeating”at the polls becomes an act of grace, and honest elections become an impossibility. As has been said:”A ship-load of foreign Romanists lands in New York ; indulgence in the lump is by the Cardinal or Archbishop granted, to swear that they have resided here long enough to become citizens ; they go before the court, become naturalized, get their final papers, and at once go to the polls and help elect the Cardinal’s candidate for Mayor. Thus perjured citizens capture polling places and carry elections in the interest of Romanism.”{Romanism, by A. J. Grover, p. 18} It does not stop here.

Dissimulation is lawful, according to Liguori, as is gambling.”Laymen, or even the clergy, do not sin if they play cards principally for the sake of recreation, or for a moderate sum of money. Hence, gambling among priests is extensively practised.

Drunkenness not a vice.

“It is lawful to administer the sacraments to drunkards, if they are in danger of death, and had previously expressed a desire of receiving them.”Hence, the murderer executed in the Tombs October 18th, 1883, cried for whiskey at the last, though he had partaken of the Eucharist. Priests are known to drink to excess. One, in a country town, rode home drunk almost every Sabbath evening after performing vespers in the chapel. All knew it, and it was tolerated because the guilty debauchee was a priest. It was Liguori who said:”Among the priests who live in the world, it is rare, very rare, to find one that is good.”

Alexander Campbell, in his discussion with Archbishop Purcell, read from Liguori the permission for priests to keep nieces, or concubines. Archbishop Purcell denied that Liguori ever taught anything so abominable, and that all who say so are guilty of a flagrant violation of the commandment which says,”Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.” The book was brought in, and another read therefrom these words:”A bishop, however poor he may be, cannot appropriate to himself pecuniary fines without the license of the Apostolical See ; but he ought to apply to pious uses that which the Council of Trent has laid upon non-resident clergymen , or upon those clergymen who keep concubines.”Marriage is a mortal sin. Adultery is pardoned.

WHATEVER HURTS ROME IS DECRIED, WHATEVER HELPS ROME IS APPROVED.

“What answer ought a confessor to give when questioned concerning a truth which he knows from sacramental confession only?”

“He ought to answer that he does not know it, and, if it be necessary, to confirm the same with an oath.

“Is it lawful, then, to tell a lie?”

“He is questioned as a man, and answers as a man. As a man he does not know the truth, though he knows it as God.”

*What if a confessor were directly asked whether he knows it through sacramental confession ?”

“He may reply, ‘I know nothing’.”

Is such a religion good enough for the youth of America? It is the true position that the nation has no right to give children into the hands of Roman Catholics ; and that prisoners in our penal institutions ought to be taught and helped by men who believe and teach the Word of God?

ROMAN CATHOLICS SHOULD NOT HAVE CHARGE OF PRISONS.

Jerry McCauley, the river thief, and a most desperate character, went to Sing Sing as a member of the Roman Catholic communion, in full and in good standing, as are the majority of our prisoners in all our penal institutions. It was because Jerry Mc Cauley heard the Gospel and found a Bible in his room that he was converted, came out of the Church of Rome, and became a benefactor to hundreds of thousands.

III. THE STATE HAS NO RIGHT TO RECOGNIZE THE CHURCH.

If the Court of Special Sessions can commit to a Roman Catholic institution children between seven and fourteen years of age, as idle, truant, vicious, or homeless, then the State can put its neck into the yoke Rome has been framing for many years, with the consent of a silent Christianity and a crafty political sentiment. The law says,

The free exercise and enjoyment of religious profession and worship, without discrimination or preference, shall forever be allowed in this State for all mankind.

The Constitution of these United States, in providing for religious liberty, expressly declares that no restraint should be exercised:”that Congress should make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;”but recognizing the principle introduced to the notice of mankind by Roger Williams, who repudiated toleration, because the right to tolerate implied the right to persecute ; who would not accept as a favor from man what had been given to him as a right by God ; who held that, when God made the eye he conferred the right to look, and when he made the Bible he conferred the right to read it, or have it read.

Gambetta, in France, saw this peril, and warned the State against giving over children to the control of priests to be educated and guided by them.”I am,”said the great French statesman,”for the separation of the schools from the churches. I consider this not only a question of political, but of social order. Let not Catholics, with their claims to exclusiveness, have anything to do with the propagation of necessary knowledge, which it is the State’s duty to see imparted to every citizen.”

Gambetta knew Romanism as we in this free land do not know it. Let us hear, and heed his manly advice.

The parochial school, notwithstanding the disposition of the American people to try and conciliate their Roman Catholic fellow-citizens, is a fact. The decree has gone forth from the Provincial Council, sanctioned by the Pope, that such schools shall be built in every parish. Compromise is a failure. Not only does Rome seek to take her children out of our public schools ; but, under one pretense or another, she seeks to fill these public schools with Roman Catholic teachers. Let us have done with this. Put the Bible back where it belongs. Let it become a text-book for the children of America. Teach them to be good readers of the Scriptures. Said Sir William Jones, who was familiar with Greek, Roman and Oriental literature:”The Bible, independently of its Divine origin, contains more sublimity, purer morality, more impartial history and finer strains of eloquence than can be collected from any other book, in whatever language it may have been written.”John Jay, in an admirable address on”Rome, the Bible and the Republic,”quotes the distinguished Robert Hall as saying:”Wherever the Scriptures are generally read, the standard of morals is raised,”and adds: The indebtedness of this country to the Bible, and its recognition by our Government in other days, are things not to be forgotten ; and it is well to keep permanently before our people this distinguishing feature of our history.”The great body of the original settlers on our newly discovered continent were men whose ancestors had fought for civil and religious freedom on the various battle-fields of the old world. They loved liberty, and loved God ‘s Word. Is it not true that their love of liberty sprung from the influence of the truth upon their hearts? Follow the Bible around the world, and in its trail you find liberty, progress and enlightenment. The Bible ought to be made a textbook in every institution helped by the State, because of what the Bible does for the State.”There never was found,”said Lord Bacon,”in any age of the world, either religion or law that did so highly exalt the public good as the Bible.”If Romanists do not like it, let them dislike it. What they love, hurts liberty. What they hate, helps it. It is our duty to make our schools so good that no ambitious child of the State can afford to be educated elsewhere. I make my appeal to you, not as religionists, but as citizens, Do more than refuse to divide the School Fund. Do this: from this time on, provide for children between seven and fourteen years of age who may be idle, truant, vicious or homeless, better places in which to educate them than the protectories or convents under Romish control. They are children of the State. Give them religious instruction, by giving them access to the Word of God. It is our bounden duty to teach them Christian morality, essential to their education as good citizens. In the words of Ulysses S. Grant:

“Let us labor to add all needful guarantees for the most perfect security of free thought, free speech, and free press, pure morals, unfettered religious sentiments, and of equal rights and privileges to all men, irrespective of nationality, color or religion. Encourage free schools, and resolve that not one dollar in money, no matter how raised, shall be appropriated to the support of any sectarian school. Resolve that either the State, or nation, or both combined, shall support institutions of learning, sufficient to afford every child growing up in the land the opportunity of a good common school education.”

POPERY IN THE UNITED STATES

is little known. It is hidden. It works in darkness. Such is the courage and faith of the American people that they consent to the existence of Roman Catholics, and to carry out their purposes and plans as they do the existence of Methodists or Baptists, or any religious denomination. They act as if it were ungenerous and unfair to uncover the wiles of Jesuitism, and disclose the perils which threaten the nation because of the doings of Romanism. In Canada, the actions of this desperate foe can be studied in detail. The programme with which the people of the United States is confronted has been carried out. There, Rome is dominant. The harvest of Rome has ripened, and Rome is consolidated.

SEPARATE OR PAROCHIAL SCHOOLS EXIST IN CANADA

Under the sanction of the law. They are sustained by taxation, as are Protestant schools ; and there are many ways in which Roman Catholics are permitted to place Protestants at a disadvantage:

1. Five Roman Catholics can petition for a separate school. The petition being granted, all Roman Catholics within a radius of three miles every way can be compelled to support it. No matter if they prefer the public school, the law compels them to support the Roman Catholic school. All known to be Roman Catholics, and all believed to be Roman Catholics, are taxed, and deliverance from the same can only be obtained by a process of law, which is irritating, if not dangerous.

2. All Protestant teachers are compelled to go through a public examination, and must measure up to a certain grade, or fail in obtaining a school. In Roman Catholic schools, the Christian Brothers and Nuns can be appointed without examination. Today, the teachers of parochial schools are not examined in the United States, and the schools are not inspected ; the youth are surrendered to Rome.

3. For the Protestant schools, books are selected by the Board of Public Education. In Roman Catholic schools, they select their own, and may fill them with treason, with superstition and paganism, and there is none to say them Nay.

4. In the public schools the Bible is read ; not in Roman Catholic schools.

5. The public schools are inspected; not the Roman Catholic.

6. In the election of trustees for public schools, a secret ballot is used. In Roman Catholic school districts, the trustees are elected by their signing their names, and voting Aye or Nay. This is the fight now going on. The laity want the secret ballot, that they may get rid of priestly control. The open ballot is kept, to preserve the control of the priests.

As a result, Roman Catholic children are growing up in ignorance. It is proven in Canada, as in Ireland, or Spain, or Mexico, that Rome hates education.

Doctor Maguire, a Roman Catholic professor of the University of Dublin, and one of the senators of the Royal University of Ireland, has written a pamphlet on

in which he declares”that a large and logical section of the Roman Catholic Church is conscientiously opposed to the spread of education.”He quotes the Dublin Review (vol. xx., p. 192, second series), in which it is contended, that the absence of higher education is a powerful preservative against apostasy,”and tells a story of the Archbishop of Tuam, who closed a school, and when one of the villagers asked how he was to send his children to school, replied:”What do they want with a school? Let them learn their Catechism.”

Cardinal Cullen, in 1870, before the Educational Convention, said:”It is admitted that the Scotch and the Irish are of the same origin, and shows that since the Scotch embraced the Reformed religion they have outrun even the English ; while, wherever the Irish embraced Romanism, they have retrograded.”What a contrast between exclusively Roman Catholic Con-naught and Protestant Ulster!

Education is the basis of national liberty and prosperity. In elementary instruction, Protestant States are incomparably more advanced than Roman Catholic, and representative governments are the natural outgrowth of Protestant populations ; while despotic governments are the congenial governments of Roman Catholic populations.

DeLavelieye declares, that”the control of education by the Roman priesthood leads inevitably to illiteracy, with its tendency to degradation, pauper ism and crime.”

The Roman Catholic Review for April, 1871, said: * We do not indeed prize as highly as some of our countrymen appear to do, the ability to read, write and cipher. Some men are born to be leaders, and the rest are born to be led. The best ordered and administered State is that in which the few are well educated and lead, and the many trained to obedience.” Said a priest:”I would as soon administer the sacraments to a dog, as to a Catholic who sent his children to a public school.”

THIS IS ROMANISM.

It ought to be fought ; not for the sake of Protestants alone, but because of the imperiled interests of the children of Roman Catholics. Illiteracy imperils, here and everywhere.

In Canada, one-sixth of the population furnishes more than five-sixths of the crime. Occasional disclosures reveal this peril. When the bill was introduced into the Legislature of New York, pretending to secure freedom of worship, it was proven to have been proposed by a Jesuit, and was introduced by Senator Gibbs ;”because,”as he said in a letter to the New York Evening Post, Oct. 27, 1875,”of certain pledges made by the leading Republicans to the Irish Catholic voters for their support of James G. Elaine.”If in America, with our centuries of training in the principles of Republican government, with our hereditary devotion to the elementary principles of civil and religious freedom, such bargains can be made, and Irish votes can be sold in blocks for the betrayal of the principles of the Constitution, is not time to ask if Popery be not in the way?

The American people are generous to a fault. They have treated Romanists as if they were brothers. They have been slow to believe they were tolerating an enemy. They are waking up. They are seeing the peril threatening liberty. They are getting on their armor, and they will fight the good fight of faith ; and, though a little slow in starting, they will get there all the same ; and will yet have the honor of digging as deep a grave for Romanism as they have furnished for human slavery. They are becoming weary of such sentiments as, that”Too much education would make the poor discontented with their lot, and unsuit them for following the plow, using the spade, hammering iron, or building walls.”It is American to believe in education for the people ; and to thank God that the path opens to the highest positions from the door of a hovel as well as from the door of a palace. In our public schools, the rich and poor are equals. As Macaulay said:

During the last three centuries, to stunt the growth of the human mind has been her chief object. Throughout Christendom, whatever advance has been made in knowledge, in freedom, in wealth, and in the arts of life, has been in inverse proportion to her power. The loveliest and most fertile provinces of Europe have, under her rule, been sunk in poverty, in political servitude, and in intellectual torpor ; while Protestant countries, once proverbial for sterility and barbarism, have been turned by skill and industry into gardens, and can boast of a long list of heroes, statesmen, philosophers and poets.”

WHAT IS NEXT?

Rome will soon have her children housed in the parochial school buildings. Then will come the refusal to pay taxes. Property will be levied and held up for sale. Who will buy it? They who do so, will run the peril of losing their lives. The scenes of Ireland will be re-enacted in the United States. Then will come the end. The American people will make short work of Romanism, when once they understand its motives, its animus and purpose.

THE REMEDY.

Resist this devil of Romanism and it will flee. Put the Bible back where it belongs ; and make it a reading-book for the youth of America. Adopt the Prussian system, or devise a better, and see to it that the children of the State are given religious instruction ; so that they shall know the chief doctrines of the Bible, the life and teachings of our Lord, the history of the Christian religion in connection with contemporary civil history. Let there be no sectarianism taught, and no antagonism engendered, and then shall our schools become the bulwark and defense of liberty.

CHAPTER XVI. Parochial schools and indulgences

The morning cometh ; and with it, and before it, the struggle. In Pennsylvania, and notably in Pittsburg, Romanism is doing its worst. Bless God for a McCrory, a Riddle, and many more brave and eloquent men, who have sounded out the bugle-call to action. There they seek to take possession of the public school buildings for parochial school purposes. The language of Superintendent Higbee furnishes good reading. He says:

“In the case submitted to us, it is stated that the Board of Directors have rented or leased a public school building for the use of a parochial school, where the peculiar dogmas and usages of a particular church, or where only a certain distinct class of children, are admitted. In this case, granting the statement of facts, there is not only an unauthorized violation of trust, but a seeming indifference to what is explicitly forbidden by the constitution of the Commonwealth itself. A school is not sectarian be cause taught by a minister, or priest, or any church official ; but a school controlled or managed in the interest of any particular church organization, up holding its peculiar confession and ecclesiastical practices, and used for any class of pupils exclusive of others, is certainly sectarian. It does not in any sense belong to our system of public schools ; on the contrary, no money raised for the support of the public schools can be used for its support without a direct violation of the constitution. Were school directors permitted to lease our public property thus, at their own will, for the use of parochial schools, the ecclesiastical convictions of the directors could turn our public schools into as many different kinds of church schools as there are different denominations in the Commonwealth.”

If the opinion of the State Superintendent of schools should fail to induce the offending school board to abandon their position, the case will be appealed to the courts.

The home is being stirred. In New York, the imperilled condition of the little ones is coming to the surface. It is found that in New York and Brooklyn, and many of our large cities, Romanists find it convenient to have the children shut out of school privileges. In New York, after counting noses, it is found that there are 20,000 children of school-age in this city for whom no room is provided in the school buildings. These little ones are of the class who most need to be provided for, being the children of poor people, who cannot afford them private instruction, and whose education must necessarily be completed by the time they are fourteen years old. None of the grammar schools are crowded, but in all the primary schools the pupils are huddled together like sheep, and are left always to the care of the least experienced teachers.

The City says, it cannot afford to build school-houses enough to supply the demand, or at least its Board of Education says so. Yet it maintains a free college, with a big faculty, where only twenty out of every class remain to graduate, and pays for a normal school which has 2,000 girl pupils, only one- seventh of whom remain for the four years of the course. These two institutions are the special pets of the Board, and everything else is sacrificed to them. If any of the English nobility are in the town they are taken up to the normal school to see 1,000 bright-faced American girls go through their calisthenic exercises, and are gravely told that this is a specimen of our educational system. They are never taken to the primary schools.

In Boston, another line of attack is being made by the church of Rome. “Swinton’s Outlines of History “has been removed from the Boston schools on the vote of the majority of the School Committee, of whom 13 are Protestants and 11 liberal Roman Catholics. The passage which caused the exclusion of the work is the one relating to the institution of the sale of indulgences. This is the beginning of another grand assault, in a different direction, upon our American free school system. First, it was the Bible that Papists couldn’t tolerate, and miserably weak-kneed, compromising Protestants all over the land were willing to expel the Bible from the schools in order to placate the Papists. But it was soon discovered that it was not the Bible, but the schools, which Roman prelates and priests disliked so much.

Now these men, who cannot tolerate our public school system, begin to find fault with the text-books, claiming that our books on history do not teach what is true. They say, the facts of history concerning the Roman hierarchy are falsified, and the best way to remedy the matter is to bundle the books right out of the schools !

The Evangelical Alliance uttered their protest. Brioe S. Evans, and other patriotic citizens, called a meeting in Faneuil Hall, and uttered their protest, asking that the Swinton’s book be put back. This is their reply:

“The Board has been asked by a petition from members of the Evangelical Alliance, to reverse its decision and restore the book to the list. By reference, this request has been considered by the Committee, and a hearing has been given to the representatives of the Evangelical Alliance. In the judgment of the Committee, no reasons have been presented which should determine the Board to change its action.

The reasons assigned are as follows:

“1. The book . . . has in its favor ten years of public indorsement and use. It has had a long and honorable tenure of our public schools.”

To retain books in the schools on this ground, would be to resist all improvement in the quality of text-books, and deprive the pupils of the benefit of progress in the provision of new matter, and better forms of instruction.

“2. The paragraph and footnote, on account of which the book has been rejected, contain a true statement of history . ”

They do not contain an ample and definite statement of the topic concerning which complaint has been justly made, to the effect that it was incorrectly taught.

“3. The book ejected is upon the expurgatory list of books of a certain religious sect.”

The Committee were not aware of this fact ; it did not enter into the grounds or affect the motives of their action.

Quoted from “Instructions to Catholics,”by Rev. Xavier Donald Macleod. Boston: Murphy Mc Carthy.

“By an indulgence is meant the remission of the temporal punishment due to sins already forgiven. Every sin, however grievous, is remitted through the sacrament of penance, or by an act of perfect contrition, as regards its guilt and the eternal punishment due to it. But the debt of temporal punishment is not always remitted at the same time. The latter is done away with by deep penitence, or by works of satisfaction, e.g., prayers, alms, fasting, etc., or by patient endurance of troubles and adversities sent us by God, or by the satisfaction of our Lord Jesus Christ and the saints, applied to us by the church under certain conditions, which application we call an indulgence.

“An indulgence, then, is not a pardon for sin; because sin must be remitted before an indulgence can be gained. Much less is it a permission to commit sin, . . . for even God himself could not give such permission.

“In order to gain any indulgence whatever, you must be in a state of grace.”

But it is added: i For this Committee of free citizens to put its expurgatorial stamp upon the book for the reasons alleged, is for it to ally itself with that religious sect.”

In the judgment of your Committee, the course of action they have recommended was in the direct line of their steadfast purpose not to ally themselves either with or against any religious sect whatever. The Committee, therefore, recommend the following:

The School Committee have given careful consideration to your petition and to the reasons presented by your representatives as to the grounds on which it is based, and respectfully reply to the same: That they are not able to grant the request. They have found no cause to change their judgment, that the action taken with respect to the “Outlines of the World s History,”in view of their whole responsibility and all the interests committed to their charge, and all the circumstances, was just.

JOHN G. BLAKE, JOSEPH T. DURYEA, JOSEPH D. FALLON.

Fortunate is it for the American people that this fight has been begun in Boston. Public attention had been called to the aggressions of Romanism. In “Why Priests Should Wed”(p 303), attention was directed to a sermon preached by Rev. Joseph T. Duryea, D. D., in the pulpit of the First Baptist church, on Thanksgiving Day, 1887, in which he sought to remove all apprehension or alarm because of the attack made by the Eoinan Catholic church upon our public school system. He said: “I have no religious prejudices.”He further says: “I recognize the beneficent service to humanity of the Roman Catholic church during the dark ages.”Then and there it was shown, that Rome made the ages “dark “by extinguishing every light in her power, and by putting to death millions of the lovers of Christ. The bid for the support of the Roman Catholic church was a success. At a public meeting, in which the pastor of the Congregational church met with Roman Catholics as friends and brothers, he told them of his having bowed down to the Pope of Rome and of having received his blessing. Whether he surrendered to the church, and took the vows of a Jesuit, and continues in the service of the Congregational church that he may do the more harm to Protestantism and more service to Romanism, is not known by the American people. Jesuitism provides for, and pays well for such service a-s the Rev. Joseph T. Duryea, D.D., is now rendering. The Protestants of New England owe it to the future of their youth that his influence be withstood, and his servility to error exposed.

The following petition was drawn up and has been largely signed and sent to this recreant minister:

“WHEREAS, The Rev. Joseph T. Duryea, D.D., lacks either the intelligence necessary to formulate a correct opinion concerning indulgences as taught by popes and practised by priests, or the honesty and bravery to tell the truth, preferring to ally himself with the Roman Catholic Church, the open and avowed enemy of public education, and the declared champion of illiteracy here and throughout the world: We, therefore, whose names are set to this petition, for the sake of imperilled youth, most respectfully ask him to resign his position on the School Board, and give place to a better educated, or a more truth- loving man.”

Let us turn attention to the statement authorized by the Committee in regard to indulgences, and confute it. They say: “By an indulgence is meant, the remission of the temporal punishment due to sins already forgiven.”That is as far from being truth as Romanists, helped by a Congregational minister, can make it. Indulgences were an invention of Urban II. in the eleventh century, as a recompense for those who went in person upon the enterprise of conquering the Holy Land. They were afterwards granted to those who hired a soldier for that purpose ; and in process of time were bestowed on such as gave money for accomplishing any pious work enjoined by the Pope. The dogma is as follows:

“That all good works of the saints, over and above those which were necessary toward their own justification, are deposited, together with the infinite merits of Jesus Christ, in one inexhaustible treasury. The keys of this were committed to St. Peter, and to his successors, the popes, who may open it at pleasure, and by transferring a portion of this super abundant merit to any particular person, for a sum of money, may convey to him either the pardon of his own sins, or a release for any one in whom he is interested from the pains of purgatory.” This is through and through an utter rejection of Christ, in whom our life is hid ; and because we put off anger, wrath, malice, blasphemy, filthy communication, and put on the new man, permitting the word of Christ to dwell in us richly, the Christian looks upon his own righteousness as filthy rags. Christ is all and in all.

He enters towns in procession, companies of priests bearing candles and banners, choristers chanting and ringing bells. At the churches a red cross was set upon the altars, a silk banner floating from it with the papal arms, and a great iron dish at the foot to receive the equivalents for the myriads of years in the penal fire of Tartarus. He came to Wittenberg. Luther’s flock bought indulgences. It was cheaper than going to confession. Luther was compelled to pronounce against them, pope or no pope. This he did ; and declared that no man’s sins could be pardoned by them.

On it went, deepening and widening like a mighty river, sweeping all before it. Then, to the door of the church he nailed the theses against indulgences, on the last day of October, 1517.

There were ninety-five of them. Tetzel replied, or got some one to reply for him, and burned Luther’s books. The students of Wittenberg stood by Luther and made a bonfire of 800 books of Tetzel. The act showed their contempt for indulgences. The pope stood for the lie, and against the brave man telling the truth, and issued a bull against the monk. The Pope always stands for a lie. His feet are planted on a lie. If there were no lie there would be no Pope. The purgatorial theory is built on a lie. Indulgences are linked with it.

was as follows: “May our Lord Jesus Christ have mercy upon thee, and absolve thee by the merits of his most holy passion. And by his authority, and of his blessed apostles Peter and Paul, and of the most holy pope, granted and committed to me in these parts, do absolve thee, first, from all ecclesiastical censures, in whatever form they have been incurred; then, from all thy sins, transgressions, excesses, how enormous soever they may be, even from such as are reserved for the cognizance of the Holy See, and as far as the keys of the holy church extend. I remit to you all punishment which you deserve in purgatory on that account ; and I restore you to the holy sacraments of the church, to the unity of the faithful, and to that innocence and purity which you possessed at baptism ; so that when you die the gates of punishment shall be shut, and the gates of the paradise of delights shall be opened ; and if you shall not die at present, this grace shall remain in full force when you are at the point of death.”Can any delusion be worse?”

The statements made by the Romanists, with the assent of the Congregational minister, is, that indulgences remit the temporal punishment of sins for given to this they add: “Every sin, however grievous, is remitted through the sacrament of penance, or by an act of perfect contrition, as regards its guilt and the eternal punishment due to it. But the debt of temporal punishment is not always remitted at the same time. The latter is done away with by deep penitence, or by works of satisfaction, e. g. , prayers, alms, fastings, etc., or by patient endurance of troubles and adversities sent us by God, or by the satisfaction of our Lord Jesus Christ and the saints, applied to us by the church under certain conditions, which application we call an indulgence.””An indulgence is not, then, a pardon for sin; because sin must be remitted before an indulgence can be gained. Much less is it a permission to commit sin ; for even God himself could not give such permission.”In order to gain any indulgence what ever, you must be in a state of grace.”So say these deceivers ; and we are told that it does not interest the masses of the community. To this we dissent. Nothing interests them more. We have waded through this long definition, not because there is any truth or honesty in it ; but to show that, even if their statement is based on fact, Swinton’s statement contains an acknowledged truth ; and also to call attention to the truth, that an indulgence, as taught by Rome, is a stupendous lie, calculated to delude, and sure to damn the believer who trusts to this artifice. Indulgences had to do with sins to be committed. According to a book called ” Tax of the Sacred Roman Chancery,”in which are contained the exact sums to be levied for the pardon of each particular sin to be permitted, these are given:

For Procuring s. d. (Editor’s note: I don’t know what this line means. Can anybody help me?)

Abortion	7	6
Simony	10	6
Sacrilege	10	6
Taking a false oath in a criminal case	9	0
Robbery	12	0
Burning a neighbor’s house	12	0
Lying with a mother or a sister	12	0
Murdering a layman	7	0
Defiling a virgin	4	0
Keeping a concubine	10	6
Using violent hands on a clergyman	10	6

In the light of such a statement, taken from Roman Catholic authorities, as much a fact as any other price-list, Roman Catholics claim that an indulgence can only be granted in a state of grace. The fact is, indulgences cannot be granted at all. To say differently, is to belie the truth. Purgatory is only a delusion. Roman Catholic teaching controverts the truth. History simply shows that the Romish lie was born in 1096, that Urban II. was its inventor, and from that period deluded people have believed a lie that they might be damned. In 1300, Boniface issued an indulgence for all that would make a pilgrimage to Rome. A price was put on sins like shopkeepers wares, and remission of sins by means of indulgences for jingling coin. The church, in 1517, was acting on the shameless principle of the Chamberlain of Innocent VIII. who said: “God willeth not the death of a sinner, but that he pay and live.”In one of the pardon-tickets of 1517, there is a figure of a Dominican monk with a cross, crown of thorns, and a burning heart. In the upper corners is a nailed hand. On the front are the words:

“This is the length and breadth of the wounds of Christ
in his holy side. As often as any one kisses it,
he has seven years indulgence.”This has no reference
to sins forgiven, and it is a lie to teach differently.”

“The cross measured seven times makes the height
of Christ in his humanity. He who kisses it is preserved
for some days from sudden death, falling sickness, apoplexy.”

The dealers put up the following notice:

“The red indulgence-cross, with the pope’s arms suspended on it, has the same virtue as the cross of Christ. The pardon makes those who accept it cleaner than baptism, purer even than Adam in a state of innocence in paradise. The dealer in pardons saves more people than Peter. The abuse went on until it became madness.”{Ludwig Hauser, p. 16}

Tetzel sold his indulgences to robbers, thieves and murderers, and claimed that they were as clean as Adam before his fall so soon as the click of the money was heard in the iron box. They tell the story of Tetzel and a robber. He bought an indulgence for a large sum, Which gave him the privilege of committing any sin. The money went into the iron chest. Through a dark forest Tetzel and his chest were going. The robber stopped him, and demanded his money or his life. Tetzel told who he was. “I know you,”said the robber, and pulled out the indulgence. Tetzel read. His sin had found him out. He lost his money ; and the story proves the utter falsity of the claim that indulgences have only to do with sins remitted. This sin was to be committed.

Then came Luther. The Bible chained to the altar, had opened his eyes to the errors of Rome. Tossed by doubt, distressed by sin, he had gone to Rome: there he saw Romanism at its worst. The Bible in Erfurt library taught him another lesson than that of fasts and vigils. Luther now learned that a man was saved not by singing masses, but by the infinite grace of God. He said to the Pope fearlessly, as was his wont: You are not God’s vicegerent ; you are another s, I think. I take your bull as an emparchmented lie, and burn it. You will do what you see good next ; this is what I do.”It was on the tenth of December, 1520, three years after the beginning of the business, that Luther, with a great concourse of people, took this indignant step of burning the Pope’s decree in the market-place of Wittenberg. Wittenberg looked on with shoutings. The whole world was looking on. This was in 1520. In 1888, Boston is summoned to take up this work, and through remonstrance and argument kindle a lire which shall spread wider and rise higher, until it shall become unquenchable, and envelope all the world.

Say not that these questions of dogma should be left to theological disputants. They belong to the people. They influence life. They shape destiny.

Romanists deceive Romanists by statements which are false as to fact, and designed to be misleading as to inference. When they say, “that in order to gain any indulgence whatever, you must be in a state of grace,” they make a declaration utterly wanting in truth. When Romanists talk about a state of grace they deceive. Romanism ignores a state of grace as Protestants understand it. The Bible teaches that a man passes into a state of grace when he is born again ; when he is regenerated by the power of the Holy Ghost: then he becomes a new creature in Christ Jesus. Romanism ignores all this, and claims that an act of baptism, performed by a man, washes away sin. In other words, Romanism rests her hopes for salvation on baptismal regeneration and the sacraments.

The Word of God teaches, that “whoever confesses with the mouth the Lord Jesus, and believes in the heart that God raised him from the dead, he shall be saved.”Rom. 10:9. When saved, he would not take an indulgence to sin were it offered to him ; and would not use it if he had a million. He hates sin and loves holiness, when redeemed.

All this Luther saw, and learned that religion as it professed to be, and religion as it was embodied in the lives of church dignitaries, priests and friars, were in startling contrast. He knew his peril. John Huss had come to Rome with all imaginable promises and safe conducts. Rome turned her back on them all ; they laid him instantly in a stone dungeon, three feet wide, six feet high, seven feet long, and burnt the true voice out of the world, choked it in smoke and fire. “The elegant pagan Leo X., by this fire-decree,”says Girlylo, “had kindled into noble, just wrath, the bravest heart then living in the world.”Indulgences were farmed out to a bankrupt ; in their sale, there was no more thought of religion than in the sale of lottery tickets.

Both lies are of the devil ; and how a Congregational minister could forgo the privilege of preaching the truth to the deceived, passes comprehension. He ignored his commission. He belied his profession, and betrayed his Lord. Either he knows better than to intimate that, for stating a truth, a book dealing with historic fact ought to be thrown out of the schools, and acts in this manner to curry favor with Romanists, and so ought to be retired from the School Board ; or he does not know the truth, and is unfit for the position. In either event, the way out is his best way. The children need either a more honest, or a more intelligent man to represent their interests. This is not said in a spirit of raillery or pleasantry. We are dealing with momentous issues. God does not suffer us to trifle with the truth. “For it is impossible that those who were once enlightened, and have tasted of the heavenly gift, and were made partakers of the Holy Ghost, and have tasted the good Word of God, if they shall fall away, to renew them again unto repentance.”(Heb. 6:4,5)

Romanism deals with and in indulgences, in these days of Leo XIII., quite as much as it dealt with them in the clays of Leo X. Romanism knows no improvement. Evolution theories may apply to science and to art, but not to Romanism. What Rome was in the dark ages, she is in this nineteenth century as cruel, as blind, as selfish, as much opposed to education, as full of superstition as at any time in the past.

Sad and melancholy as is the truth, it is here, and evidently here to stay. There is a paper circulated among the young, culled by a priestly name, which carries to the homes of vast numbers of individuals this fearful superstition and falsehood, known as indulgences, fresh from the hand of Leo XIII.

Here is an Agnus Dei, with a little of the earth from the foot of the cross, of which doubtless cart loads have been shipped away, which saves from drowning, etc. Here is a book bought at Dona hue s, published in Barclay street, New York, with the approbation of John Hughes, archbishop, as full of lies as an egg is full of meat, circulated among Romanists. This is the caption:

Scapular of our Lady of Mount Carmel. “As it is considered a mark of distinction by men to have attendants wearing their livery, so does the Blessed Virgin like to see her servants wear her scapular ; it should be a sign of their having devoted them selves to her service, and of their belonging to the family of the mother of God.”(St. Alphonsus Liguori) .

A scapular is a piece of cloth worn on the bosom and on the back to procure indulgences to sin, or indulgences which shall free from the guilt or pain of sin. Now, Romanists are making a distinction between the payment of the debt in purgatory, and an indulgence to sin.

“And yet,”said Archbishop Hughes, “we have spoken only of the scapular of our Blessed Lady of Mount Carmel. There are several others to which likewise many graces and indulgences are attached:

• I. The Scapular of our Blessed Lady of the Seven Dolors, of the Order of the Servants of Mary, founded in Florence, in 1133, by seven men, to whom the Blessed Virgin appeared, and commanded them to wear a black habit in memory of the Seven Dolors.

• II. The Scapular of the Immaculate Conception of the Order of Theatines, or Regular Clerks, which was founded by Peter John Caraffa, who was afterwards Pope, under the name of Paul IV., and died in the year 1559.

• III. The Scapular of The Most Holy Trinity, of the Order of Trinitarians, for the redemption of captives, which was founded in the twelfth century by St. John deMatha and St. Felix de Valois. These religious wear a white habit, with a cross of red and blue on the breast, as shown by an angel to St. John de Matha, and in which the Blessed Virgin appeared to St. Felix de Valois. These three Scapulars, like the Scapular of Mt. Carmel, are composed each of two small pieces of woolen cloth. When together with that of Mount Carmel, all four pieces square, or nearly so, are sewed together, like leaves of a book, and four more pieces exactly similar are sewed in like manner ; then these two parts, four pieces in each, are joined by two bands of tape about eighteen inches long, so that one part falls on the breast, and the other on the back, The largest piece is generally the Scapular of Mt. Carmel, which is of brown color ; the second, which is somewhat smaller, is the Scapular of Our Lady of the Seven Dolors, and is of a black color ; the third is, the Scapular of the Immaculate Conception, and is still smaller and of a blue color. This color, the emblem of resignation to Mary, was also the color of her mantle. The Scapular of the Most Holy Trinity is white, and the smallest of the four, in the middle of which there must be a cross, likewise of wool, one arm of which must be of red, the other blue. All these colors, as well as the cross, must be visible.

The Redemptorist Fathers have the power to give these three Scapulars. The essential requirement for all the indulgences and graces annexed to these three Scapulars is, to receive them from a priest empowered to grant them, and to wear them constantly. If any one loses or wears out the Scapular, he can take another in its stead. Those who, either though carelessness, or even through malice, neglect to wear it, or have laid it aside, can again resume it, and gain all the indulgences as before. The Scapular of the Most Holy Trinity alone is excepted ; according to the declaration of Innocent XI., it must be blessed as often as renewed.

Indulgences are granted to those who wear the scapulars, by Paul V. in 1606, Clement X. in 1673, Clement XI. in 1710, Innocent XI. in 1680, 81, 82.

They teach that they save life. Proof: At the siege of Montpelier, in the year 1682, a soldier named M. de Beauregard, was struck by a musket-ball, which rested on the Scapular and saved his life. Louis XIII., King of France, saw it, and put on a Scapular. Monsieur de Cuge, cornet of a company of horse, was wounded at Tefin, in the year 1636, by a cannon ball, which, passing through the left side, tore his heart to pieces, so that, naturally, he could not live a moment. The Scapular saved him until the priest came ; and so on, and so on.

If Romanists can do the one, they can do both. Besides, whenever indulgences are procured, the besotted run the risk, and plunge deeper into sin because of it.

To say, as does Rev. Dr, Duryea and the Boston School Board, that an indulgence is not & permission to commit sin, is to deceive the people. Said Tetzel: “Draw near, and I will give you letters duly sealed, by which even the sins you shall hereafter desire to commit shall all be forgiven you. I would not exchange my privileges for those of St. Peter in heaven ; for I have saved more souls with my indulgences, than he with his sermons. There is no sin so great that the indulgence cannot reach it let him pay largely, and it shall be forgiven him. Even repentance is not indispensable. Shall such facts be cast out of our school-books, that the generation now coming upon the stage of action may be surrendered to Rome?

In Canada is an indulgence of Pio Nono, offering to all who enlisted in his army indulgences for themselves and their relatives, framed and hung in the homes of the deluded. Here is one that offers 100 days indulgence each time repeated, signed Pius IX., 3d June, 1874. Here is another offering- indulgences to all who will contribute to the building of the University College of Ottawa: the holder of this certificate shall be entitled to share twenty-five masses daily, and in all the prayers and good works of the Rev. Oblate Fathers,

• For ten years, by a contribution of – 25 cents.
• Forever – $200
• A family, for ten years – $100

Thus are men and women deceived. They trust in man, rather than in the efficacy of the atonement by Jesus Christ. This gives them power at sick beds over the wills of the dying, and over the purses of living relatives and friends. From the living they get profit in the sale of indulgences, Agnus Deis, scapularies, masses of every kind, dispensations from fasts, removal of impediments to marriage, miraculous medals, various defences against the devil, grace through the images or relics of patron saints, and other similar devices.

Remember, there is nothing to be gotten from the Roman Catholic church without money. No money, no baptism ; no money, no marriage ; no money, no burial ; no money, nothing.

If Romanists deceive Romanists, it becomes Christians to preach to them the gospel. The mortification and shame which came to us because of one who professes allegiance to Christ, is very hard to bear. Let the shame and disgrace end there. Christians, awake, and put your armor on ! Napoleon in Egypt, close by the pyramids, said: “Twenty centuries behold your actions.”Christian people, look up to the throne. Jesus is there. Look about you, behold the perishing.

Romanists are crowding the broad road to death. Millions of youth are interested in this controversy. Will Americans rise to the level of their great opportunity and do their whole duty? or will they bow down to Rome, and barter away their God-given rights? This is the question of the hour ! How will it be answered? Shall men be taught error, or the truth? Remember, “as a man thinketh in his heart, so is he.”Think right, and all will be well. Think wrong and act wrong, and ruin awaits you.

CHAPTER XVII. Can Washington be taken out of the lap of Rome?

This may yet come to be the question of the hour. If done, it must be accomplished through the combined efforts of the people of the United States. The North and the South, the East and the West, must come up alike to the help of the Lord against the mighty. The need of it is apparent. It is the boast of the Frenchman, that as goes Paris, so goes France. As went Rome, so went Italy. And so it may yet be said, As goes Washington, so will go the great Republic.

Remember, France made Paris bend her neck to the people. Italy thundered at the gates of Rome ; took away the States of the Church from His Holiness the Pope ; tossed overboard, with contempt and ease, the ruler who was said to preserve the equipoise of Europe ; sent him a prisoner to the Vatican ; and went on with the work of making Italy free, as if the tap- root of Papal Rule had not been the growth of centuries. Washington, the centre of political influence and activity, is in the lap of Rome, with the consent of the people. Let there be a protest. Unroof the monster, Jesuitism. Uncover the pollution, the scandal of the confessional. Unlock and throw open the doors of the convents and nunneries, the assignation houses, kept for a so-called celibate priesthood. Expose the conduct of those who have made prostitution flourish at Rome and in all the great cities in which they have control, and Washington will shake off the incubus. The nation will declare for purity, for justice, for emancipation from the shackles of blind and besotted Romanism, and from the thraldom of the black-robed throng, who insult their sick, half-starve their orphans, for whose support they are paid by the State, and maltreat their poor ; because in the heart of Rome love is exchanged for selfish greed. Not always will statesmen bow and cringe to obtain the Roman Catholic vote, which is only powerful because it is always on sale, going to the highest bidder, without regard to principle. It will yet appear that fifty millions of people, blessed with liberty, and in the presence of wonderful opportunity, cannot afford to creep under the black wing of Papal despotism, that vampire that sucked the life-blood out of Spain, out of Mexico, and out of any country where it has been permitted to do its hellish work undisturbed. Christianity is the product of witnessing for the truth. The Papacy is the monument of withholding testimony for God. Error is the servant of the “Prince of the power of the air.” Truth is the helpmeet of God. Witnessing for the truth is to result in the overthrow of every form of error. There are reasons for this faith. Let us enumerate a few of them:

1. God is for the truth. When we say that, the argument assures the people of victory so soon as they are made ready to stand with and for God. By grace, by Providence, by the help of God s true children, in uncounted and in unexpected ways, aid will be brought to those who put on the whole armor of God and stand ready to fight the good fight of faith. The achievements wrought by truth, and for the truth, in other days and on other fields, attest the truth that God works for those who work for him.

DARK DAYS THERE HAVE BEEN.

Here is an illustration. Death, the fire, and the inquisitorial torture of Romish hate, had achieved an apparent victory. The night was dark, because the witnesses were still.

In 1514 the Council met in Rome. Into the Market Place strode a servant of the Church of Rome, and in pride asked, Is there one who protests?” He waited. He listened. The Waldensians were dead in France. In England the Lollards were exterminated. In Italy truth had been slain in the street. ” Not one protests!” It was a terrible charge brought by Rome against Rome. Thousands and tens of thousands passed from the Cross to the stake. They were burned, tortured, hurled over rocks. Rome reveled in barbarity.

“The rack, the fagot, or the hated creed

Were the tender mercies of tyrant Rome;

While, fearless amidst Christ s fold fierce wolves did roam,

And stainless sheep upon her altars bleed.”

In May 1514, the testimony ceased. Three years and a half pass. It is a prophetic period. Look! Up the stair-way climbs Martin Luther on his knees. Hark! A voice sounds down to him. He is tired, sick, hopeless, despondent, a type of all Romanists. ” The just shall live by faith,” passes through the gateway of the conscience to the chamber of the soul. It startles him. It unlocks night. It uncovers the crucified Christ. Clouds depart. He is born again. He is in a new world. He confesses it. He becomes a witness. God helps his own. Everything is made ready for the work. The banner is unfurled. Redeemed men take it and bear it on. The friends of error are powerless, in presence of the testimony of living and brave witnesses.

Think how Zwingle, Luther, Melancthon, William, Prince of Orange, told the truth! They carried their testimony into towns, into churches, and into homes. They told what God did for them. As justification by faith placed them on vantage ground, they called to men in night and gloom to come to the light, and held up to them the reeking cross, which broke the power of the man of sin ” and gave deliverance to captive souls.

TRUTH DISINTEGRATES ROMANISM.

Romanism was born, and found its place of being and its capacity of growth, because of the surrender of the individual conscience to the keeping of a machine.

Every effort put forth by the individual in behalf of the truth is a subtraction from the power which upholds the Papacy, and an addition to the power which is to people the world with hope, and make the desert to bud and blossom as the rose. Hence every movement in favor of individual thinking favors Christianity and opposes Romanism. Every scintillation of truth in behalf of freedom, every word spoken for God and the right, clears the way for humanity, and widens the area of the kingdom of God. There is nothing in Romanism calculated to charm or please the thinking and unfettered intellect. It stultifies reason where it can ; it banishes God’s word as best it may ; that word which is the foundation of the World s jurisprudence, the fountain-source of liberty, and the pillar of flame and cloud, by whose aid the nation has made its march out of the wilderness of trial into the Canaan of possession. Romanism fetters the mind, enslaves the limb, and is the servant of injustice, the parent and source of despotism, and the foe of all that ennobles and exalts humanity. This is coming to be known and felt. Romanists are feeling it quite as much as others. Christ is leading on.

“He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat ;
He is sifting out the hearts of men before His judgment seat ;
O be swift my soul to answer Him! be jubilant my feet!
Our God is marching on.
In the beauty of the lilies, Christ was born, across the sea,—
With a glory in his bosom that transfuses you and me.
As he die dto make men holy, let us die to make men
free,—
While God is marching on.”

Somebody will catch this inspiration, and become the trumpeter of a great truth. Some one will appear, not only as the scourge of impositions, and the ponderous hammer that shall smite upon the brazen idolatry of the age, but as the upbuilder of holy principles in accordance with the teachings of the Word of God.

It is essential that a dear conception be obtained of the work to be done.

A free Church in a free State was once the battle-cry of the Republic. Rome is organizing an aggressive warfare upon the separation of Church and State. It was the hope of promoting a union of Church and State that made the Red-Robed Cardinal desire the company of a son of a Presbyterian minister, occupying the position of President, in laying the corner stone of the Jesuit college. It is to be proclaimed that the religion of Jesus Christ is to be divorced from the State. This is not because Republicans honor religion less. They believe that the Church of Christ is a divine institution, which has to do with finding out the truth, holding the truth, and spreading the truth.

They believe also in the State ; claim that it is also a divine institution, and has sacred duties, such as guaranteeing to every man safety, and making his person, his property, and his right to think and be. The State must be safety, justice, righteousness. There must be a free Church in a free State, the State subject to justice only, the Church subject to Christ only.

True Americans must see that the very antipodes of the idea just stated is the Romish idea. Rome claims that the Church shall be all, and the State a non-entity, and that the Roman Catholic religion shall be permitted to exclude all other forms of faith. The Pope declares, that it is an error to be reprobated and proscribed, that the Church shall be separate from the State. Americans are to take note of this, and be made ready to antagonize it.

Rome claims that it is ” an error to be reprobated, proscribed, and condemned, to say that, in the case of conflicting laws between the two powers, the civil law ought to prevail, and that the church has not the power of availing herself of force, or any direct or indirect temporal power.” These propositions so clear, so startling bear date Dec. 4th, 1864, of “Errors Condemned,” and were reaffirmed by the late Plenary Council of Baltimore. Truly has it been said: ” There is enough dynamite in these propositions to blow up our entire modern civilization, destroy liberty of conscience, and bring utter ruin upon the purity of the church and the integrity of the State.”

Americans know that in the United States, at the present time, there is a union of Church and State to an extent little dreamed of.

In New Jersey, the State Reform School has been Romanized. The unsectarian teaching, in piety and morals, has been destroyed. The moral and religious training of the Catholic boys is handed over completely to the Romish Church. The same is true of the City of New York, where children arrested are given over to institutions under the control of the religion professed by their parents. As a result, there are 3,000 Roman Catholic youth in the New York Protectory, more lost to Protestantism than if they were born and reared in Rome.

The State thus gives a guarantee to the Roman Catholic Church, that no child of Romish parents shall be permitted to come in contact with the free thought of our American life and with the religion of our Lord Jesus Christ. This is not liberty of conscience ; this is coercion of conscience. The American people will see this ; and seeing it, they will correct the legislation that makes it live and thrive under the shadow of the broad ^Egis of our Republic.

Again: Rome seeks to take the children of the State out of the control of the civil power. This is the exact language of the Syllabus: That * the entire direction of public schools in which the youth of Christian States are educated, may and must appertain to the civil power, is an error to be reprobated and proscribed. Issue must here be joined. ”

We want in our land no fractional parts of Americans we want whole men, who are rooted in American ideas. The Baltimore Plenary Council decided, that all Catholic children shall be educated in parochial schools. This education will give us mutilated men and women. The American people must be made to see this, and they will resist the encroachment.

“I wonder,” said Dr. Dollinger of Germany, the Old Catholic, who fought the conferring of the decree of Infallibility upon Pio Nono, ” I wonder if they understand in America what an infallible Pope means? that it means a hand stretched over into the United States, and laid upon every Roman Catholic citizen, and imposing upon him the obligation to set himself up in opposition to the ordinances of your Government whenever the Pope shall pronounce his judgments against these ordinances on moral or religious ground?” Yes, Dr. Dollinger, a great many understand it, and are getting ready to deliver Roman Catholics from their thraldom.

Roman Catholics are getting more money for the support of Romish schools than is given to all the Evangelical churches combined. The New York Independent affirms, that Protestant schools find more difficulty in getting what they ask for than the Romish schools. It affirms that Government interferes less with Romish schools than with Protestant. It affirms that, in the schools wholly supported by the Government, they are rapidly passing into the control of the Roman Catholics, even where all are Protestants, as among the Indians.

A Roman Catholic was kept at the head of the postal service until it was very largely Romanized, with Roman Catholics for postmasters wherever they could be pushed in ; and then he was transferred to the Interior Department to Romanize that ; while the head of the army, a Roman Catholic, gave a Roman Catholic sutler control of every army post, and the nation donates, even against fundamental law, a lot of land at every military post, on which to build a Roman Catholic chapel.

The American people only need to be made acquainted with these facts, and they will antagonize them.

Our fathers clamored for a separation of Church and State. Let their children go on with the work. It has been well said: “If we work to serve the twentieth century, we must save the nineteenth.” We must reconstruct our geography, and permit the Tiber to flow into the Potomac, and not compel the Potomac to flow into the Tiber.

Create a literature that shall point out the vices and corruptions of Romanism.

Popery must be antagonized ; Christ must be championed. This, politicians will come to see. They will insist upon a separation of Church and State ; upon maintaining a public school system, in which all the children of the State shall be educated. The Bible shall be unbound. This made way for Luther, so that when he came they breathed an air which had long been most patiently impregnated with the very essence of innovation. The word of God in the hands of the people is the accusing spirit of the Papacy. In the days of Wicliff, ” the noise of its wings” were faintly heard in England.

Then, men of position, indignant at the impoverishment and disgrace of their country, antagonized the power of Eome. Afterwards men fought it, because of the perversion and abuse of their religious institutions. Hence, when the conflict under Luther began, the leader of it could number potentates among his allies and partizans, till, at last, he may be said to have had

“A kingdom for a stage, princes for actors,
And monarchs to behold the swelling scene.”

Not so at the present time. Our great men seem to be our greatest cowards. In pulpits, in pressrooms, and on platforms, it is fashionable to be servile. What kings did in Europe who held the stirrup for His Holiness to mount, that presidents and politicians in free America seem ready to do. It is not in our stars, but in ourselves, that we are underlings to Rome. The Church of Rome is being pandered to by men who will ere long wake up to their shame. What mean these “Roman Catholic Notes” that meet the approval of Roman Catholic officials, except as an indication that the Roman Catholic vote is a thing that may be bargained for. How humiliating the fact! Seven millions of men and women in free America for sale to the highest bidder! For that vote, politicians betray God, turn their backs upon liberty, surrender the dearest rights of freemen to the keeping of their bitterest foe. A distinguished statesman goes to Rome ; enters the American College, so-called, in fact, a college built by Americans to change American youth into Italian priests ; there he referred to the Church of Rome as “that Church which is so widely spread and so profoundly respected.” Where is it “respected” by any one? Had he said, feared, by all in America, and by himself more than all, he had told the truth.

To stand up against Rome at this hour requires high courage. Thousands have it. Millions will yet possess it.

2. God is against Romanism. Prophecy declares it. History brings proof in support of the proposition ; and from no nation so truly as from the story of the life of the Republic of the United States. Romanism is disintegrating, wherever the truth concerning it is told. It resembles an ice-glacier loosened from its Northern home. The current bears it southward. The gulf-stream of liberty catches it and dissolves it. Superstition is being scattered broadcast by the brightness of the Sun of Righteousness.

The overthrow of the Papacy is simply the unfulfilled prophecy of that Being who described its coming and its doom. The same Eye that saw the rise and decline of Mohammedanism, the same Being who gave the command, ” Loose the four angels which are bound in the great river Euphrates,” (Rev. 9:14), before the Islam horsemen swept forth in their career of conquest ; and that commanded the sixth angel to pour out his vial upon the great river Euphrates when the water was dried up (Rev. 16: 12), and the way was prepared for the kings who are from the rising of the sun, so that Turkey is destroyed, and is a captive enslaved, the sport and plaything of Continental powers ; that foretold the settlement of America when he pointed to the ships of Tarshish on their way to the land of broad rivers, described the character and the occupation of the ” beast ” of prophecy, and portrayed the ” woman” clothed in purple and scarlet and holding in her hand the cup of her fornications and upon her head the writing: Mystery! Babylon the great! The Mother of Harlots and of the abominations of the earth” This the people begin to see. Sound the battle-cry.

THE WORK IS ONLY BEGUN.

The possibility of bearing witness for Christ is within reach of all. It is possible to carry truth within the citadel of the enemy, through the agency of the help employed in our houses and in our places of business.

Never do I think of the millions about us, who want something better than these nummeries to satisfy the cravings of their immortal souls, but I rejoice that the Gospel, as we know it, is the power of God and the wisdom of God, suited to their every need. Tell them of it. There is no mistaking what it will do for them. It will save their souls, and give them a joy and peace they seek elsewhere in vain.

The Holy Spirit works for those who work for God. There are links in the chain of God s providence which enter into the chain that is mighty to the pulling down of the stronghold of error. Children of God, be true. Things of deep interest are pending. Let soul touch soul. Let truth combat error ; and the people of the Lord, beautiful as Tirzah, comely as Jerusalem, shall be terrible as an army with banners!

The Lord Jehovah reigneth. Let the people rejoice. For from God we obtain the assurance that witnessing for the truth shall result in the taking of Washington out of the lap of Rome, making her the glory of the Nation, and the Light-house of the World ; so that the millions now shrouded in darkness shall awake to the touch of the new-born radiance, and leaving their idols behind, shall walk forth into the new day heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Jesus Christ, to an inheritance incorruptible, and un defiled, and that fadeth not away.

AMEN AND AMEN.

END OF ARTICLE

You can also Download the PDF file from where I got the text. There may be some mistakes both when copying from the PDF file and when the PDF file was first created. The hard copy must have been scanned and the document converted to text by optical recognition software. It’s not always 100% accurate and needs proofreading.

Continued from XII. The Confessional.

The only two Scriptures quoted by the Catholic Church to sustain the practice of extreme unction, simply prove that in the Saviour’s day his servants miraculously raised the sick by the use of oil. In Mark vi. 13, we find these words: “And they [the disciples] cast out many devils, and anointed with oil many that were sick, and healed them.” The persons anointed are not said to be dying; the act is not called the Last Unction, and the transaction was a miracle, the design of which was to restore health, not to fit men for death.

In James v. 14, 15, we read: “Is any sick among you? let him call for the elders of the church; and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord, and the prayer of faith shall save [save from his disease] the sick, and the Lord shall raise him up; and if he have committed sins, they shall be forgiven him.” Here the unction is not to fit the man for dying; it is the human part of a miracle of restoration. Christ commonly used some natural agency and the astonishing power of God in performing his miracles. He could have made the wine out of nothing at Cana, but he required six stone vessels to be filled with water; he could have created all the bread and fishes needed to feed the hungry thousands, but he sought the five loaves and two fishes, and gave them a miraculous enlargement. And so the anointing in James is but the natural basis of a supernatural cure. It is not a work performed on the dying, but a process applied to the sick to give them perfect health. Nor is it the unction which effects the healing, but the prayer of faith: “And the prayer of faith shall save the sick, and the Lord shall raise him up.” “And if he have committed sins, they shall be forgiven him,” through the prayer of faith.

These are the only Scriptures brought forward to sustain extreme unction, and they simply prove that the Saviour, in the age of miracles, cured, not the dying, but the sick, by having them anointed with oil, and by having his wonder-working servants offer up believing prayers for them. As the age of miracles passed away, so did this custom. If the practice should exist now, it could only apply to the removal of diseases. The sick Christian, instead of calling in a physician, should send for the elders of the church, to anoint and pray for him, that he might become well.

The Greek Church retains the Form of Anointing recommended by James.

When a member of that communion is dangerously ill, the elders, that is, a body of priests, not a single priest, are called in, who anoint the patient with oil, and pray for his recovery. This is exactly the object of James’s unction.

An unction was recommended in the sixth century, and for several ages immediately after, for the sick, with a view to hinder the use of amulets, charms, and incantations for the recovery of health; a practice prevalent among converts, and rendered popular among others by their experience. This unction was applied to all cases of sickness, as well to those threatened with death; and the oil was used by laymen on themselves and their families.

Bede alludes to this oil when he says: “It is clear from the apostles themselves, that this holy custom was delivered to the Church, that the possessed, or any other diseased persons, may be anointed with oil consecrated by the pontifical benediction.”

Jonas, Bishop of Orleans, from A.D. 821 to 843, in his “Institutione Laicorum,” censures many for preferring the advice of soothsayers, or female fortune-tellers, about their diseased friends, to sending for the priests, and having themselves or relatives anointed with consecrated oil, according to the apostolical tradition.”

The Council of Chalons, A.D. 813, regretting the contempt with which the unction of health was treated in their forty-eight canon, “Recommend the anointing of the sick, which ought to be performed by priests, with an oil consecrated by the bishop; adding that a remedy so fit to cure the infirmities of the soul and the body, ought not to be neglected.” The canon was intended to show the advantages of this unction for health and pardon. The information it gives, that priests ought to apply it, would sound strange from a Catholic Council to a Romish community now.

The Council of Paris, A.D. 850, in their eighth Constitution, say that:

“The priests should instruct the people in the saving nature of the Sacrament of Unction (not extreme), of which the apostle James speaks, and make them sensible that they can hope to receive the wished-for effects of that mystery; the remission of sins, and health, only where they desire it with a sound and full faith; that because it often happens that sick persons know not the force of that sacrament, or think their distempers inconsiderable, or forget to desire it, the priest of the place ought to put them in mind of receiving it, and he ought to invite the priests of his neighborhood to be present at its administration. Only those fitted to receive the other sacraments of the Church should have this unction.”

This Council knew nothing of the unction for death; it was THE ANOINTING FOR HEALTH AND PARDON. The churches knew nothing of the anointing for death for at least nine hundred years after Christ.

Hagenbach says: “The apostolical injunction respecting the sick (James v. 14), gave rise to a new sacrament, which came into general use from the ninth century, and could be administered only in the dying hour.” This is extreme unction, or, properly, the Sacrament of Death. Possibly, in the tenth century, there were a few who had heard of the Sacrament of Death; but the opinion of Riddle is more precisely given, and nearer the truth: “The ceremony of extreme unction, as now used by the Church of Rome, cannot be traced to an earlier date than the end of the twelfth century; after this century, it was universally adopted in the Western Church.”

It is formally adopted by the Catholic Church in the Council of Florence, A. D. 1439.

The decree is short and descriptive. It is:

“The fifth sacrament is extreme unction, whose matter is olive oil blessed by the bishop. This sacrament ought not to be administered unless to the infirm whose death is feared. The places to be anointed are: the eyes on account of sight, the ears on account of hearing, the nostrils on account of smelling, the mouth on account of tasting and speaking, the hands on account of touching, the feet on account of walking, the reins on account of their being the seat of pleasure.”

The form of this sacrament is this:

“By this anointing and his own great mercy, may God indulge thee whatever sins thou hast committed through sight, etc., and in like manner by the other members. The minister of this sacrament is the priest. The effect truly is the healing of the mind, and as far as is fit, of the body also.”

This is the first time in which the new unction was enrolled among the laws and sacraments of the Catholic Church, by the supreme legislature of that community.

The Catechism of Trent, after describing the oil in the last unction, as applied to the eyes, ears, nostrils, mouth and hands, proceeds to say:

“As in bodily infirmity although the entire body be affected, the cure is applied to that part only which is the source and origin of the disease; so is this unction applied, not to the entire body, but to those members which are preeminently the organs of sense; and also to the loins which are, as it were, the seat of pleasure and of sensuality, and to the feet, by which we are enabled to move from one place to another.”

Hogan says: “Send an American (Protestant) missionary to a Catholic country, and without aid from home he will starve; he has no servants whom he can persuade to give him ten or twelve dollars for saying mass, no dying person who will send for him and pay him well for taking out of his pockets a set of oil stocks for the purpose of greasing him over, commencing on the forehead, then proceeding to the tip of the nose, the eyelids, the lips, the breast, the loins, and the soles of the feet.”Hogan has breast for hands, which, in all probability, is a mistake. But the loins are anointed.

The oil is regularly blessed once a year by the bishop, so that the priests have it always holy and ready for use.

The Council of Trent says: “If any one shall say that the sacred anointing of sick persons does not confer grace, nor remit sins, nor raise up the sick, but that now it has ceased, as if the grace of cures existed only in former times; let him be accursed.”

The Catechism of Archbishop Spaulding says: “Extreme unction is a sacrament that gives grace to die well. It is given when we are in danger of death by sickness.”

Extreme unction is not observed to restore health, by miraculous answers to prayers. It is only given to the dying, and it is applied to impart grace to them that they may die well; and to remove all traces of remaining sin.

The manner of applying Extreme Unction.

“The priest provides seven balls of cotton to wipe the parts to he anointed; and a taper (candle) to light him during the ceremony. As he enters the chamber of death he must wear a surplice and the purple stole; he gives the sick person the cross to kiss, he sprinkles him, the apartment, and the assistants with holy water in the form of a cross; confession and absolution if possible must precede the unction. The priest dips his right thumb in the ‘Oils of the Infirm,’ and anoints each part in the form of a cross, pronouncing words appropriate to the part receiving the unction; for the eyes, for example, he says: ‘May God by this holy anointing, and by his most pious mercy, pardon you the sins you have committed through the eyes!’ At the conclusion of the anointing the priest repeats some prayers, after which he delivers an exhortation to the sick, and retires.”

Such is extreme unction, one of the leading sacraments of the Church of Rome; it has no place in the Scriptures; no location among the fathers; it was never heard of until from nine to twelve hundred years after Christ. It is a MODERN INNOVATION.

Continued in XIV. The Sacrament of Orders

All chapters of The Papal System by William Cathcart

Leo Herbert Lehmann (1895-1950) was an Irish author, editor, and director of a Protestant ministry, Christ’s Mission in New York. He was an accomplished priest in the Roman Catholic Church who later in life converted to Protestantism and served as the editor of The Converted Catholic Magazine. He authored magazine articles, books and pamphlets, condemning the programs and activities of the Roman Catholic Church.(Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leo_Herbert_Lehmann

1942 Second, enlarged edition.. April, 1944 Third printing, March, 1945

CHAPTER I. Jesuits, Jews and Freemasons

IT IS IMPOSSIBLE to understand fully what has been taking place in the world for the past twenty-five years unless we are able to grasp the underlying significance of what appears on the surface. It is necessary to penetrate behind the scenes of day-today happenings and examine thoroughly the active forces and planned objectives which are responsible for all that has come to pass so quickly in the past few years.

The 19th century left us deplorably weak in true knowledge of the history of State-Church conflicts. The facts of human development since the Reformation have become so inextricably tangled, that we have ceased to try to unravel them. We content ourselves in America with a mere superficial knowledge of events, and the conclusions arrived at, far from helping us to get at the real truth, only drive us farther away from an understanding of the real meaning of these events. Too much emphasis has been placed upon the mere economic aspect of the world-situation. The ideological and theoretical origins of Nazi-Fascism, as a consequence, have been almost entirely overlooked. Research is necessary to show where social, political and religious conflicts cross one another. There is abundance of incontestable proof that the forces of religion, as represented by the Catholic Church, have succeeded in dominating the political and í field, and that there exists a close bond between them and the origins, methods and objectives of the whole Nazi-Fascist movement in Europe. Furthermore, this domination has already spread to America. History proves that in every attempt made during the past half century against the liberal progress of mankind, the Jesuit Order, as the leader of Catholic action, has played a decisive role. We can go even so far as to state that Nazi-Fascism had its origin in the Society of Jesus, and that, like other movements in the past analogous to Fascism today, it was planned to serve the traditional aims of the disciples of Ignatius Loyola.

As long as this reverse side of the conspiracy against democratic liberalism goes undetected, Fascism will survive. The defenders of democratic ideology will not be victorious until they come out openly against their real enemy—the Knights of the Black Crusade.

The Jesuits were once irrevocably expelled from the nations of Europe, and from the Catholic Church itself, by Pope Clement XIV in 1773, and the only refuge they could find during their forty years of banishment was with the impious Catherine of Russia. Sworn to obey and defend the pope in all matters, they were hard put to it (even as Jesuits) to find a way out of the dilemma of being proteges of a monarch who thumbed her nose at the pope— in order to protect them from his wrath. Not to be outdone, the Jesuits politely and diplomatically protested to Catherine for thus disobeying the pope. And having thereby satisfied the requirements of their oath, they proceeded with a clear conscience to accept her hospitality. The truth of the matter is, that the Jesuits are not so much sworn to protect any individual pope as such, but rather the institution of the Papacy. By this Jesuitical distinction they hold themselves free to resist any pope who fails to follow their dictates; nor would they lament if such a pope were “providentially” speeded on his way to heaven. It is they, in fact, who comprise the Papacy. Their unalterable aim is to restore the nations of the world to the control of the Catholic Church.

As recently as 1886, the public press spoke frankly and fearlessly about the menacing tactics of the Jesuits to secure this worldcontrol by the Papacy. The New York Tribune, of Sept. 19; of that year, in a dispatch from Rome reporting the serious illness of Pope Leo XIII and his subsequent rapid recovery, states that the London Times referred editorially to the report that Pope Leo’s close approach to death “was due to poison administered by the Jesuits.” It relates that, after his sudden recovery, the pope established a new policy in the Church towards the Jesuits, “and that this new line of policy is the price at which he was able to procure the antidote which they alone could supply.” The Tribune report goes on to say:

“Within three days of the recovery from his illness, the pope issued a Bull re-establishing all the privileges, immunities, exceptions and indulgences formerly accorded to the ‘Society of Jesuits’, and declaring null and void all documents which his predecessors have ever written against the order. The fact that Leo XIII restored the order to what it was in the days of its supreme power is more than enough to paralyze all hopes of a peaceful determination of the conflict between the Vatican and the Quirinal; for the Jesuits constitute the belligerent element of Catholicism, and are thoroughly ‘intransigent’ on the subject of the temporal power of the world escaping from the control of the church . . .”

Far be it from us to doubt the sincerity of the Jesuits and their followers in believing that the control of the world by the Catholic Church is the only solution for the ills of mankind. They are welcome to their conviction, and are free in the United States to propagate their teaching and carry out their activities towards that end. The traditional manner in which they carry out their designs, however, should be disturbing to all who strive to sustain the democratic ideology and the principles of freedom and tolerance cherished so highly in this country.

In order to obtain their objective, they spend all their energies (as Nazi-Fascism does) against the two forces they consider inimical to their cause—Judaism and Freemasonry. From its first founding, the Jesuit Order has battled, by every means, against these two, because they are the chief advocates of tolerance and freedom for all. By the ruthless elimination of Jews and Freemasons in so many countries of Europe, Nazi-Fascism has merely effected what the Jesuits have schemed and worked for during many centuries.

In France, Germany, Hungary, Poland, Spain, Belgium and Italy, the Jesuits, for many years before Mussolini and Hitler, led the fight against the Jews and Freemasons. In each of these countries it was a Catholic priest (prototypes of Father Coughlin) who was the spearhead of Fascist attacks on both Judaism and Freemasonry. In France it was the Jesuit Father Du Lac, with his Ligue Nationale Anti-semitique de France; in Germany the Jesuit Fathers Overmanns, Muckermann, Loffler and Pachtler; in Hungary it was Father Adalbert Bangha, and Father Bresciana in Italy—all of these worked under the banner of Positive Christianity and Christian Front to fight Judaism and Freemasonry, in order to get the millions of unsuspecting non-Catholics to serve their ends. They all proclaimed a crusade for “The Christian Reformation of States and of the World.”1 Father Overmanns2 states that “the rock of positive moral Christian law”3 is the best foundation for the creation of organizations capable of reuniting the members of all Christian religions.

Father Hugger, S. J., shortly after the establishment of the German Republic, wrote (in Stimmen der Zeit, June, 1919, p. 171):

“We are facing a ruinous state of affairs. Once again the work of restoration will have to be accomplished by youth. Will the Congregations of Mary not go forth for the third time as the instrument of reconstruction chosen by Divine Providence?”

Hitler4 also identified his National Socialist Party with “Positive Christianity.” In his Mein Kampf he states that he imbibed his anti-Semitism and his hatred of Masonry from the Catholic Christian Social Party of Lueger, then Mayor of Vienna, when he went there as a young man. “By combatting the Jews,” he says, “I am helping the work of the Lord.”

This “Christian Reform of States”—which is also the subject of the late Pope’s famous encyclical Quadragesimo Anno—is nothing else but the establishment of the Fascist, Corporative State, in which neither Jews nor Freemasons will have any part. Needless to say, it is also anti-Protestant.

The Jesuit Fathers Pachder and Muckermann proclaimed the Fascist doctrines of Nazism before Hitler was heard of. Father Muckermann wrote prolifically in favor of racial eugenics and sterilization,6 and continued to do so even in spite of the condemnation of sterilization in the encyclical Casti Connubii of Pope Pius XI in 1929.

1 P. Loffler, S. J., Zur Jubelfeier der Marianischen Kongregationen Freiburg, pp. 21, 47: G. M. Pachtler, S. J., Der Stille Krieg gegen Thron und Altar. (The Silent War against Throne and Altar), 1876; P. Bresciani, S. J., The Jew of Verona and The Roman Republic, published in the Jesuit magazine Civilta Cattolica. Rome.
2 In Stimmen der Zeit (Jesuit magazine), Feb. 1918, p. 182 et seq.
3 For the Jesuits, “Christian” is synonymous with “Roman Catholic”.
4 Cf. Art. 24 of “The National Socialist Party Program”: ”Die Partei als solche tertritt den Standpunkt eines positiven Christentums.”
5 P. 70, 1931, German ed.
6 Cf. Muckermann, Hermann, S. J.: Volkstum, Staat nnd Nation—eugenisch gesehen (“The People, State and Nation — from the Eugenic viewpoint”) ; also his Rassenforschung und Volk Zukunft, Berlin, 1932, in which he expresses the desire that the doctrine of race will penetrate the national consciousness as a religion (p. 81).

Jules Michelet, the great French historian, in his Histoire de France, and the German historian Wilhelm Herzog,7 stress the fact that those who directed the anti-Semitism at the time of the Dreyfus Affair depended upon the instructions and, above all, upon the financial support of the Jesuits. The Croix de Feu and the Parti Francais in France, and the Catholic Rexist Party in Belgium also had the support of the Jesuits. The Libre Parole, anti-Semitic daily newspaper, was founded by Jesuit money and its treasury was constantly replenished by them.8 The anti-Semitic leaders of the Dreyfus Affair, which was a plot against the French Republic, were products of Jesuit schools or had Jesuit confessors. In France, as elsewhere, anti-Semitism and anti-Masonic campaigns took the form of “integrated Nationalism/’9 They called for expulsion of Jews and Freemasons, the overthrow of the French Republic, and the setting up of a “Nationalist State.” Henlein’s Party in Czechoslovakia, likewise, preached the doctrines of Othmar Spann, the theoretician of the Corporative State and a protege of the Jesuits. One of the first acts of Father (now Monsignor) Josef Tiso, when he became Nazi premier of Slovakia, was the destruction of all Masonic lodges.

In his Mein Kampf Hitler repeats these principles of the Jesuits against Judaism and Freemasonry like a well-trained parrot. All that he says against the Jews and the revolution in Germany after the war, about Zionism, Jewish exploitation of indecency and obscenity in literature, movies, theater and the press, their part in the organization of vice, prostitution and white slavery, was borrowed almost word for word from the official writings of the Jesuits. Everything he says, likewise, against the Freemasons— their fight for religious tolerance, their efforts to break down racial and religious barriers, as well as their alleged disloyalty to Germany during the world war—is in agreement with both the teaching of the Jesuits and of the popes in their encyclicals against Masonry. The Jesuit Father Bea,10 shortly after the revolution in Germany, wrote:

“The part played by many Jews at the time of the revolution . . . the Zionist movement … all this should be a lesson to those who take their religion and their country seriously to put themselves resolutely on the defensive. The increase of anti-Semitic literature and anti-Semitic organizations is evidence that the people are ready for the fight against Judaism.”

7 Der Kampf einer Republik—die Affare Dreyfus, p. 34, et passim.
8 Cf. Herzog, opus cit., pp. 27, 52.
9 Idem, pp. 26, 36.

As far back as 1911 Father Overmanns, writing in Stimmen aus Maria Laach, states:

“It is impossible to deny the harmful influence of the Jews “on the ideal which we desire in our literature. . . . The Jews make use of the great scope of their influence to spread corrupt and obscene principles and thus cause immense damage to the spiritual life . . . Everyone can see that they create many literary works which are inspired by vile and worldly ideas . . . the hooks of these writers are filled with the base pleasures of life, a vile sensuality and pure naturalism. The commercial sense of the Jews is not offended by the worst obscenities, white slavery, prostitution and immorality of all kinds . . . “

The popes before Hitler proclaimed all this in even more brutal terms. Pope Pius VII, who restored the Jesuits to the Catholic Church and the nations of Europe after the downfall of Napoleon in 1814, issued a Bull in 1821 against the Freemasons. He calls Freemasonry “a cancer and a deadly disease of society.” And the reason he gives is because Masonic Lodges uphold the idea of religious tolerance: “. . . they receive into their order all classes and all nationalities, and favor all kinds of moral codes and all forms of worship.”

The culminating point in the Vatican’s fight against Jews and Freemasons is to be found in the encyclicals of Popes Pius IX-and Leo XIII. Pius IX styles Masonic Lodges “Synagogues of Satan,” and accuses them of having fomented wars and revolutions which put Europe to the fire and the sword. Pope Leo XIII, in his encyclical Humanum Genus (1884), calls Freemasonry “a work of the devil,” and “an impure epidemic.” He accuses Freemasonry of aiming to destroy the churches, the state, and the public well-being. He states that among the chief reasons why Freemasons, and democracy, must be condemned are the following:

10 In Stimmen der Zeit, (Jesuit magazine), 1921, p. 172.

“They teach that all men have the same rights, and are perfectly equal in condition; that every man is naturally free; that no one has a right to command others; that it is tyranny to keep men subject to any other authority than that which emanates from themselves. Hence they hold that the people are sovereign, that those who rule have no authority but by the commission and concession of the people, so that they can be deposed, willing or unwilling, according to the wishes of the people. Thus the origin of all rights and civil duties is in the people or in the State, which is ruled according to the new principles of liberty. They hold that the State must not be united to religion, that there is no reason why one religion ought to be preferred to another, and that all must be held in the same esteem.”

He ends his encyclical by inviting all the Catholic clergy as well as the whole lay world to exterminate the Freemasons without mercy.11

All this was the plan of Mussolini and Hitler as expressed and put into practice by Nazi-Fascism. Circumstances have permitted it to go farther than the popes and to carry its principles by propaganda, invasion and war, into the whole world. In undermining the position that Jews and Freemasonry acquired since the French Revolution, it threatens to destroy the entire work of political and religious freedom initiated by the Protestant Reformation. It thus serves the aims of the Roman Church and the Society of Jesus, founded chiefly for the work of Counter-Reformation. For both Roman Catholicism and Nazi-Fascism regard the ideas that came out of the Reformation and the French Revolution as the chief source of the evils of our time—evils which they trace for their origins to Rousseau, Calvin, Luther, John Huss and Wycliffe —to Paris, Geneva, Wittenberg, Prague and London.

All of this again is to be found in the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion.” An examination of this matter in the next chapter will show conclusively that this infamous forgery is the work of none other than the disciples of Ignatius Loyola.

11 Father Coughlin’s magazine, Social Justice, Oct.-Xov. 1939, reiterated all this in a series of three articles entitled Freemasonry in the Scheme of Satan. They repeat the papal assertions that Freemasonry is allied with the Jews and Communists, and end by calling it, in the words of Pope Pius IX, “The Synagogue of Satan.”

CHAPTER II. The Jesuits and the Protocols of Zion

IT IS ADMITTED by all intelligent people that the so-called “Protocols of the Wise men of Zion” are criminal forgeries, and could never have been written either by a group of Jews or Freemasons. Yet their authorship remains unknown. The amazing part of it is that this fantastic fraud has succeeded in its planned objective– the ousting of all Judaic-Masonic influence in Central Europe by methods that would bring a blush to the cheek of a Torquemada. (Editors note: “Torquemada” may refer to a Spanish Dominican monk. As first Inquisitor-General of Spain (1483-98), he was responsible for the burning of some 2000 heretics.)

The contents of these alleged Protocols are well enough known, and have been broadcast by Nazi-Fascist (and Roman Catholic) agents in every country as verbatim reports—proces verbaux—of secret conferences at which certain Jewish leaders drew up plans for the formation of an invisible world-government. With the help of Masonic Lodges and the liberal, democratic, socialist and communist parties, these “Elders of Zion” are said to have conspired for the overthrow of all non-Jewish governments and to destroy all religions other than Judaism. Every despicable means to weaken Christian institutions is set forth by the imaginary leaders of this vast conspiracy.

All this is to be accomplished principally by means of the Masonic orders throughout the world, as the blind dupes and willing tools of this alleged super-imperialism of the Jews. Credit is claimed for the Jews in having instigated practically all revolutionary movements of the past century, assassination of rulers and heads of states, all the wars, civil, racial and international, and all the upheavals in and throughout the nations—from the Protestant Reformation to the economic conditions that resulted in our business depression. Behind it all there is pictured the cold calculation, the unscrupulous cunning and murderous fanaticism of these “Elders of Zion.” Protocol One tells of a vast army of spies and secret agents, well supplied with funds, who bore from within and create dissension and revolution in all countries. Support of anarchist, communist and socialist movements for the destruction of Christian civilization is outlined in Protocol Three; also the debasement and ruin of the currency system, leading to a world-wide economic crisis. Universal war against any nation or group of nations which fails to respond, is planned in Protocol Seven. Protocol Ten contains particulars how all morality is to be undermined and leading statesmen blackmailed, compromised and calumniated in order to force them to serve the ends of the conspirators.

The secret conclave, at which these monstrous plans were purported to have been drawn up, is said to have been held under the auspices of “one of the most influential and most highly initiated leaders of Freemasonry”; they are also said to have been “signed by representatives of Zion of the Thirty-Third Degree.”

No group or organization could ever be as evil and satanic as these Judaic-Masonic “Elders of Zion” picture themselves to be. They are the apotheosis of the anti-Christ, and could have been conjured up only by theological minds imbued with the fearful expectation of the eventual coming of an anti-Christ.

It must be admitted that there, is a certain similarity between this revolutionary plan of action and the Bolshevist program that followed the assassination of the Czar of Russia and the overthrow of the Kerensky regime. But of the seventeen members of the Council of People’s Commissars of the Soviet government at that time, only one, Trotsky, was a Jew. Neither have the Masons ever been the least bit influential in Russia, either under the Czar or the Soviets. A world-wide economic depression also has since happened, somewhat similar to that allegedly planned by these elders of Zion. By no means, however, have the Jews and Masons ever so completely controlled the world’s finances. They suffered as much as others as a result of the economic debacle in 1929.

The Nazi-Fascists, who have successfully exploited these Protocols to their great advantage, and who have used these criminal forgeries to attain their primary objective, might well be accused of their authorship. But their publication antedated the rise of Fascism by a quarter of a century, when Hitler and Mussolini were youngsters learning their multiplication tables in school, and Franco babbling his “Hail Marys” at his mother’s knee.

Now, authorship of an anonymous document is best discovered from the document itself—by the cause it favors and by the enemies it depicts. These will appear even if placed in reverse. A clear sample of this can be seen from such an analysis of a part of these Protocols of Zion which I have before me. It is a reprint from The Catholic Gazette, of February, 1936, a monthly publication of the Catholic Missionary Society of London, England. Space limits permit the quotation of only parts of this nefarious document.

The Judaic-Masonic conspirators are speaking:

When all this is placed in reverse, the following appears:

This is exactly what is taught in all Catholic schools. Every retreat and mission given to priests and lay people begins with St. Ignatius’ picture of “The Two Camps”—the Catholic Church led by God on one hill, and a combination of Protestants, Jews, Masons, communists, socialists and atheists on the other led by Satan.

And all of this is to be found again in Father Coughlin’s Social Justice magazine. In its issue of February 5, 1940, for instance, he reiterates that the Catholic Church is “the ideal Christian Front” and proclaims that all those opposed to, or not with, it belong to anti-Christian groups which will soon “appear incarnated in the person of Anti-Christ himself.” He says that “lay Christian leadership of social matters is to be condemned.” In the same issue a special correspondent of his magazine in Rome writes an article that the “Only Hope of Christian Europe Lies in Rome,” and that Europe can be saved only by the resoration of the Holy Roman Empire; that England, “who more than any other country now represents the neo-Judaic, anti-Catholic spirit,” will be destroyed by Germany and Italy. In another part of this issue, liberal Catholic priests, like Msgr. John A. Ryan, are called “Hireling Clergy” paid by left-wing revolutionary groups. Towards the end is a trick questionnaire which implies twenty answers aimed to secure a poll from its readers which will be condemnatory of democracy.

Although first published in Russia in 1903, the Protocols of Zion had their origin in France and date from the Dreyfus Affair, of which the Jesuits were the chief instigators. They were planned also first to take effect in France, by the overthrow of the “Judaic- Masonic” government of the French Republic. But the discovery of the gigantic fraud of Leo Taxil, who had been openly supported by the Jesuits, the concluding of the Franco-Russian alliance, along with the Vatican’s difficulties with the French government at that time, made it more opportune to have them appear first in Russia.

These Protocols of supposedly Jewish leaders are not the first documents of their kind fabricated by the Jesuits.

For over a hundred years before these Protocols appeared, the Jesuits had continued to make use of a similar fraud called The Secrets of the Elders of Bourg-Fontaine against Jansenism—an anti-Jesuit French Catholic movement among the secular clergy. The analogy between the two forgeries is perfect—the secret assemblage in the forest of Bourg-Fontaine; the plan of the “conspirators” to destroy the Papacy and establish religious tolerance among all nations; the alleged plot against Throne and Altar, and the setting up of a world-government in opposition to the Catholic Church. There is the same dramatization of the negative pole of the historic evolution of the world, in order to bring out, by contrast, the positive Christian [Catholic] pole, around which all conservative forces—the monarchy, the aristocracy, the army, the clergy—must gather to save the world from Satan’s onslaught.

Analyzing, therefore, the ends to be attained by these Protocols of Zion, the means to be employed, the forces depicted as evil and those to be considered good, we must reach the conclusion that only to those whose objectives these forgeries were clearly intended to serve, can their authorship be attributed.

CHAPTER III. The strange case of Leo Taxil

THE PRIME MOTIVATION of Catholic Action is its escatological complex that the Vatican, as God’s designated champion, must do open battle with the forces of Satan before the world ends. Present world trends have convinced Catholic leaders that the time for that Armageddon is fast approaching. In their minds there is not the slightest doubt but that ultimate and complete victory will be theirs. Neither have they any doubt as to who comprise these forces of Satan. They now name communism as the generic term for the objective at which the various forces aim who are on Satan’s side against the Catholic Church. And since they hold that all who are not 100 per cent with the Catholic Church are against it, liberals of all kinds are placed under the banner of communism. Leadership of these combined forces of evil is accredited to world Jewry and Freemasonry.

“The Protocols of Zion,” preceded by the like forgery of “The Secrets of the Elders of Bourg Fontaine,” have spread this belief among Catholics everywhere. Obvious forgeries though they are admitted to be, it is safe to say that nothing contributed more to the rapid victories of Fascism over the forces of liberty and tolerance than these alleged Protocols of the Elders of Zion. As has been pointed out, they insidiously picture world Jewry and Freemasonry as conspiring to establish the reign of Satan on earth and, by contrast, the Catholic Church as the sole bulwark and only certain triumphant force against it. As employed by Nazi-Fascism in the past ten years, this fantastic but clever fraud has already succeeded in discrediting democratic institutions of government, even in the United States, and in glorifying the authoritarian rule of force and brutality.

No one can deny the chief role which the Catholic Church has played in these events and all that has led up to them during the past half century. Pope Pius IX1 calls Freemasonry “. . . the Synagogue of Satan … whose object is to blot out the Church of Christ, were it possible, from the face of the earth.” Pius X2 says:

1 Cf. Brief of Nov. 1865. These and other quotations have been published time and again in Father Coughlin’s Social Justice magazine, and in other printed and mimeographed brochures sent out from his Shrine at Royal Oak, Mich. One of these is called The Malist—For the Honest and Honorable, published at Meriden, Conn.

“So extreme is the general perversion that there is room to fear that we are experiencing the foretaste and beginnings of the evils which are to come at the end of time, and that the Son of Perdition, of whom the Apostle speaks, has already arrived upon the earth.”

As has been shown in a previous chapter, the popes of Rome condemn Masonry as in alliance with Judaism chiefly because it teaches tolerance of all religions and works for the establishment of popular government, secular education and international brotherhood. There is nothing too fantastic that the popes and Catholic authorities have not believed and propagated against Judaic- Masonic aims and activities. The most astounding and outrageous were the alleged revelations of the arch-imposter Leo Taxil towards the end of the last century. So successful was his deception of the pope himself and the whole Catholic world, that Father Herbert Thurston, S. J., is forced to deplore the fact that examples of “excessive credulity have been too lamentably brought home to our generation by the outrageous impostures of Leo Taxil.”3

Taxil’s real name was Jogand Pages, and he is described by Father Thurston (loc. cit.) as “the most blasphemous and obscene of anti-clerical writers in France.” He was once jailed for having published a book entitled Les Amours de Pie IX (“The Love Affairs of Pope Pius IX”). That was all before his conversion to the Catholic Church. It was then that he began to make alleged revelations about the Freemasons, and published a large number of books about them, each more astounding than the other. Sensing the Catholic Church’s demon complex, Taxil played this up with consummate art. In his many novels, which were published by the Catholic press all over the world, Taxil stressed the cult of Demonism, or what he called Satanisme. He pictured the Freemasons as practising this worship of the devil, and accused them of assassinations, sexual orgies and white slavery. He recounted that the Freemasons tried to get women into their power to the point of forcing them to have intercourse with the devil. As proof that Freemasonry was secretly controlled by the Jews, he revealed their alleged practices of Jewish rituals.

2 Cf. Supremo Apostolatus, 1903.
3 Cf. Catholic Encyclopedia, Vol. VII, pp. 701-703.

The Catholic clergy everywhere were especially delighted with Taxil’s sinister novel Palladismus, the story of Diana Vaughan who, according to him, was the result of the union of her mother with a devil named Bitron. These fantastic revelations convinced many that the Catholic hierarchy were in direct contact with this daughter of the devil through the intermediary of Leo Taxil, now their protege. Pope Leo XIII received Taxil in private audience, gave him his blessing, assured him that he had read his books against the Freemasons with intense interest, and that his writings were of great benefit to the cause of the Catholic Church. I pass over the question many will ask as to how an infallible pope could be so completely deceived by one of the most outrageous imposters who ever lived. It was one time that the Jesuits too were outdone.

For a long time Leo Taxil enjoyed the easy success he had obtained by playing upon the credulity of the Catholic clergy and laity. Then came the great denouement—planned and carried out by himself, as it were, for the fun of it. In order to enjoy his victory over the Jesuits to the very last, he called a public meeting in Paris on April 10, 1894, and announced, to the consternation of his hearers, that all his activities, his books and pamphlets, as well as the story of Diana Vaughan, the daughter of the devil who had been converted to the Catholic Church, were nothing but a huge joke dispassionately concocted and executed by him. He quietly told them that Diana Vaughan was merely the name of his typist!

The interesting, and serious, point in the whole affair is the fact that it was the Jesuits who translated Taxil’s novels into German. The Jesuit Father Gruber, whose article on Freemasonry in The Catholic Encyclopedia is nothing but a rehash of what Taxil says about it, widely publicized all his books. And they continued to reassert that what he had written was perfectly in accord with actual facts, even after they had broken with him because of his dramatic expose of himself.4

4 Cf. Hoensbroech, Der Jesuitenorden, Vol. II, page 504.

And even to this day, in the United States, the Catholic Church continues to publish and broadcast Taxil’s frauds about Freemasonry and its alliance with world Jewry. The New World, official organ of the Catholic Archdiocese of Chicago, in its issue of March 26, 1910, published an article entitled Freemasonry— The Open Door To Damnation, as defamatory and fantastic as anything Leo Taxil ever wrote. It was reproduced, as a sample of Catholic animus towards Masons and Jews, in the Souvenir edition of Life and Action during the Knights-Templar Conclave in August that same year. It states that “Jews are the master spirits of the Masonic craft,” that “Freemasonry was founded and organized by Jews in the vain hope of destroying Christianity,” that they plot assassinations of prominent men, even in America, and corrupt the judiciary to set murderers free. Reminiscent of Pope Leo’s condemnation of Freemasonry in his Bull Humanum Genus, is the following:

“A society that admits to membership Christians, Turks, Jews, Chinese, and every other species of barbarian, and amalgamates them— or the majority of them—into an army of infidels and atheists, must be animated and controlled by the malevolence and malice of the evil spirit. . . . There is no reason to doubt that a Christ-hating Jew is the head of the Masonic craft at this time—and at all times.”

There is no need here to stress the fact that, when it comes to attacks on Judaism and Freemasonry, Leo Taxil has nothing on Father Coughlin. This priest and his powerful supporters among the Catholic clergy and laity in America are copying the methods of Hitler and the other dictators who have ruthlessly obliterated Freemasonry and Judaism from all of Central Europe. In reality they are not so much imitators of Hitler, Mussolini and Franco as the successors of the Popes, the Jesuits and the Taxils who initiated the campaign half a century before Nazi-Fascism came into being. Its objective was, and is still, to destroy the effects of the Reformation and to re-establish the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation.

CHAPTER IV. The re-establishment of the Holy Roman Empire.

EUROPE’S TRAGEDY, in Catholic opinion, is due to the breaking up of its great papal-controlled confederation of states by the Protestant Reformation. All the efforts of the Catholic Church since have been directed to the work of counter- Reformation—to re-establish the political and social order of pre- Reformation times. That order of states was hierarchical, not democratic, and was ruled at the top by the dual sovereignty of Pope and Emperor, by the union of Church-State authority. The political and social order that resulted from the Reformation, both in Europe and America, is regarded by the Catholic Church as pagan and anti-Christian; they give it the name of “pseudo-democracy.”

This is to be found in all official Catholic writings and is the burden of all papal encyclicals. The Jesuit weekly America,1 for instance, tells us that the evils of our present time are to be ascribed to this “pseudo-democracy, which is pagan in its remote origins and leads to an inhuman wage system, an uprooted proletariat and pauperism.” It goes further to say: “Protestant, rationalist, and now definitely anti-Christian in its inspiration, its logical fruit is Socialism,” and calls for “a return to an integral social order, the principles of which are still preserved in our languid memory of the great medieval experiment.”

Few realize how intense is the hatred of official Roman Catholic spokesmen for the American democratic way of life. This same Jesuit magazine America (which advertises itself as “the most influential Catholic magazine in the United States”) published the following in its issue of May 17, 1941, six months before Pearl Harbor:

1 April 13, 1940.

“How we Catholics have loathed and despised this Lucifer civilizaion, this rationalist creation of those little men who refuse to bend the knee or bow the head in submission to higher authority . . . Today, American Catholics are being asked to shed their blood for that particular kind of secularist civilization which they have been herocially repudiating for four centuries. This civilization is now called democracy, and the suggestion is being made that we send the Yanks to Europe again to defend it. In reality, is it worth defending? What’s the sum and substance of it all? All the Yanks in America will not save it from disintegration. Unless a miracle occurs, it is doomed—finally and irrevocably doomed. The New Order in Europe will be either a Nazi or a British totalitarianism, or a combination of both . . .

“American democracy is disintegrating, crumbling from within. Fatigue, disillusionment, disgust, the unbearable tension in society, the fear of war and the fear of bankruptcy, the absence of security, the technological revolution which has gone far beyond the instruments of social control, deep-rooted, anarchistic hatred of a social order, which has too long denied the principle of social justice, the revolt of the masses and the levelling of all values, the absence of any common ethical basis—these are but a few of the multiple factors in the decline which is now upon us . . .

“Leadership in this crisis will not come from the laity. It will not come from the bottom of the Catholic pyramid. It will come only from the top, from the Hierarchy. The Christian Revolution will begin when we decide to cut loose from the existing social order, rather than be buried with it.”

Whatever opinion the Catholic Church may now express about Hitler and his Nazi-Socialism, it stands 100 per cent with him and the other fascist dictators in this avowed objective of destroying the political and social order that came out of the Reformation and substituting therefor an integral, positive-Christian hierarchical confederation of states, similar to that which existed before Protestantism disrupted the authoritarian order of things in Central Europe. Hitler laid it down in article 24 of his National Social Party Program that “the Party as such starts from the standpoint of a Positive Christianity.” This is specifically a Jesuit principle of action, with the ultimate objective of inducing all Christian sects to unite with the Catholic Church for a “Christian reform of states” —the establishment of an hierarchical grouping of corporative states entirely devoid of Jewish, Masonic and Protestant influence. Bishop Hudal2 and other German prelates have pointed out the identity of the fundamentals of National Socialism and Catholicism. Father Coughlin and his Jesuit supporters preach the same in this country. To date, Hitler’s blitzkriegs are accomplishing in fact everything set forth in his ideological concepts for a “new order” in all of Europe after his ruthless extermination of Judaism and Masonry.

2 Die Grundlagen des Nationalsozialismus, p. 18.

For centuries Vatican policy has based all its hopes for the restoration of its dominion over the nations of Europe upon a strong, militaristic Germany that would cleanse the Continent of all British Protestant influence from the West, and, above all, safeguard it from Russo-Slavic invasion from the East. A Greater Germany, in other words, must be made again the center of a revived Holy Roman Empire.

It is significant that Pope Leo XIII urged this very plan upon the late Kaiser Wilhelm II during the latter’s last visit to the Vatican. The Kaiser, in his Memoirs,3 vividly describes the colorful and solemn setting in which the interview took place, and says that he jotted down what was said for future reference. What interested him most was Pope Leo’s insistence that, by war, if necessary, the Holy Roman Empire should be restored, and that to this end “Germany must become the Sword of the Catholic Church.” Following are the Kaiser’s own words:

“It was of interest to me that the Pope said to me on this occasion that Germany must become the sword of the Catholic Church. I remarked that the old Roman Empire of the German nation no longer existed, and that conditions had changed. But he stuck to his words.”

Hitler succeeded the Kaiser and by Germany’s military might wiped out from all of Europe popular government, Freemasonry, and all the democratic freedoms against which Pope Leo XIII and other nineteenth century popes fulminated their condemnations.

Catholic propagandists in the United States, despite expressed opinions to the contrary, have not been unaware of this identity of interests between Nazi-Fascism and Catholic aims, and diplomatically, but definitely, have been striving for their realization. Hitler’s early conquests in Austria and Czechoslovakia were applauded as “a natural re-adjustment in Europe” by the Catholic Justice Herbert O’Brien of New York, in an article featured in the New York Herald Tribune of March 29, 1938. Needless to say, his opinions are not solely his own, but were obviously dictated to him by official Catholic authority. Taking occasion to warn the United States from participating in war on the side of England and France, Justice O’Brien stated that such a war would be unjust since its objective would be “to oppose certain political adjustments and changes in Central Europe resulting in economic and nationalistic confederations which had existed for generations before the great world conflict . . . and also to resist that great confederation of small groups which, up to the breaking out of the great world war. had enjoyed, under the beneficent sway of the Hapsburgs, commercial prosperity, independence and peace.” He goes on to say:

3 See, The Kaiser’s Memoirs, by Wilhem II, translated by Thomas R. Ybarra, p. 211, Harper & Bros. 1922.

“The opposition to this adjustment of the German peoples with some of the groups of the old Austrian Empire . . . comes from England and France. These two nations have expressed their bitter resentment over these changes as a disturbance of the ‘balance of power’ in Europe, and are fearful that Germany, in union with a re-united Austria, will place the German peoples in the ascendancy with ample force to maintain this position, and, by alliance with Italy, terminate Britain’s sole supremacy of the Mediterranean and directly affect its sole future control of India and Egypt and the African British colonies.”

He wrote that “dismemberment of the Austrian Empire was the most tragic blunder of the twentieth century. When England and France chopped up Austria they ruined Europe.” He applauded Hitler’s success in destroying Protestant British hegemony in Central Europe and in securing a return to the political and social set-up of the corporate union of states in a revived Holy Roman confederation:

“What America is witnessing is the normal reunion of these several parts into the original, living structure. It had to come. It could not be blocked. In justice to the 100 million people in Central Europe, why should anyone try to prevent it?”

He uncovered the whole pretense of official Catholic opposition even to Hitler’s religious and racial persecutions as well as to his “protectorates” over non-German nations as follows:

“It happened with Hitler. It would have happened without Hitler, and in spite of Hitler. And with the inclusion of these non-Germanic groups, Hitler’s anti-religious and racial persecutions must terminate and vanish. Hitler will pass away, but the great re-established union, together with religious liberty, will survive.”

What the Catholic Church is hoping and working for as a result of the present death struggle between the fascist and democratic blocs is the re-establishment in Europe of the “Real State,” a rigid hierarchical system wherein inferiors are subject to superiors. In this system each individual, like a cell in a body, must humbly submit to his fate and occupy his “natural place” which is allotted to him from birth and have no desire to get away from it. This basis of social structure is not only anti-Jewish, but also anti-Protestant. It corresponds exactly to the system of the Jesuit Order itself as founded by Ignatius Loyola, the essential point of which consists in an hierarchical structure of ideas, and is characteristic of all Catholic political thought.4 The hierarchical, as opposed to the Protestant democratic system, holds that the different races constitute the hierarchical steps in a cosmic system which no one has the right to change or modify either by individual or collective will.

The Jesuit Father Muckermann, in his many works on race hygiene, fully explains this ideology which is at the basis of all the aims and acts of Nazi-Fascism. Mixture of races, he holds, produces “inharmonious” descendants who have difficulty in allowing themselves to be absorbed into a national unity. It is well known that mixture of races brings forth strong individualities; and these in the Jesuit view, would disrupt the static “harmony” they desire among peoples and nations, as well as nullify the gregarious instinct which the Jesuits endeavor to foster. In their view “harmony” is a state where each one places himself humbly and voluntarily in the organic niche appointed for him by the supreme authority without any “diabolic inharmonious” desire to leave it. This is the way the Jesuit Order itself is built up, and this is the ideal Catholic aim for states and groups of states in the political and social order. It is the organic, static, hierarchical, integralist, corporative system of Nazi-Fascist teaching, which is already in effect in many countries of Europe. It is in direct opposition to the disintegralist, dynamic, liberal, free, democratic concept of political and social order.

4 Cf. Rene Fulop Muller, Macht und Geheimnis der Jesuiten, p. 41; also his Rassenheirarchie als Kirchliche Lehre, pp. 42, 204.

The Jesuit Order has its “Aryan paragraph” corresponding exactly to that of Hitlerism. Its Constitutions contain six impediments against reception into the Order, the first of which is Jewish descent up to the fourth generation. If Jewish descent is discovered after a candidate’s admission, it prevents his “radiation.” This Aryan paragraph first appeared in the statutes of the Order in 1593, was confirmed in 1608 and is to be found in the latest official edition published in Florence in 1893. General councils of the order have many times proclaimed that Jewish descent must be considered as “an impurity, scandal, dishonor and infamy.”5 Suarez, noted Jesuit theologican, also states that Jewish descent is an impurity of such indelible character that it is sufficient to prevent admission into the Order.6

This identity of interests between Nazi-Fascism and Jesuit Catholicism in the matter of opposition to the mixture of races and religions is something that cannot be denied. And this ideology is the prime cause of the war that is devastating the world at the present time. Hider, the fanatic, has already gone a long way to bring it to realization. If he succeeds in making it permanent, the “new order” which he has vowed to bring about in Europe will be what the Catholic Church has been strenuously working for during the past four centuries. As a result, Europe will be entirely free of that “pseudo-democratic liberalism” so hateful to official Catholicism. With or without Hider, as Justice O’Brien says, it had to come. And its beginnings could only have been accomplished by the ruthless war now being waged by Nazi-Fascism—a fact which its Jesuit proponents have fully realized during their centuries of counter-Reformation activities. But it is only by facing this fact, and forgetting Roman Catholic propaganda in our daily newspapers, that we can understand why a victory for an authoritarian Germany, not its crushing defeat by the democratic Allies, has been fervently desired by the Vatican.

5 Institutum 8. J., p. 278, 302; also Jesuit Lexicon, p. 939.
6 F. Suarez, Tractatus de religione Societatis Jesu, p. 34.

CHAPTER V. Hitler and the Catholic church

HITLER is a product of the Catholic Church. He has never renounced the religious doctrines nor condemned the political aims and aspirations of the Church into which he was born and baptized. Just as his father regarded the Catholic priesthood as the highest state to which anyone could aspire, so to him as a child the priest appeared as the ideal human being. In his autobiography Hitler says that he was deeply impressed with the religious ceremonies of the Catholic Church and was a member of the choir in his parish church. In his free time he took singing lessons at the nearby monastery. “This,” he says, “supplied me with the best opportunity to steep myself in the solemn magnificence of the brilliant feasts of the Church.”1

These early emotions never completely disappeared, and he has always remained conscious of the extremely suggestive value of ecclesiastical surroundings. Toward the end of his book he describes “the psychological conditions which tend to create that artificial and mysterious half-light in Catholic churches—the wax tapers, the incense …” In fact, in his Mein Kampf Hitler approves of everything particularly relating to Jesuit Catholicism as opposed to Protestantism. He approves of the indisputability of Catholic dogmas,2 of the intolerant attitude of Catholic education,3 of the necessity of blind faith,4 of the personal infallibility of the pope— imposed upon the Church by the Jesuits in 1870,5—and of the compulsory celibacy of the Catholic clergy. These are all matters that make Catholicism radically different from the other churches of Christendom. In an open and prophetic expression of his admiration for the Catholic Church, he says:

“Thus the Catholic Church is more secure than ever. It can be predicted that, as passing phenomena vanish away, she will remain as a beacon light amid these vanishing elements, attracting blind adherents in ever-increasing numbers.”

1 Cf. Mein Kampf, p. 4. 2 P. 293. 3 P. 385. 4 P. 417. 5 P. 507. 6 P. 513. See The Catholic Church in Hitler’s ‘Mein Kampf’; 15c Agora Publishing Co. It was a priest, Father Staempfle, not Hitler, who really wrote “Mein Kampf.”

This enthusiastic declaration of the Fuehrer is not only an expression of the prophetic sense generally attributed to him, but the manifestation of a desire firmly rooted in his soul. Like all Catholics of Central Europe, he was educated to resist Protestantism—the historical enemy which has always endeavored to detach governments and peoples from the political and religious influence of the Church of Rome. Throughout his book he has no word of disapproval for the Jesuit campaign against ail forms of Protestantism. It is true, that, in places, he states that both Protestantism and Catholicism, as religious units, are of equal worth, so far as his National Socialism is concerned. But an analysis of his particular statements regarding the two religious systems immediately shows how closely he is bound to ultramontane Catholicism. In the matter of racism and anti-Semitism, Hitler clearly indicates his hostility to Protestantism. He says:7

“Protestantism opposes in an extremely vigorous manner every attempt that is made to rid the nation of its worst enemy; in fact, the position of Protestantism with regard to Judaism is more or less dogmatically fixed. But we have now come to a point where this problem will have to be solved; otherwise all attempts at the renaissance of Germany and national regeneration will be of no avail.”

It is true that Protestantism can never associate itself with Jesuit racism. The protest to Hitler by the German Confessional Church in 1936, makes this clear: “Anti-Semitism,” it says, “often provokes excesses that nothing can justify, and which are merely the result of hatred for the Jewish minority.”8

The identity of Hitler’s ideology with that of traditional Jesuit Catholicism cannot be denied; nor the fact that by ruthless persecution and armed might, in collaboration with the other Catholic dictators, he has forwarded the ultimate objectives of the Catholic Church. Hitler, Mussolini, Franco and Salazar (the Catholic dictator of Portugal) ousted Jewish, Masonic and Protestant influence from all of Europe from the Arctic to the Mediterranean. In spite of this, however, many in America are still skeptical of any predetermined connection between Nazi-Fascism and Jesuit Catholicism. They point to the “persecution” of the Catholic Church in Germany, and to professions of faith in democracy by some Catholic spokesmen in the United States.

7 p. 123.
8 Cf. Basler National Zeitung, July 20, 1936.

There is here a case of obvious contradiction between reality and appearance. In the first place, Nazi opposition to the Catholic Church in Germany has been confined to its “liberal” elements, and Catholic leadership has always opposed these more than any others. The Jesuit party has long feared the infiltration of Protestant and liberal ideas into the German Catholic mind. During the post-war years, when Germany was a democratic republic, many of the ordinary secular clergy and some of the religious orders became enamored of the liberal, secularizing spirit. They formed the backbone of the Catholic Centre Party—which was the last bulwark against Hitler’s rise to power. But this last element of liberalism in Germany was dissolved by order of Pope Pius XI, as a stipulated condition of the Vatican’s concordat with Nazism; its leader, Klausener, was assassinated in the “blood purge” of June 30, 1934. The last liberal party in Italy also, headed by the exiled priest Don Sturzo, shared the same fate at the hands of the same Pope Pius XI. It is nothing new in Catholic history that religious and social reformers from within the Church should be the first to suffer its enmity. The heretics of history, delivered over to autocrat civil power for burning and imprisonment by the Church, are mute witnesses to this unchanging policy of intransigent Catholicism.

It can easily be seen that the identity of Jesuit political thought with the objectives of Nazi-Fascism makes it imperative to conceal it from the American public. Were it otherwise, the Catholic Church would suffer complete loss of its prestige in the United States—in the eyes of Catholics and non-Catholics alike. It is not surprising, therefore, that the following evident contradictions may be noted with regard to Catholic Church propaganda:

1. Opposing views of Jesuit authors on actual questions concerning politics, economics, and even religious matters;

2. The adoption of national peculiarities in all countries, even in pagan lands;

3. The combatting of socialism with one hand and ottering it friendship with the other;

4. The favoring of chauvinist and nationalist views as well as of international pacific tendencies;

5. The making of eloquent declarations in favor of democracy, and at the same time seizing upon every possible means to undermine and wreck it;

6. The creation of situations apparently contradictory of one another.

Apart from this, there is nothing insincere on the part of intransigent Catholic leadership. The guiding forces of modern Catholicism are as sincere in their conviction as their predecessors of old that nothing good can come out of liberal political and social regimes. Liberalism in religion is anathema to them and their greatest enemy. They desire peace, but hold with the Nazi-Fascists that peace can come only by war, with all its appalling consequences, as a necessary evil. For by victorious war alone, they hold, can men and nations to be made to submit to the hierarchical idea of a world-order of states, races and individuals. Their conviction is that peace can come only from that “harmonious” acquiescence of men bound to their “natural place” in society and religion. From its apex, this pyramid of states is to be totally ruled by the theocratic institution of the Catholic Church, with the Pope of Rome as the Vicar of Jesus Christ and the sole mouthpiece of Almighty God.

Alone, and without well-planned direction, Adolf Hitler never could have accomplished what he did to this end. All the world is now convinced that he was no idle dreamer, nor just a poor paper-hanger, when he attempted his Munich Beer-hall putsch. His visions were realistically sketched out for him by those who directed him as a youth, and the grandeur of their ideas of a totalitarian world, symbolized by ritualistic ceremonies in cathedrals and churches, urged him to action.

When Hitler drew Austria into his hierarchic confederation, his action was greeted by Heils from Catholic Church prelates. After his bloodless absorption of Czechoslovakia and the land of the hated Hussites, there was rejoicing again within the Catholic world. A feeble, easily answered complaint from the Vatican followed his blitzkrieg that brought Catholic Poland again into the orbit of a centrally-controlled Europe. Definite refusal met the request of President Roosevelt, through his “peace ambassador” to the Vatican, that Pope Pius XII condemn Hitler’s invasion of Protestant Denmark and Norway.

Only short-sighted, idealistic Americans fail to understand that Hitler and the intransigent leaders of Roman Catholicism are one with Mussolini when he declared:

“Capitalism, parliamentarianism, democracy, socialism, communism, and a certain vacillating Catholicism, with which, sooner or later, we shall deal in our style, are against us.”

All of these, particularly the last, are the forces which the Jesuits and their counter-Reformation have fought against (and made use of) since the time of Martin Luther and his associates.

CHAPTER VI. The Catholic church and the corporative state

A FEW YEARS AGO, Americans considered it incredible that the Catholic Church could be officially in favor of the Fascist corporative state; much less that it could have been in any way responsible for the origin and spread of Corporatism. They refused to believe that the vaunted encyclical Quadragesimo Anno, of Pope Pius XI, was an endorsement of the Nazi-Fascist objective to discredit and destroy the structure of the liberal democratic state, and to set up, in its stead, authoritarian, hierarchical regimes. Yet, this encyclical embodied the whole aim of the Catholic Church for half a century before the rise of Fascism, namely, the total reconstruction of the then existing social order on Catholic- Fascist lines. The real title of this encyclical is: “On the Reconstruction of the Social Order,” and its plan is actually the ecclesiastical counterpart of the Fascist military onslaught against liberalism and democracy.

Americans heard Father Coughlin preach this for eight years, but merely shrugged their shoulders and took it for granted that his rantings were those of a crackpot and had nothing to do with the true aims and activities of the Catholic Church. It can now be seen that this plan of the Vatican, though camouflaged in terms to quiet the fears of Americans, was being carried forward officially by the Catholic Church in the United States as vigorously as in European countries.

In our first issue of The Converted Catholic Magazine,1 attention was directed to the plan as published under the auspices of the National Catholic Welfare Conference, and signed by 131 Catholic prelates and noted laymen. It advocated a change in the United States’ Constitution to permit the enactment of the recommendations of Pope Pius XI into American law. It praised the NRA (National Recovery Administration, an agency created by Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1933 after congress passed the National Industrial Recovery Act), which is now admitted as having been patterned on Fascist
Corporative lines,2 and which was abolished by unanimous opinion of the U. S. Supreme Court as destructive of American democracy. In spite of this, however, this plan of the Catholic Church says: “Had the NRA been permitted to continue, it could readily have developed into the kind of industrial order recommended by the Holy Father.”

1 Jan., 1940. p. 6.
2 Cf. John T. Flynn, in the N. Y. World-Telegram, July 12, 1940, where he states that, by the NRA, President Roosevelt, unwittingly, “attempted to introduce this feature of Fascism into our country”.
3 Feb. 8, 1940. The N.C.W.C. called it “the most important utterance made by the Catholic hierarchy since the bishops’ program of reconstruction of 1919”.
4 Cf. Richmond Times Dispatch, Feb. 9, 1940.

So cautiously had this plan been advanced in the United States, that it was not until the Roman Catholic hierarchy, in 1940, issued its pronouncement on “The Church and the Social Order”3 that the press could safely headline the news that “The Catholic Hierarchy Advocates Corporative System for the U. S.”4 Strange to say, there was then no public outcry. And even now, when patriotic Americans are turning the searchlight of suspicion on every sign of political and economic subversion, the greatest Trojan Horse of them all continues to tower unmolested in the very shadow of their searchlights. In newspaper offices, this Trojan Horse of Jesuit Catholicism is still regarded as the feared and untouchable “sacred cow.”

The misconception that the corporative system is purely an economic matter, has blinded the American press and public to the real aim behind Catholicism’s advocacy of it. Corporatism is indeed the economic ingredient of Fascism. But it is also the essential element of Fascism, since the corporatives make a parliament or congress unnecessary. For these corporatives are the means through which the “Leader” exercises his dictatorial will. It was precisely because the Supreme Court judged that, by the NRA, Congress had abdicated its powers and was thus paving the way for Fascism, that it took vigorous action against it. The entire ideology of Fascism and Nazism—in social, economic, educational, religious and military’ matters—is contained in the corporative system. Corporatism is Fascism.

The Roman Catholic bishops, though cautiously, have spoken nonetheless as plainly in favor of Nazi-Fascist ideology as the Catholic hierarchies of Italy, Spain and Germany. Like Hitler and Coughlin, they start from a standpoint of “positive Christianity,” and call for “a comprehensive program for restoring Christ to His true and proper place in human society,” for “a reform of morals and a profound renewal of the Christian spirit which must precede the social reconstruction.” Implicit in this is the customary anti- Semitic and Fascist condemnation of the “Masonic-Judaic plutodemocracies” as resting upon an immoral, un-Christian foundation.

It was in this same way that the Roman Catholic bishops of Italy, Spain and Germany supported the rise of Fascism and Nazism in their respective countries. In their pastoral letter from Fulda on August 30, 1936, the Catholic hierarchy of Germany solemnly declared to their people:

“There is no need to speak at length of the task which our people and our country are called upon to undertake. May our Fuehrer, with the help of God, succeed in this extraordinary difficult work . . . What we desire is that belief in God, as taught by Christianity, will not be overcome, but that it be universally recognized that this faith constitutes the only sure foundation upon which can be built the powerful and victorious bulwark destined to hold back the forces of Bolshevism…”

All doubts as to the whole-hearted support of Hitler’s program from the beginning by the Catholic hierarchy in Germany are cleared up by a perusal of the discourses and writings of Bishop Aloysius Hudal, Rector of the Collegio Teutonico in Rome and one of the closet consultors of the Holy See on German and Austrian affairs. In his book, The Fundamentals of National Socialism, he repeats the contents of many of his allocutions to the German colony in Rome. The following is a sample:

“Let us see, for example, how interesting are some of the objectives of the National Socialist program: popular unity as opposed to everything that can disrupt; language as the nation’s spiritual bond; consciousness of Germany’s historical destiny; the sentiment of race consciousness; the attempt to solve the Jewish question; assurance of pure German breeding; destruction of parties; culture of the family, and the ideal of the large family considered as a matter of honor and national pride; the militarization of the nation . . . ; a new system of instruction and education; the corporative idea; the aristocratic principle of government by a Leader. . . . Above all, the German people are indebted to this spiritual movement for the slow destruction of the idealogy of the Rights of Man, upon which the edifice of Weimar was founded, as well as for destruction of faith in formal juridical constitutions, of the dialectics of parliamentary procedures . . . and of democracy”.

In order to prove the identity of interests between Catholicism and Nazi Socialism, Bishop Hudal5 quotes from the Catholic German historian, Joseph Lortz of Minister, who, in his work, History of the Churches,6 shows that Catholicism and Nazi-Socialism agree on the following points:

“1. Both are mortal enemies of Bolshevism, Liberalism, and Relativism, that is to say, of the three deadly maladies from which our age is suffering, and which fiercely attack the work of the Church. The essential ideas of Nazi Socialism, together with the principle of liberty bound to authority, correspond exactly to the ideas that Popes Gregory and Pius IX endeavored to impose upon the 19th century, in face of a world which called itself progressive, and which received their teachings with sarcastic smiles. To this is added their common fight against Freemasonry.

“2. Their common fight against the Godless movement; against public immorality; against the stupid doctrine of equality, which is destructive of life; their fight for a rational and fertile structure of human society as desired by God, and for the corporative structure of the state as proposed by Popes Leo XIII and Pius XI (Quadragesima Anno); their common fight against a mode of life that is unnatural and deprived of all healthy traditions as encountered in great modern cities and workmen’s localities.

“3. By its principle of authority and government by a Leader, a principle upon which all national life rests, National Socialism combines the German and the Catholic attitude towards human life.

“4. Most important of all: National Socialism is a confession of faith; opposing, as it does, unbelief and destructive doubt it has convinced all classes of society that the outlook of the believer is not, as liberalism has taught, an attitude of inferiority, but one that carries man towards the total accomplishment of his destiny. And although the Catholic Church should never identify itself with any movement, it cannot afford to mists the opportunity of gratefully accepting the help of this powerful ally in the fight which she is carrying on against atheistic rationalism.”

This Catholic historian calls attention to the fact which American observers have failed to note, that Nazi-Fascism is but the outcome of events in which the Catholic Church has played a decisive role for centuries. He says that National Socialism is the “fulfilment of destiny,” and goes on to say:

5 Op cit p. 236 et seq.
6 p. 291 et seq.

“It was born originally out of the most profound tendencies of the epoch, of which it is the crowning act. Undoubtedly, we now have the right to speak of an essential transformation, of the birth of a veritable new era, the accomplishments of which will remain, A new epoch has opened which will serve religion and the Church, and which will be extraordinarily well armed to carry on the fight against atheism.”7

This, and much more, is quoted by Bishop Hudal to prove the fundamental identity of the aims and purposes of Catholicism and Nazi-Socialism. The Catholic bishops in the United States cannot afford to be as frank in supporting Nazi-Fascist ideology in this country. They cannot but admit, however, that their fellow-bishops in Nazi-Fascist countries have been correct in their analysis of the benefits which this anti-liberal and anti-democratic ideology will bring to the organization of Roman Catholicism.

7 Franz von Papen, a papal Knight and Hitler’s most successful henchman, declared in Der Volkischer Beobachter of January 14, 1934: “The Third Reich is the first power which not only recognizes, but which puts into practice the high principles of the Papacy.”

CHAPTER VII. The greatest Trojan horse of them all

A CLEVER MASQUERADE has always been characteristic of the political activities of Jesuit Catholicism. Jesuitry is a word in all our dictionaries that is defined as synonymous with subtle duplicity, indirection and disingenuousness. History is witness to the undeniable fact that the Jesuit Order, founded in 1540 for the express purpose of counter-Reformation, has excelled in the art of Machiavellian duplicity.1 It is an organization founded on military lines to fight for the political restoration of the Roman Papacy, and is the only order in the Catholic Church that binds its members by special oath for this purpose. It uses the deep-seated religious needs of the human heart in order to carry out a plan which is patently political and reactionary from the point of view of social matters.

This is a fact that must be borne in mind today in order to understand what is behind the onslaughts of what is known as Nazi- Fascism against the liberal constitutions of Protestant democratic countries. Present-day events appear as a mass of contradictions and confused paradoxes which, if they are to be fully understood, require a most acute analysis. In order to uncover the real forces which are playing for high stakes in the game, it is not sufficient to examine the mere surface of things as they happen. It is necessary to discover who is pulling the strings from behind the scenes. Otherwise we reach, not the real culprits, but only the puppets pushed out in front by their political masters to cover up and bear the brunt of the initial attack.

All the efforts so far made in America to fight the forces of Fascism, Nazism and Communism, in order to safeguard the gains of liberalism and democracy, have been frustrated by the fact that few have been aware that their chief strength lies in their ideology. Only now is it being slowly realized that they can never be overcome by fighting them merely along the lines of economic interests. But all that comes under the name of Fascism will never be successfully met until it is further fully realized that the essential foundation of its ideological factors is rooted in the past. Americans will never win out against it unless and until they bring to light the activating forces set in motion, long before Mussolini and Hitler, for the express purpose of arresting and eventually destroying the progress that followed upon the Protestant Reformation and the American and French Revolutions. Nazi-Fascism is not merely “Kaiserism with bad manners.” It is the spearhead of a hidden force which set out long ago to impose a new ideology upon the post-Reformation world.

1 Cf. the well-known Jesuit slogan: “Suaviter in modo, fortiter in re”- “Be suave in manner, aggressive in act”.

Religion, which has always been used by ambitious oppressors to serve the ends of their political power, is the mask to conceal their scheme of action. Although religion is the most sacred of man’s needs, it is the easiest and most effective cloak to hide a poisoned dagger from an enemy. It has always been used by political Catholicism as a Trojan horse with all the appurtenances of war safely concealed within its flanks. This is especially the case in liberal democratic countries like the United States, where a wealthy and powerful organization like the Church of Rome is safeguarded not only against open attack but even against mild and just criticism. American tolerance, leaning backwards, has forced a rigid policy on leading newspaper offices and bureaus of public information to treat the Church of Rome as a “sacred cow.” Just as the Trojans unsuspectingly accepted the mysterious horse thrust within their gates by the wily Greeks, so too has America stood in awe of the “sacred cow” of Catholicism and has never dared even to question its presence. Americans are justly fearful of being accused of religious bigotry and intolerance, since they have long prided themselves as guaranteeing religious liberty and freedom of expression to all comers. They have been thus without means to justify an open investigation of an organization suspected of concealing dynamite that, touched off by other dangerous forces, may explode in their midst and destroy the very Constitution that has enabled them to remain secure and prosperous themselves and tolerant to the Catholic church itself.

Observers in America’s ivory towers have been blinded to the real facts behind the present upheaval that threatens to wipe out every vistage of post-Reformation liberalism from the world. This is due in great part to that subtle duplicity which has enabled Jesuit Catholic forces to pave the way for, and cooperate with, Nazi- Fascism’s successful efforts to impose on the world an entirely new ideology, while at the same time making it appear in Protestant countries that the Catholic Church is on the side of democracy, is, in fact, one of the main bulwarks of democracy. Its real aim and purpose, however, can be known only by an examination of its activities before and since the rise of Fascism.

The Jesuits take a solemn oath to fight a crusade for “Catholic restoration,” the success of which has always depended first on the complete destruction of Protestantism and its increasing liberalizing effects on political and social life for the past four hundred years. For it was Protestantism that undermined the political power of the papacy in the past. It made religion a matter of individual choice; it liberated the individual from the authoritarianism of kings and popes; it freed the civil state from ecclesiastical interference; it caused non-Catholic governments to deny outright the vital claim of the Church of Rome to be, by divine right, a universal, independent entity and superior to all other forms of government; it took away from the Church of Rome direct control over all the institutions that go to make up the life of man—marriage, education, charitable, cultural and recreational activities. It is now accused by Catholic spokesmen as being the instigator of communism and atheism and the ally of world Jewry and Freemasonry.

Space permits only a very brief summary of the counter-Reformation activities of Jesuit Catholicism which led to the rise and present successes of Nazi-Fascism against the liberalizing effects of the Protestant Reformation. The Thirty Years War, the murderous reign of the Duke of Alva in the Netherlands, the massacre of St. Bartholomew and the bloody attempts at Catholic restoration in England, are visible, and terrifying examples of the anti-Protestant activities of the Jesuit Order in the past. It was they who instigated the Dreyfus Affair as a means to overthrow the French Republic and thus nullify the effects of the French Revolutions of 1789 and 1848. For these, in the Jesuit view, were also the result of the Protestant Reformation.

“The Revolutions of 1789 and 1848.” says the Jesuit Father Hammerstein, 2 “were the result of the Reformation. And today we are faced with a choice of an alternative: either to live in a Socialism during these last years of heresy [Protestantism] or to infect public life with the principles of Christianism, that is to say ‘Catholic principles.’ Anything else is but half-measure.”

Hitler himself admits that he was helped by the methods of the Jesuit counter-Reformation to carry on his ideological war. His use of brute force against all opposing convictions and philosophical opinions is the result of the fact, as he says,3 that “I made a rigorous analysis of analogous cases which are to be met with in history, especially in the domain of religion.”

But it was not until after “World War I that the active plan for Catholic restoration began to take shape. Before the coming of Pope Pius XI, in 1922, the Catholic church had been forced into a more or less defensive position towards the liberal spirit of modern times. But with the election of this admittedly pro-Jesuit and pro-Fascist pope, Mussolini and Hitler also appeared on the scene, and in combination with them the Catholic church took the offensive. The following, from the historical work of Karl Boka,4 an ardent supporter of Catholic restoration, is to the point:

“At this decisive moment the Pope seized the reins and took into his hands the unified control of all fields of endeavor in which his predescessors had distinguished themselves. This was the beginning of Catholic Action of far-reaching importance, of the entrance of the church into the fight, into the battle for moral and religious renovation, and for the reform of social institutions. And this intervention had for its end the destruction of the liberal spirit of the 19th century and the triumph of the Christian Idea.”

Since then we have witnessed Catholicism’s open support of every step taken by Nazi-Fascism to impose authoritarian regimes upon all peoples: its active cooperation in the systematic oppression exercised by the Fascist regime in Italy itself; its secret agreement with Hitler’s National Socialism (the Vatican was the first to recognize Hitler’s regime); its support of Mussolini’s shameful conquest of Ethiopia and even of Japan’s invasion of China; its open alliance with Franco in his rebellion against the Spanish Republic; its joy at the annexation of Austria to Nazi Germany and the obliteration of democratic Czechoslovakia; its part in the final triumph of Leon Degrelle’s Rexist Party in Belgium and its fulsome praise for the French Fascist State which under “good Marshal Petain,” took the place of the defunct French Republic. After Pearl Harbor the Vatican accepted General Ken Harada as Ambassador from Tokyo to the Holy See.

2 In his book, The Church and the State, p. 132. published before the first world war in England, when he was professor of Canon Law at Dutton Hall.
3 Cf. Mein Kampf, p. 186.
4 Staat und Parteien. p. 75, Max Niehams Verlag, Zurich and Leipzig.

The full account of events in Germany from 1918 till the rise of Hitler to power has yet to be written. But it cannot be denied that they were cleverly maneuvered to their outcome by the machinations of Jesuit diplomacy. The owning classes, whose liberalism was less an expression of ideal convictions than of material interests, were gripped with the fear of the growth of socialism under the Weimar Republic. By clever propaganda, Roman Catholic forces succeeded in convincing them that an hierarchical church was their best protection against the attacks of the “lower classes.” On the other hand, they used the anti-liberalism of German socialists to prove to these latter that political Catholicism and the socialist movement, both opponents of this liberalism, could form a solid basis for common action in the domain of political action.

The coalition between the Social-Democrats and the Catholic Center Party was the result of this maneuver; in reality it was an unconscious submission of the former to Jesuit Catholicism, which was thus enabled to use Catholic democratic politicians and the anti-Jesuits for its own ends. It was so cleverly done that the real aim of the Jesuits was not realized until Pope Pius XI dissolved the Catholic Center Party and thus left the way clear for Hitler’s rise to power. In all this, Hitler had the cooperation of Monsignor Kaas, the real head of the Catholic Center Party. The role played by former Chancellor Briining, the political leader of the Party, is as obscure as that of his ill-fated colleague Schuschnigg. The present pope, Pius XII, was papal nuncio in Bavaria at that time and was well known to have been an enemy of the German Republic. After Hitler came to power he was sent as nuncio to Berlin and immediately drew up a concordat between Hitler and Pope Pius XI. Shrewd Franz von Papen, a favorite protege of the Jesuits, also played an important part in preparing the way for Hitler’s final victory over the Social-Democrats and all other parties in the Reichstag.

And if we look closely into present happenings in our own Western Hemisphere we cannot fail to note a cautious, yet aggressive pro-Fascist and anti-liberal trend in all official Catholic utterances. American democracy’s greatest danger is Fascist penetration of the Latin-American Republics, whose way of life has always been controlled by the Church of Rome. Evidences are plentiful that this Nazi-Fascist penetration has the support of the Catholic Church.5 The Catholic press in the United States ridiculed and openly resented the attempt of the United States to “impose its will” on the Pan-American Conference held at Havana in 1942 to countract Nazi-Fascist efforts in South American countries. The close observer will not fail to note the pronounced anti-Semitic, anti-Masonic, anti-British and pro-Fascist tone of official Catholic periodicals and newspapers. They also pooh-poohed any need of compulsory military training in this country, and instructed the Catholic people to write to their senators and representatives in Washington to protest against efforts to pass the Burke-Wadsworth bill. They accuse the Jews and the Masons and liberal organizations of being the real “fifth columnists” against whom Mr. Hoover and his FBI should take action.6 Montreal’s Catholic Mayor Houde in 1940 openly defined Canada’s law requiring national registration for home defense, and urged the citizens of Canada’s largest city to disobey the law.

Political ecclesiasticism, which thus makes use of man’s need of religion to serve its thirst for power, forfeits the right to be called religious.

5 Cf. N. Y. Times’ report from Bogota, Colombia, June 3, 1940.
6 For confirmation of these facts, see issues of the Jesuit magazine America, N. Y. Catholic News, Brooklyn Catholic Tablet, Social Justice, et al. for 1940-41.

CHAPTER VIII. Nazi socialism and Catholic restoration

CATHOLIC ACTION, instituted by Pope Pius XI, is a generic term for Catholic reform and reconstruction—the restoration of Catholicism to the position of authority which it held over the nations before the Reformation. It has a two-fold object: a purge of liberal elements within the church itself, and the complete destruction of Protestantism and its liberalizing effects in those countries which threw off the yoke of the papacy in the past. Catholic Action was brought into being coincidentally with the rise of Nazi-Fascism, and was later consolidated by the Lateran Pact with Mussolini in 1929, and by the concordat with Nazi Socialism in 1933. It gained its objectives to a large extent in Europe through the military might and fifth column methods of its Nazi-Fascist partner.

It can be safely said that Nazi-Fascism and Jesuitism, the two greatest reactionary forces in the world today, are but two facets of the same unity—one civil, and the other ecclesiastical. For an authoritarian civil State cannot function properly without the help of an authoritarian ecclesiastical system. It is nonetheless true, though not sufficiently recognized, that a free electoral State is impossible without the spiritual support and nourishment of a free church.

Nazi-Fascism’s anti-Semitic ideology, its anti-Masonic and antidemocratic activities, its propaganda methods, the hierarchical structure of its organization, and even its war program, were copied from the Jesuit Order. The crusades of the Middle Ages also began with persecution of the Jews, and were preceded by a purging within the church itself. Likewise a brutal cleansing within Catholicism preceded the wars of religion instigated by the Jesuits in the 16th and 17th centuries. Its object was to rid Catholicism of the heretical Protestant influences which had arisen within the church’s organization before and after Martin Luther’s time. It is in the light of these events that Nazi Socialism’s fight with all the churches in Germany must be regarded. On the one hand, it was an attempted purge of recalcitrant elements within the Catholic Church which had been infected with liberal and Protestant ideas during the post-war years in Germany under the Weimar Republic. On the other hand, it was a fight against Protestantism and its liberal institutions which had been afforded still greater scope for development after the fall of the monarchy in 1918. The fight was carried out, in both instances, according to the traditional methods of Jesuit strategy.

Many Americans, however, do not see it in this light. They think only of the fact that the Hitler regime in the beginning interned Catholic priests in concentration camps because they refused to obey his dictates; that heads of religious orders were brought to trial for smuggling money out of the country; that some of the members of religious orders were arrested and found guilty of crimes against morals; that some priests were imprisoned for allegedly harboring communists; that the Hitlerites turned against Cardinal Faulhaber, Cardinal Innitzer and the Bishop of Salzburg; that public school education was taken out of the hands of the priests in Austria; that the Catholic Center Party was annihilated and its members persecuted; that its leader, Dr. Klausner, was assassinated on June 30, 1934, in Hitler’s “blood purge.” These and other facts are at times cited to show that Nazi Socialism seems to be actively opposed to the Catholic Church. They are, however, merely facts whose real significance is hidden beneath the surface. In reality, they are not indications of a war against the Catholic Church as a whole, but only against certain groups opposed to a corresponding plan of reconstruction and Fascist regimentation instituted at the same time by Pope Pius XI within the church itself. Hitler, Goebbels, von Papen, and the greatest part of the highest officials in the Third Reich are Catholics by birth and education.

The popular confusion about the relations between the Catholic Church and Nazi Socialism is due to the fact that few people have any precise knowledge of the inner workings of the Catholic Church. They have been led to believe that Catholicism is a rigidly uniform system. The truth of the matter is that it is not the wonderful unity that it is generally supposed to be. Like all natural and historical phenomena, the Catholic Church is also subject to the law of polarity and philosophical contradictions. It has always had its conservative, reactionary element pitted against opposing liberal groups. In order, therefore, to understand fully the status of the Catholic Church in relation to Nazi Socialism it is necessary to know the details of these opposing tendencies and forces within the church’s organization. History alone can furnish the key to the mystery.

An outstanding Catholic historian, Josef Schmidlin, draws a clear picture of the different factions which existed within the Catholic Church towards the end of the 19th century, and how victory for the intransigent Jesuit party led to the rise of Fascism. The following, from his History of the Popes of Modern Times,1 is to the point:

“The history of the Popes during the 19th century presents a succession of divergent systems following each other like a game of opposites and of warring forces striving for the mastery, with first one side winning and then another. On one side are the zealots striving in an intransigent and intolerant manner to preserve fixed traditions and orthodoxy, and who take a hostile attitude towards the progress of modern civilization and the liberal victories that followed on the great revolutions, which are the unremitting enemies of the [Catholic] Church, the State and the principle of authority. On the other side are the liberals who, actuated by a more equitable political sense, endeavor to break free from the traditional restraints bound up with the ideas of old, and who try to reconcile themselves with modern progress in order to live in peace with liberal states and governments, and to integrate the church, as a spiritual force, in contemporary civilization.

“From the beginning this war-like game of opposites has been going on within the Roman Curia, and especially within the College of Cardinals. It is most evident in the papal conclaves which become the stage for this play of divergent tendencies, which are afterwards openly expressed in the attitudes of successive pontiffs. For the popes support one or the other of these tendencies and personify them by the conduct of their internal and foreign policies after mounting the papal throne.”

Thus it can be seen that the Catholic Church has been torn between two main irreconcilable factions, corresponding to the two opposing ideologies of Fascism and Democracy, which are warring to the death at present all over the world. They are two distinct parties whose effects are felt in all ecclesiastical groups in the church. They are particularly active during times of papal elections, and at all times go beyond the field of religion and profoundly affect political and social affairs. Their effect can easily be seen in every phase of social and political life in the United States.2

1 Vol. III, p. 1.

The fight between these two opposing factions has been increasingly evident since the time of the Encyclopedists. The spirit of progress had developed so strongly in the 18th century, even within the Catholic Church, that Pope Clement XIV was able to succeed, where other popes had failed, in completely suppressing the Society of Jesuits which represented, then as now, the intolerant and intransigent element of Catholicism. In spite of Pope Clement’s irrevocable decree, however, the Jesuits were again restored to power by Pope Pius VII after the fall of Napoleon in 1814.’3 But the liberal Catholic groups, which recognized to a certain extent the victories won by the French Revolution, managed to exist side by side with the Jesuit reactionary group which has always regarded the liberal progress of civilization as something pernicious and diabolic. The progressive groups did all they could to bring the teachings of the church into line with modern philosophic doctrines, and thereby incurred the increasing enmity of the Jesuit faction. They showed themselves skeptical of relic and saint worship and of religious sentimentalities in general. Moreover, they made no secret of their hostility to the Jesuits. The Benedictine Order, long ante-dating the Jesuits, greatly angered the latter by their efforts in promoting what is known as the “Liturgical Movement”— a return to Evangelical Christianity and an attempt to cleanse Catholic worship of modern innovations and superstitions, such as wonder-working devotions to the saints. They aimed this especially at the Jesuits’ pet devotion of the “Sacred Heart,” which has since been outdone, however, by more modern fads like the Little Flower devotion. The Jesuits fought back by their usual underhand methods of playing on the fears of bishops and secular priests and even by sending members of their order, disguised as laymen, to spy on the Benedictines, as was done at the Benedictine Abbey of Maria Laach near Cologne.

2 Cf. The Catholic Church in Politics, a series of six factual articles by L. H. Lehmann in The New Republic, Nov.-Dec., 1938.
3 The Jesuits lost heavily during their 40 years of banishment. Before their suppression they controlled practically all educational work in European Catholic countries. In 1749 they had 639 colleges with up to 2,000 students in each; in France alone they had 40,000 students.

A severe blow to the hopes of liberal Catholic groups was the Syllabus of Errors decreed by Pope Pius IX at Jesuit insistence. One of these “errors,” in particular, fairly took the ground from under the feet of those who had striven for a more progressive and liberal Catholicism. In complete accord with traditional Jesuit intransigence, Pope Pius IX solemnly condemned the proposition that “the Roman Pontiff can and ought to reconcile himself to, and agree with, liberalism and modern civilization.”

The history of the Catholic Church entered a new phase with the proclamation of the dogma of the personal infallibility of the pope, which was also railroaded through the Vatican Council (1870) by the machinations of the Jesuits. This was the severest blow of all to the liberal elements, and certain groups hostile to the Jesuits followed Doellinger out of the church and established themselves as the Catholic Christian Church. But the vast majority of those who had fought the Jesuits and opposed the dogma of infallibility bowed their heads and submitted with resignation. Bishop Fitzgerald of Little Rock, Arkansas, held out till the end and voted against it. Archbishop Kenrick of St. Louis and five other American bishops left the Council and returned home without voting.

From that time the forces of reaction fought on, invisible from the outside, but all the more effectively because they worked by intrigue and trickery. The popes themselves often aided this underhand working—at times they covered up the real intent of the Jesuits and, at other times, they restrained them lest their excessive zeal should wreck the Vatican’s other political maneuvers. In order to prevent the news of the increasingly bitter controversies waged at papal conclaves from reaching the public, Pope Pius XI imposed an oath of perpetual silence on everyone connected with them in the future.

All these developments paved the way for the Vatican’s ecclesiastical support for the coming Fascism. There followed a rapidly increasing trend in Catholic action in favor of rigorously authoritarian, conservative and solely hierarchical policies. Apparent yielding to contrary policies in democratic countries did not in any way affect Rome’s fixed goal. It merely served to help its attainment, since it was able to employ what are now known as fifth column methods by using to its own purposes freedom of speech and religious tolerance in those countries. Once democracy and freedom of speech have been obliterated by military might, as in Nazi-Fascist controlled countries in Europe, the real authoritarian and intolerant nature of Jesuit Catholicism comes to light. It immediately proclaims itself the ecclesiastical counterpart of civil dictatorship. What has happened in France since its capitulation to Hitler and Mussolini is a clear case of this. Likewise in Germany the Catholic bishops in 1940 decreed a solemn oath of loyalty to Nazi Socialism,4 and in Slovakia in the same year the governmental structure of that country was publicly and officially declared to be a combination of Nazi Socialism and Roman Catholicism.

Catholic historians do not trouble to deny that the success of Fascism is to a great extent due to the reactionary policies of the late Pope Pius XI. Josef Schmidlin,5 already quoted, in spite of his prudence in the matter, states:

4 A Vatican dispatch to the N. Y. Times of Sept. 17, 1940, stated that the pope had decided that it was more ependient to defer official pronouncement on this pledge till the end of the war.
5 Op. cit., p. 3.

“This conservative heritage appears not only by the fact that the Pope (Pius XI) allied the church to the Fascist state, but also by the fact that he seeks to deprive the clergy and Catholicism of all political activity and strongly supports Catholic Action, which is based upon the principle of an absolute hierarchy.”

Schmidlin also points out that liberal Catholic groups during the reign of Pius XI placed their last and only hope in the election of a liberal pope to succeed him. By the selection of the aristocratic, conservative Cardinal Pacelli as Pius XII, that hope was forever frustrated.

The Fascist policies of the Vatican can be seen from the following four points:

1. In the application of “modern” methods of political action, that is, fascist methods,

2. In the opposition to the one-time Catholic (popular) political parties.

3. In the distrust of the lower clergy, because of its too tolerant attitude toward pre-Fascist ideas of individual rights and liberties.

4. In the creation of a movement of restoration, Catholic Action, entirely dependent upon Vatican bureaucracy.

Much of the mystery of Vatican relations with Nazi-Fascism can thus be solved. Persecution of the Catholic Church in Germany has been directed only against those elements which did not entirely submit to the ever-increasing centralization of authority in Church and State. To this end the Vatican helped to crush out the Catholic popular parties both in Italy and Germany and centralized all political matters in Rome. This insured to the dictators freedom from popular interference on the part of Catholics; it established a more complete dictatorial regime within the Catholic Church itself; it enabled the Vatican to enter into secret concordats with fascist countries already existing, and with democratic countries, like Spain, France, Belgium and Portugal, after the destruction of their democratic governments by revolution and blitzkrieg. Finally it left the way dear for complete harmony and unity between Nazi-Fascism and Jesuit Catholicism.

CHAPTER IX. Hitler’s fight against the churches

THE FULL STORY of the rise of Nazi-Fascism has still to be written. When it appears it will surprise most Americans to discover the part played in it by the Christian Churches— Protestant as well as Catholic. For Nazi-Fascism was as much a product of the Churches as of the State, and a movement towards religious as well as political and social authoritarianism. European Catholic historians immediately recognized it as the final act in the Jesuit plan of counter-Reformation instituted exactly four hundred years before—in 1940.

Americans will never fully understand the real aims and activities of the Church of Rome so long as they continue to look at Catholicism from our American point of view. On this side of the Atlantic attention has been focussed mainly on attempts of a few “liberal” Catholic spokesmen to integrate their Church with the American way of life. These are sincere in thinking that Catholic authoritarianism can be reconciled with the liberal, tolerant principles of American democracy.¹ But the Church of Rome has its roots in Europe; there its metaphysic was first established. It is therefore to its background and activities in Europe we must look if we want to judge what its real nature is. It is the policy determined upon “beyond the Alps” in Europe that directs and guides the Catholic Church even in America. Well-meaning Catholic spokesmen in the democracies are permitted to voice their liberal views, but their wishful thinking has never had any effect in really bringing the Catholic Church into line with our American democratic way of life.

¹ Cf. for example, the article of Rev. John F. Cronin, S. S., Rome—Ally of Democracy! in the magazine Common Sense for October, 1940.

This issue has been bitterly fought out in Europe between Nazi- Fascism and the Christian churches. As far as Europe is concerned the fight is ended—with victory on the side of Nazi-Fascism and Catholic ultramontanism. In Italy, Spain, Austria, Poland, Portugal, France and Belgium, Catholicism alone was involved. In Germany, however, both the Protestant and Catholic Churches have played their respective parts. There the struggles were as bitter, and purges as bloody, within the Churches as within the State. They were more severe and bloody within Protestantism than Catholicism; many more liberal Protestant leaders than Catholic were liquidated or put out of the way in concentration camps. By refusing to make any concessions to Nazism, the Evangelical Protestant Churches are said to have actually paved the way for the success of the “German Christian” movement. These “German Christians”—Protestant Fascists—professed to consider it necessary to submit to a spiritual leader in order to free Protestantism of liberalism and rationalism. They thus became one with the Catholic Fascists who, in keeping with the Catholic Action crusade of Pope Pius XI, were purging every taint of liberalism and democracy out of the Catholic clergy and were bringing the Catholic Church in Germany into line with pure Vatican absolutism. Gonzague de Reynold, ardent Jesuit Catholic reformer, in his book L’Europe Tragique,2 states:

“A real fight has been waged within Protestantism. The Evangelical Protestants refused to make any concessions and established a confessional church in opposition to that set up by the state . . . We are on the threshold of a religious schism. These are the final repercussions of the Reformation. We are witnessing a phase of dissolution [of Protestantism]. Many German Protestants believe that to reject a purely religious authority like the Papacy, would constitute a danger to the church and to Christianity.”

In order to understand what happened to the Catholic Church in Germany, it is necessary to go back to the time of Pope Leo XIII, well known for his unrelenting antagonism to the liberal constitutions of states.3 In order to counteract the increasing influence of 19th century liberalism on Catholic countries, Pope Leo XIII urged on Catholic leaders throughout the world the formation of Catholic political parties. He thought that if such Catholic parties took an active part in parliamentary politics they would, by securing the balance of power, succeed in obtaining victory for the Church. He even hoped that these Catholic political parties would eventually obtain a large enough majority, by democratic means, to enable them to seize complete control of governments. What actually happened, however, was the very opposite. The Catholic parties gradually came under the influence of their liberal opponents and copied many of their ideas. Thus in Italy the Catholic party became the “popular” liberal party headed by the now-exiled priest Don Sturzo; in Germany it became the liberal “Center” party.

2 P. 329.
3 Cf. Great Encyclical Letters of Leo XIII—also The Converted Catholic for October, 1940, p. 19.

This liberal influence of Catholic parties became so great that the Holy See began to regard Catholic political trends as a grave danger which actually threatened the juridical and political unity of the Church itself. These Catholic parties became infiltrated with the liberal spirit of the French Revolution of 1789. The ideas of the rights of man, of religious tolerance, of freedom of conscience, of speech and press, were adopted by a great number of Catholic politicians and by many of the lower clergy.

So pronounced had this trend of popular Catholic politics become in the United States, for instance, that when Alfred E. Smith was nominated for the Presidency in 1928, the Vatican and Catholic bishops in Europe were shocked to hear that Mr. Smith had been prompted by priests to proclaim these principles to be, not a mere matter of “favor” (as he first stated) but also a matter of “innate right.”4 This was rank heresy, and, after Mr. Smith’s defeat at the polls in 1928, the Vatican rebuked those who had advised the former Governor of New York to proclaim doctrines so contrary to official Catholic teachings.

By the end of the First World War, the Catholic political parties had begun to lose the importance which they had, in the eyes of the Vatican when it first brought them into being. They became so integrated with democratic States, founded as they were on political compromise, on tolerance and the idea of equality, that it was confusing to note the alliances made by some Catholic parties with bourgeois groups and by others with socialist groups. It had become apparent that the control of Catholic politics was being lost by the Holy See in Rome. Pope Leo XIII’s plan had miscarried, and had proved a boomerang against the real aims of the Church as he had proclaimed them. Catholic political action had acquired an independence that made it a menace to. rather than a docile instrument of, the Vatican. Liberal Catholicism, in fact, which, to all appearance, had received its death-blow by the decree of papal infallibility towards the end of the 19th century, had taken on a new lease of life by means of the very Catholic political parties which had been established and sustained by Pope Leo XIII to oppose the hated liberal constitutions of democratic States.

4 Cf. Alfred E. Smith’s reply to the Open Letter of the late Charles C. Marshall in Forum Magazine, March, 1928; also Mr. Marshall’s able work The Roman Catholic Church in the Modern State.

This is how the Vatican saw it after the First World War, and the conclusions which it drew from its observations in the matter were the first steps towards the rise of what we now call Fascism.

Many of the non-Jesuit religious orders in Germany, notably the Franciscans and the Benedictines, started movements which displeased the Vatican. The “Liturgical Movement” of the Benedictines; their attempt to establish contact with the Oecumenical Evangelical Movement, and their effort towards a reunion of all Christian Churches; the attitude of the Patres Unionis (“Fathers of Unity”) who were even prepared to modify the dogmas of papal infallibility and the Immaculate Conception in order to help their work of reunion; their open and secret negotiations with groups in the Anglican Church under the guidance of the late Cardinal Mercier—all these liberal reform movements were regarded as tainting the lower clergy and the intelligent laity with the heresy of liberalism and Protestantism. The Vatican regarded its authority as gravely menaced by it all, and determined to wage relentless war against this growing liberalism in political and spiritual matters.

It should not be surprising that Rome became disturbed at the prospect of a revival of the Lutheran Reformation. It was particularly marked in Germany. Friedrich Heiler5 has the following to say on this point:

“These recent tendencies of Catholicism have spread to a great extent in Germany. German Catholicism is in fact a particular kind of Catholicism, due to the fact that it has been subject, continually if not visibly, to the influence of the reformed churches of Christendom, and has constantly absorbed certain features belonging to Evangelical Christianity.”

5 Professor at the University of Marburg, in his work, Im Ringen um die Kirche, p. 175 et seq.

But the democratic States were the most powerful in the world at that time. The Catholic political parties had become too strong to be stopped by mild protests or even by encyclical letters from Rome. Repressive action, carried out by the help of authoritarian secular regimes, was necessary. Thus the two great opposing factions within the Catholic Church became locked again in a gigantic struggle: one possessing the Evangelical Catholic idea, deep-seated as of old in the hearts of true Christian believers; the other, the coldly imperial, sectarian and intransigent Roman Party, represented by the Holy See under the domination of the Society of Jesuits.

It is in the light of these facts that Hitler’s “campaign against the churches” must be viewed. Neither Hitler nor the Jesuits could forgive priests and bishops in Germany who sided with the cause of liberalism and democracy during the Weimar Republic. It was against them that the acts of Catholic repression were directed. Hitler and Pope Pius XI acted in concert to destroy every vestige of liberalism in Germany: the one in social and political life, the other in the sphere of religion. By dissolving the Catholic Center Party, the Pope removed the last obstacle to Hitler’s rise to power, and also deprived the Catholic people and clergy in Germany of any say-so in political matters. He had done the same for Mussolini in Italy by the dissolution of the Partito Popolare and the exiling of its priest-leader Don Sturzo. By his Catholic Action he concentrated all Catholic political power in the Holy See. Thenceforth, the Vatican was free to make arbitrary concordats with the Fascist dictatorships.

The lower clergy in Germany did not yield without a struggle. Many defied both Hitler and the Pope. Some priests were imprisoned. Even when the pristine ardor of Cardinal Innitzer for Hitler and Nazi Socialism showed signs of cooling, hostility was engineered against him. Catholic schools, mostly under the care of liberal, non-Jesuit religious orders, were closed; some heads of these anti-Jesuit religious orders were punished for attempting to save their funds by smuggling them out of the country. In the press of America this was called “Hitler’s persecution of the Catholic Church,” and served to conceal the common purpose of Nazi Socialism and ultramontane Catholicism. There were some mild protests from Rome but no adverse action. Even the closing of Catholic schools in Austria went almost unprotested. These were regarded by the Vatican as but a small loss compared to what was gained by the elimination of disobedient priests and their liberal views. The Nazi-Vatican concordat continues to hold and function.

With the extinction of liberal Catholicism and the imprisonment of liberal Protestant leaders, Vatican absolutism was triumphant. Of supreme satisfaction to the Jesuit Catholic faction was the knowledge of the apparent dissolution of Protestantism in Germany, and the fact that the pro-Nazi Protestant “German Christians” were forced to realize, as Gonzague de Reynolds points out, that “to reject a purely religious authority like the papacy would constitute a danger to the Church and Christianity.”

CHAPTER X. National socialism and Catholic action

CATHOLIC ACTION—the crusade for Jesuit-Catholic Reform— has the following characteristics:

1. Its direction, as laid down in Pope Pius XI’s Encyclical Quadragesimo Anno, is explicitly entrusted to the Society of Jesus.

2. Its aims are: the extermination of the hated liberal spirit of the 19th century; the formation of a world crusade against socialism and communism; the success of the counter-Reformation.

3. The means to obtain these ends are: the annihilation of the old Catholic political parties, which became impregnated with the “democratic ideology, and the purging of the secular clergy, the religious orders and the laity in so far as they persist in holding to non-Jesuit opinions in matters of ecclesiastical policy.

4. The most suitable political regime to assure the success of this crusade for Catholic reconstruction is the hierarchical, authoritarian form of the Fascist state or of Nazi Socialism.

The secular clergy of the Catholic Church in Germany and other European countries have always secretly fostered a democratic tradition, and for many years considered it their principal task to live in peace with Protestantism and the liberal institutions of the modern world. For this reason they constituted the chief obstacle in the way of the Catholic Reconstruction Movement initiated by the late Pope Pius XL They were not friendly to the idea of the corporate state, to the plan of the new crusade, nor to the Vatican’s aim to set up complete papal absolutism. Unlike the Irish-dominated clergy in America, the Catholic clergy of France and of Germany and other European countries have never fully identified the pope himself with the seat of power in Rome. They acquiesced in taking their religion from Rome but not their politics, nor in accepting the Vatican’s direction of extra-spiritual matters in their respective countries.

In modern times, the European Catholic clergy veered increasingly to the idea that it was advisable to encourage Christian tolerance and friendly relations with all religious sects, even with those who belonged to no Church. Many were persuaded that the day would come when all the Christian Churches could be united on a basis of a universal Evangelical reform within the Catholic-Church. This liberal reform would be aimed at the overthrow of the “jurisdictional” papacy, with its unscriptural, political Roman Curia and its claims to ecclesiastical absolutism; it would be a reform against papal imperialism, against Jesuit-fascist discipline and overlordship. It would aim to set up an “Evangelical” Papacy which, freed of political ambitions, would act as a center of Evangelical unity for all Churches of Christendom. This would indeed be true Catholic reform—a second Reformation, the setting up of Evangelical Catholicism. It would mean the purging of medieval accretions of doctrine and liturgy and. of course, the complete banishment again of the Jesuits from the Church and the world, as was accomplished by Pope Clement XIV in 1773.

All such aims and plans for a liberal, Evangelical reform, however, fell within the explicit condemnations of religious tolerance and the liberal, democratic idea by Jesuit-controlled popes during the past 150 years. The late General of the Jesuits, Wernz, in his treatise on Canon Law,1 says:

“As concerns the relations of the Catholic Church with other religious associations, there is no doubt that all religious associations of unbelievers and all the Christian sects are regarded by the Catholic Church as entirely illegitimate and devoid of all right of existence. These organizations are formally rebels against the Church. As a consequence, he is in grave error who believes that the different religious sects, such as, for example, the Anglicans, the Lutherans, the Orthodox Catholics, constitute legitimate parts of a universal Church of Christ, and that they are in some way collateral branches of the Catholic Church, or sister Churches.”

Against this hope for true Catholic, reform that would have brought about a tolerant, Evangelical Catholic Christian Church, the Jesuits swept the field for an absolutely totalitarian set-up in Catholicism to go hand-in-hand with the Nazi-Fascist regime in the secular order. On their side they had Hitler himself who, as far as condemnation of religious tolerance is concerned, has always shown himself to be a better Catholic than the ordinary European priest and many bishops. In Mein Kampf he upholds and approves of the dogmatic intolerance of the Vatican party in the Catholic Church; like the Jesuits he regards religious tolerance as an effective instrument for the establishment and support of the liberal aims of the Jews and Freemasons;2 his chief cause of complaint against the clergy of the Center Party in Germany was that they had allowed themselves to become convinced of the idea of tolerance, and that they had made alliances with these deadly enemies of the Christian religion; he holds that his principal task is the combatting of this deplorable situation from which religion has suffered so much.3 He also condemns Protestantism for persisting in its tolerant attitude towards Judaism; he adds, however, that

“the believing Protestant who belongs to National Socialism could exist side by side with the fervent Catholic without his religious convictions being in any way affected thereby”.4

This yielding of Catholics to the liberal tendencies of religious tolerance was regarded by the Jesuits as the “Protestantizing” of Catholicism; to correct this they deemed that drastic, punitive measures were imperative. The late Jesuit Cardinal Billot expresses true Jesuit contempt for this yielding of the secular clergy to liberalizing tendencies, and also advocates the severity that should be meted out to them, when he speaks of

“the poor little parish priests who fill the greater part of our religious magazines and periodicals with their speeches, seeking thereby to create a new apologetic to take the place of the miracles which the 20th century no longer understands. There are but two replies to make to this: the first is the whip . . .” 5

This is in perfect keeping with Mussolini’s symbol of the fasces or bundle of rods, such as he and his Nazi partner have so ruthlessly employed to scourge Europe of every vestige of liberty and tolerance. Thus, Hitler’s program of Catholic “repression” is but the carrying out of the Jesuit punitive measures, and a part of the plan for Catholic reform against those members of the Catholic clergy in all countries who have opposed Jesuit hegemony over Catholic affairs.6 Catholic Action, like Nazi-Fascism, ostensibly started out as a crusade against Godless communism which, the Jesuits say, is but the radical application of the Protestant principle of the separation of Church and State. They hold that communism is the extreme of Protestantism predicted by the Jesuits since their founding by Ignatius Loyola to fight the Reformation of Martin Luther, and is the result of the wrong principle that the internal life of the individual is the only place where he should be allowed to seek satisfaction for his religious needs. The Jesuits therefore launched their new offensive principally against Soviet Russia, the first country since the Wars of Religion that seriously threatened to undermine their work of counter-Reformation. They have found it more menacing to their aims than Protestant England was in the 16th and 17th centuries. By completely separating the State from the influence of all forms of religion, the communists have tried to make religion a purely private matter and by this means to effect the complete liberation of the individual and the conduct of civil affairs from all ecclesiastical influences. Because of this, the Jesuits identify Protestantism and democracy with socialism and communism and seek to destroy them together with all movements to the left of Fascism and Nazism.

1 Cf. his Jus Decretalium. Vol. 1. p. 13.
2 German edition, p. 345.
3 Ib,, p. 294.
4 Ib., p. 632.
5 Die erste ist die Peitsche . . .” in Hugo Koch’s Katholizismus und Jesuitismus. p. 53.
6 The German bishops, the Catholic Popular Association and the Center Party opposed the re-entry of the Jesuits into Germany in 1910. Because of this the Jesuits regarded the German bishops as “recalcitrants”; cf. Hoensbroech, The Jesuit Order, p. 248.

Catholic Action, similar to Nazi-Fascism, will not be content with any half-hearted reform in Catholicism. Just as a brutal war campaign against democratic nations has been deemed necessary in Nazi-Fascist policy, so a brutal cleansing within the church, even at the risk of some loss to Catholicism as a whole, is a necessary part of the Jesuit program of Catholic Reconstruction. Gonzague de Reynold, one of the most ardent zealots of the movement, whom we have already quoted in these pages, frankly admits that the wiping out of these Protestant tendencies (liberalism and socialism) constitutes the first problem of religion, namely, of Roman Catholicism, and that the new “Christian regime” which will come about as a result of this desired Catholic Reconstruction of the social order, will have to be Fascist, since, as he says, “Fascism has been the only successful attempt to create a new regime.”7 The Italian socialist, L. Segni,8 confirms this when he states that

“Fascism is an epiphenomenon in keeping with the evolution of the Catholic Church as directed by the tactics of the Jesuits.”

7 Cf. L’Europe Tragique, p. 93.
8 In his book, L’Esprit du Fascisme, p. 15 et seq.

CHAPTER XI. Rexism and Catholic action

NOWHERE has Catholic Action shown itself more in line with Nazi-Fascism than in Belgium where Leon Degrelle’s Rexist Party in 1940 came into its own. Pope Pius XI gave the Jesuit slogan Christus Rex1—”Christ the King”—to Catholic Action as the battle-cry for its crusade for Catholic Reconstruction of the social order. The same cry, Viva Christo Rey, was used by Franco’s Fascists in their war against the legitimate Republican government of Spain. It was the war cry of the fanatic Mexican Indians who were spurred on by the Jesuits to commit acts of sabotage against the Republican government of Mexico. It was also the cry of the Spanish Rebel officers who, with the help of their Moorish troops, tortured, violated and slaughtered nearly 15,000 men, women and children at Badajos.

The Rexists in Belgium claimed the honor of being the first fruits of Catholic Action, the “Christian Fronters” of Belgium. Their leader, Leon Degrelle—the Belgian peasants nicknamed him “Adolf” Degrelle—was won over to the movement by Monsignor Picard, when he was a student at the University of Louvain. He and all his assistants are products of Jesuit training.2 He became the great “lay apostle” of Catholic Action in the Jesuit drive to align the Catholic Church with Nazi-Fascist plans for the “new order” in Europe after the destruction of liberalism and democracy.

As the scope of Degrelle’s activities increased, his Christ-the- King movement was temporarily separated from Catholic Action in Belgium with the consent of the hierarchy. This maneuver was designed to give the Rexists greater liberty of action to work out Nazi-Fascist policies. Thereupon the apparently independent “Rexist Popular Front” was set up, ostensibly to fight “Jewish Communism,” much on the same lines as Father Coughlin’s “Christian Front” in America. Degrelle’s chief officer was the White Russian Denizoff, who was Secretary to the last President of the Council in the Czarist regime. Today Degrelle is Hitler’s right-hand man in Nazi-occupied Belgium where no signs of disagreement are apparent between the Catholic hierarchy and the Nazi invaders.3 He has organized his own storm troopers, formations de combat he calls them, and is fast bringing Belgium into close collaboration with Hitler’s new order. In a heavily censored dispatch from Liege to the New York Times on January 6, 1941, Degrelle said:

“We must make our choice now. We have faith in the Fuehrer as the greatest man of our times. Trust his spirit, his genius, and have faith in the Europe which he will build up. The youth of all Europe is today fighting shoulder to shoulder for a new order under German leadership. German weapons will win because they are defending a just cause Hitler saved Europe, and Belgium’s future could [several words missing] cooperation with the Reich.”

1 This slogan is from the Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius Loyola, founder of the Jesuits.
2 “Leon Degrelle is a pupil of these gentlemen [the Jesuits]; so also are all his colleagues.”—R. A. Dior, in Le Vatican, Paris, 1937, p. 42.

There never was any secret about Degrelle’s collaboration with Hitler. In its issue of May 20, 1936, the Paris newspaper Le Temps called attention to the close relationship between the Rexist Party and Hitler’s National Socialism, and shortly before the Belgian elections in May, 1936, Degrelle went to Germany to “study” Nazi propaganda methods. After the example of the German Fuehrer (and Father Coughlin) he sought to gather around him all the discontented elements of the middle class. In imitation of Goebbels, he curried favor with the workers by appearing to side with strikers. The chief point of comparison, however, between Rexism and Nazi-Fascism is that both declared war on Catholic liberal tendencies, among both the clergy and the laity, with the aim of setting up the Jesuit, authoritarian control of Catholic activities. This was the real reason why Catholic Action was instituted by Pope Pius XI.

It is not out of place to repeat the underlying reasons for this desire to abolish all pre-Hitler Catholic politics throughout Europe —a thing the Jesuits for many years had ardently longed to see accomplished. As already pointed out, the old Catholic political parties had become intimately bound up with the liberal constitutions of States, wherein all parties and religions were able to coexist freely. Furthermore, the ideology of the liberal democratic State, with its principles of religious and racial tolerance, was broadening the political and social outlook of these Catholic parties. The fraternizing of the secular clergy with the laity in these political parties furthered the spirit of tolerance as opposed to the traditional intolerance of Catholic dogma.

3 In their joint pastoral letter of October, 1940, the Catholic bishops of Belgium instructed their people as follows: “It is doubtless necessary to recognize the occupying power as a de facto power and to obey it within the limits of international conventions.” (Quoted from the Jesuit magazine America, Feb. 22, 1941.)

On the other hand, it must also be remembered that in Germany the two Catholic political parties, the Center Party and the Bavarian Popular Party, because of their close religious connections with the Catholic Church, had met with strong opposition from the Protestant part of the population. As a consequence, the continued existence of these parties threatened to compromise the aim of Catholic Action, which was to use Germany as the instrument to effect its counter-Reformation designs. It was thus necessary for the new Catholic policy to camouflage itself as a national movement, and make itself appear as the only party representing the nation as a whole.

It can thus be seen why the abolition of the pre-Hitler Catholic political parties in Germany had the approval of the movement for Catholic Reconstruction. Here is what Gonzague de Reynold has to say on the point:4

“The Center Party, which Hitler fought with all his might, was forced to commit suicide. But it was a party which had already shown signs of deterioration, which had made many mistakes and upon which the young people were turning their backs . . . The news that soon they could take part in real Catholic Action, without any addition of party politics, aroused great enthusiasm.”

For the very same reason the Rexist Party in Belgium, direct offspring of Catholic Action, likewise declared:

“All Catholic parties are the result of a fixed historical situation, and have advantages and disadvantages for the Church. “When these historical situations cease to exist, Catholic parties lose their reason for existence. This applies equally to the Catholic party in Belgium. Up till now differing opinions could be had as to their usefulness and their right to existence. Today, however, they are anarchronisms, as were the Center Party in Germany and the Popular Party in Italy.

“The Catholic Party did not understand the new ‘historic mission’; the confessional movement did not transform itself into a national movement. Because of these deficiencies it had to disappear like all other parties. The Rexist Party will now take up the defense of Catholic and ecclesiasiteal interests. It does not only intend to defend the Church, but also to take the whole religious question out of politics. It will effect this by means of the Constitutional guarantee of the rights of the Catholic Church and by drawing up a concordat to regulate the relations between the State and the Church.”5

4 Cf. L’Europe Tragique, p. 333.
5 Cf. Vaterland, Lucerne, Aug. 14, 1936.

Thus, according to this new Catholic policy, there is to be no apparent separation between Catholic Action and the Nazi-Fascist thrust for the establishment of its “new order” in Europe. To the Rexist Party was assigned the task of regulating the relations between the Catholic Church and the Fascist State in Belgium by means of a concordat, as was done in Germany through Von Papen and the present Pope Pius XII, then papal nuncio to Germany.. This “new historic mission” of the Church of Rome, initiated by the Lateran Pact and Concordat of 1929 between the Vatican and Fascist Italy, calls for collaboration with the Nazi-Fascist dictators, unhampered by any questioning or interference from the people or the lower clergy. Liberal principles and popular freedom have to be crushed out as completely in the Church as in the State.

“We in America are only now beginning to see clearly how the noose was formed to strangle all forms of liberalism and democracy in pre-Hitler Europe, in order to make way for the Nazi- Fascist hierarchical grouping of nations and individuals in a sort of revived Roman Empire of the German Nation. And the real motivating force behind it all has been the thrust of the Jesuit counter-Reformation, ante-dating all the dictators, which aimed to crush out of existence the hated liberal principles of the Protestant democracies. It has indeed been an ungodly combination that worked together to accomplish this objective: Catholic Reconstruction movement of Pius XI; Italian Fascism; Hitler’s National Socialism; French anti-Semitic Leagues; La Roque and the Cagoulards; Belgian Rexism; the Hungarian racist movement of Father Bangha; white Russian association; Croatian associations—whose hand appeared in the assassination of King Alexander of Serbia and French Foreign Minister Barthou; Slovene separatists led by the Jesuit Father Anton Koroshetz, who worked his way to the Presidency of the senate in Yugoslavia; the Catholic prelates and politicians of old Austria—Mgr. Seipel, Dollfuss, Schussnigg, et al.; the priest-politicians of Slovakia, Carpatho-Ukraine and Bohemia— Fathers Hlinka and Tiso; not forgetting Franco and his Fascist Generals in Spain and the Laval-Petain cliques in France. All of these worked closely together and were interlinked with the Catholic Church in working towards the same end—the destruction of the post-Reformation structure of Europe and the world.

But the end is not yet.

CHAPTER XII. Pro-Germanism of Pope Pius XII

IT IS NOT generally known that the reasons which led the Allies to exclude the pope from the Peace Conference after the First World War were connected with the activities of Monsignor Eugenio Pacelli, later Pope Pius XII.

HIS TWELVE YEARS IN GERMANY

Monsignor Pacelli’s life has been divided between his native Italy and Germany where he spent twelve crucial years. Nuncio in Munich in 1917, he has dealt with the Kaiser and with the Republic, with revolutionary committees and Nazi conspirators. He was a friend of Friedrich Ebert, first president of the German Republic, and an intimate of Germany’s monumental Hindenburg under whose presidency he concluded a concordat with Prussia. He witnessed Hitler’s tempestuous beginnings in Munich and the machinations of his agents in Berlin. Viscount d’Abernon, Britain’s first ambassador to the Weimar Republic, in his Memoirs calls Pacelli “the best informed man in the Reich.”

His mission in Munich in 1917 was not the starting point of his German career. Even before the first world war, Monsignor Pacelli had been Papal State Secretary Gasparri’s most trusted expert on German affairs. It was no mere chance that in the very first months of the war he was stationed in Switzerland where he started with great devotion, tact and zeal, a truly Christian and humanitarian movement—the exchange of prisoners of “war. Yet, while there he had frequent contacts with the Kaiser’s propaganda chief, his old acquaintance Matthias Erzberger, for years a leading member of the Reichstag’s Catholic Center Party. It was with Matthias Erzberger in Switzerland that Pacelli engaged in the negotiations which deeply shocked Italy’s liberal Government, and which accounted largely for its opposition to the Vatican’s participation in the peace settlement.

* This article was published in The Converted Catholic Magazine for April 1943. The author, Pierre L’Ourson, was for many years connected with the League of Nanons in a responsible diplomatic capacity.

All his life Eugenio Pacelli has taken an active part in one of the most secret and complex intrigues of our time: the patient struggle of the papacy to regain and extend its temporal power. In this struggle, for the last seventy years, whenever a major issue of international politics was at stake, the Vatican has hitched its star to the Germanic juggernaut.

HIS TIE-UP WITH FASCISM

The Lateran Treaty in 1929 between the Vatican and Mussolini restored the sovereignty of the pope and allied the Vatican to the Italian Fascist Government. It also brought about a world-wide coordination of authoritarian powers of the corporative and nationalistic type, and the eventual entrance of Italy into the camp of Nazi Germany. Thus in 1940, after the fall of France and the proclamation of Marshal Petain’s Fascist French State, it looked as if in the present World War Vatican policy had gained substantial progress where it had failed in the previous one.

At the end of this war, when delegates of all countries will gather in an international peace conference, the pope, for the first time in more than a hundred years, will again be represented as a ruling monarch—provided that his miniature State is still intact. He expects to exercise considerable authority, although as a temporal ruler his influence will be less than that of Pope Pius VII at the Congress of Vienna in 1815. Today, as Chief of State of Vatican City he possesses only a formal, juridical status. But he will have real power because of his self-assumed status as “Chief of Christendom,” a notion cleverly introduced, for more than ten years, into public international discussions and, after centuries of obliteration, re-admitted even in non-Catholic countries. As “Chief of Christendom,” the pope would take rank above all other Chiefs of State—just as the papal nuncio on the continent of Europe as well as in Latin America automatically becomes “dean” of the diplomatic corps.

“CHIEF OF CHRISTENDOM”

The idea of a Chief of Christendom, himself also a Chief of State, presiding over an assembly of Chiefs of State, is a medieval conception which has no place in our twentieth-century democratic world. It has been revived for political reasons, and unless denounced, will prove a dangerous challenge to freedom and progress. For just as the equality of individuals, the equality of nations is a fundamental principle of democracy.

To recognize one Chief of State as senior and permanent hierarchical chief of all other States would be to set up an authoritarian world monarchy, even though the term ‘monarchy’ may not be used. Caesar Augustus in ancient Rome refused the unpopular title of king and preferred to be called “Imperator,” a dignity which the Roman Republic used to bestow temporarily upon a Supreme Commander appointed in a national emergency. Hitler played the same trick in Germany. It would have been easy for him to have had himself crowned Emperor. Instead, he found it more expedient to leave the Constitution of the Weimar Republic legally in force and to assume the less conspicuous name of Fuehrer or Leader—the “Mein Fuehrer” standing for the old-fashioned “Your Majesty” or “Sire.”

Protestant nations, it is to be hoped, will not accept this new international slogan of a “Chief of Christendom” which the Holy See is trying to smuggle into general acceptance. Whatever the illusions of clerical politicians who believe in the re-establishment of the supra-national rule of the papacy, their schemes are bound to work to the advantage of imperialist Germany.

Recent statements by Mr. Elmer Davis as well as Vatican diplomatic activity seem to indicate that the Axis Powers are seeking the mediation of the Holy See. If the Government of the Protestant Kaiser tried to enlist the support of the Vatican, there is no reason why Hitler’s predominantly Catholic Greater Germany should refrain from appealing to the pope, now that even the most fanatical Nazis can no longer hope to conclude the war by a crushing Axis victory. The last time the pope’s collaboration in post-war arrangements was made impossible by Article 15 of the Secret Treaty of London between Italy and the Allies. This explicit exclusion of the pope from the Peace Conference has ever since been branded by Catholic politicians as a villainous maneuver of international Freemasonry. They still point to the absence of a delegate of the Holy See at Versailles and Neuilly in 1919 as the deeper cause for the failure of the Peace Treaties and of the League of Nations.

TREATY OF LONDON

The real history of Article 15 of the Treaty of London and the reasons for the exclusion of the pope from the Peace Conference have never been fully understood in this country. The American public does not know that Italy demanded and that the Allies agreed upon the exclusion of the pope from the future peace settlement because they had evidence that some of the most prominent clericals at the Holy See were favoring the Central Powers, and had for months discussed and planned a secret German proposal to reconstitute in Rome a Papal State with internationally guaranteed access to the sea.

Only in face of the irrefutable fact that, in the midst of a terrible war, Vatican politicians were abusing the Christian peace apostolate of the Supreme Pontiff to further their temporal interests and to extend their power, even at the expense of their native land— these papal politicians were all Italians—did the Allies agree to Italy’s demand. Although from the beginning of the war it was obvious that the sympathies of the Vatican could not be with Protestant England, anti-clerical France and Orthodox Russia, Allied statesmen—some of them devout Catholics—found it hard to believe that papal diplomacy would place its political interests before those of millions of French and Belgian Catholics who had become victims of German aggression.

MATTHIAS ERZBERGER

The story of Germany’s collaboration with the Vatican in the last war has been told, as so often before, by a devout Roman Catholic who had himself been on the inside of the intrigue and who, vain by nature and bitter from disappointment, spoke out when he felt that he had been abandoned by his former associates. Our witness is none other than Matthias Erzberger, leading member of the Catholic Center Party, militant German imperialist in 1914, Germany’s foreign propaganda chief until 1917 when he promoted the Reichstag’s famous peace resolution, Imperial Under-Secretary of State, leader of the German armistice delegation, Minister of Finance and one of the Fathers of the Weimar Republic. He was assassinated in 1921 by young German nationalists, a few months after the publication of his outspoken book, My Experiences in the World War.1

SECRET VATICAN TREATY WITH GERMANY

One of Erzberger’s chief objectives was to secure diplomatic immunity and extra-territorial rights for the Holy See. As early as October, 1914, a few weeks after his appointment as chief of foreign propaganda, he suggested the establishment of a small neutral Papal State in that part of Rome which lies on the left bank of the Tiber, with a corridor to the sea and a port. His negotiations finally led to a draft treaty “regarding the recognition of the temporal power of the Pope.” This treaty, he says, had the approval of “competent personalities of the German Foreign Office.” The first version was submitted by Erzberger and his friends in Vatican circles in the beginning of 1915. It was formulated with characteristic thoroughness.

1 Erlebnisse im Weltkrieg, von Reichsfinanzminister A. D. Matthias Erzberger, Deutsche Verlagsanstalt, Stuttgart & Berlin, 1920.

The following extracts of this secret treaty are from Erzberger’s book (pages 127ff.):

The temporal power of the Pope is recognized by the High Contracting Powers as extending over a territory including Vatican Hill and a strip of land connecting it with the Tiber and with the railroad to Viterbo and to be designated as Church State . . .

The church State is permanently independent and neutral. Its independence and neutrality are guaranteed by the High Contracting Powers.

Sovereign of the Church State to the Pope. During the vacancy of the Apostolic Chair the sovereignty is exercised by the College of Cardinals.

Citizens of the Church State are: Papal legates, nunzios and internunzios, members of the Papal Court, officials of the administrations and palaces of the Church State, members of the Palace guards as well as ecclesiastics permanently residing in the Church State . . .

The Kingdom of Italy pledges to render the Tiber navigable for oceangoing ships with draught of five meters, along the border of the Church State and thence to the sea, within two years from the ratification of the present treaty.

Papal ships can at all times navigate on the Tiber to and from the sea without being subject to the authority of the Italian State. Should Italy be at war or should it, for other reasons, deem necessary to close the Tiber waterway to general traffic, a channel is to be kept open for Papal ships, and river pilots are to be placed at their disposal. Papal ships shall be treated by the High Contracting Powers as extraterritorial in peace and in war and not subject to interference by a foreign power . . .

The Kingdom of Italy will pay to the Holy See within six months after the ratification of the present Treaty the sum of 500,000,000 Lire, to cover the cost of the Papal Court and of the administration of he Church State.

The sovereignty of the Church State includes finances and jurisdiction.

Diplomatic representatives of foreign powers accredited to the Holy See enjoy within the territory of the Kingdom of Italy the same privileges and exemptions as diplomatic representatives of the same rank accredited to the Kingdom of Italy … In case of a state of war or a break in diplomatic relations between the Power they represent and the Kingdom of Italy, they have to take residence in the Church State . . .

The High Contracting Powers, after the ratification of the present Treaty, will invite all those powers which are not signatories of this treaty to recognize the temporal power of the Pope over the territories designated in Article I as well as the extra-territorial status af Papal ships as provided in Article V.

This Treaty shall be ratified as soon as possible. Ratification documents will be deposited with the Holy See. The Treaty enters into force on the day on which ratification documents have been deposited.

It is not astonishing that the liberal Government of Italy should have resented this planned infringement of their country’s sovereignty by Germany and the Vatican. Nor was this all. Germany has never given without receiving. Only indirectly does Herr Erzberger inform his readers of the assistance which Germany had received and was to receive from the Holy See.

INTERNATIONAL CATHOLIC COMMITTEE

After Italy entered the war on the side of the Allies, Erzberger, as the Kaiser’s chief of propaganda, organized in collaboration with an emissary of the Papal Secretary of State, an International Catholic Committee in which each country was represented by five or seven delegates. Its object was to urge upon all belligerents that the territorial independence and the political freedom of the Holy See should be guaranteed in the future peace. This International Catholic Committee and several of its sub-committees met repeatedly in Switzerland and Holland. Its chief purpose was to explain the German viewpoint to the world. Erzberger tells us that the high official of the Roman Curia with whom he negotiated in Switzerland was in charge of the exchange of prisoners of war. He was Monsignor Eugenio Pacelli, the present Pope Pius XII.

PAPAL PEACE OFFENSIVE

Negotiations between Erzberger and Pacelli continued throughout 1916. In June of that year Erzberger was “asked by the German Secretary of State to inform the Vatican that the German Government was willing to accept the good services of the Pope in the matter of peace and would appreciate them.” He at once consulted with his “friend, the representative of the Papal Secretary of State in Switzerland” [Pacelli], who believed that the time had come for “winning the peace.” But after the Vatican peace move had produced its first results, it was checked by a parallel intervention of the German Foreign Office through Spain. The results which Berlin wished to obtain in 1916 were only of a diplomatic and psychological nature. Germany was in fact merely trying to disintegrate the home front of the Allies and to obtain a clear picture of the political situation in the Allied camp. The Papal peace move thus suited the Kaiser’s purpose.

In 1917, after Eugenio Pacelli had been appointed nuncio in Munich, Wilhelm II became more outspoken in his demands. According to Pope Pius XII’s official biography by Kees van Hoek (published in London in 1939 by Burns, Oates & Washburn, Ltd., publishers to the Holy See), the Kaiser told Monsignor Pacelli “that the Pope should mobilize the Episcopate all over the world in a moral peace offensive and begin by using his special influence on Catholic States by promoting [a separate] peace between Italy and Austria.”

JESUIT PROPAGANDA AMONG PROTESTANTS

Erzberger’s propaganda mission ended shortly after Pacelli had taken up residence in Germany. With laudable frankness Erzberger tells us (page 7) that he had been assisted by “a number of Jesuit priests who rendered us extremely valuable services in enlightening foreign countries.” Nor were these propaganda activities limited to Catholic circles. It should be of interest to Protestants in America to discover that this prominent Roman Catholic politician, working hand in glove with the highest dignitaries of the pope, also organized what was known as “Weekly Evangelical Letters.” These letters were edited by Dr. Deissmann, Professor of Protestant theology at the University of Berlin and were addressed especially to American Protestants. “Professor Deissmann,” says Erzberger, “was very skillful in drawing up his mailing lists . . . We adapted the contents of these letters deliberately to American interests . . . Professor Deissmann had reason to be satisfied with the response. The Secretary General of the Federal Council of Churches of Christ in America, representing thirty evangelical church organizations with 125,000 communities, maintained close relations with him.” This gentleman might not have done so, had he known that these “Weekly Evangelical Letters” were financed and—in the last instance— directed by propaganda chief Erzberger and his Jesuit assistants.

Erzberger’s assassination in 1921 had been planned for some time. The young fanatics who killed him were only the instruments of others who wished to eliminate this man who knew too much, who already had said too much and who had been too closely connected with events in which the promoters of the present World War saw Germany’s humiliation.

PACELLI’S POST-WAR ACTIVITIES

Monsignor Pacelli’s stay in Germany lasted in all more than twelve years. He was in Munich under the short-lived Bavarian Soviet Republic which he fought, and at the time of Hitler’s first putsch in 1923. When France occupied the industrial Ruhr Valley because Germany refused to continue reparations payments, the Nunzio, though not accredited to Prussia, ostentatiously flew from the Bavarian capital to Duesseldorf in the Prussian Rhineland, and induced his friend Achille Ratti, then Pope Pius XI, to publish an open condemnation of the “Ruhr adventure.” In 1925 he obtained a concordat with Bavaria, a concordat with Prussia in 1929, after his appointment as nuncio in Berlin, and in 1933 the famous concordat with the whole of Hitler’s Germany.

“Cardinal Pacelli,” wrote Kees van Hoek, his official Catholic biographer, in 1939, “has always been known for his strong German leanings.”

Thus it is that Germans and Italians now have good reasons for looking forward hopefully to Pius XII’s mediation on their behalf. For his past history shows that, instead of condemning Hitler whom he knew well during the seven years of his stay in Munich, he negotiated a concordat with the Nazis just as he tried to negotiate one with the Kaiser’s Germany during the last war. He fears German radicals as much as his predecessor feared the Bolsheviks. Like Pius XI, he is connected with the Fascist bourgeoisie through his family. His uncle, a famous banker, was the founder and guiding spirit of the Banco di Roma, one of Italy’s greatest banks and investment houses. His brother, Francesco Pacelli, who drafted the Lateran Treaty with Fascism, had more than a hundred secret conferences with Mussolini before the treaty was signed.

The Papacy undoubtedly can and will survive the present Fascist set-up in Italy, but in the lifetime of Eugenio Pacelli it will continue to support Italy’s vested interests and will continue to remain pro- German under any kind of a regime, provided it is not anti- Catholic.

Today, Papal diplomacy is again busy behind the scenes. Judging by its record in the last war and by the personal leanings of the present Pope and his Jesuit advisers, the Curia is not the disinterested and elevated tribunal which it is made to appear to Americans. The Pope, too, has a political axe to grind.

By propagating the idea that the Pope as “Chief of Christendom” is to be dean and arbiter in the future peace conference, clerical politicians, however, may render disservice to their cause. Protestants as well as Orthodox Catholics, who do not believe in any “Chief of Christendom,” might come to learn that the Allies in London in 1915, after all, were not so ill-advised.

Continued from The Papal System – XI. The Lord’s Supper, The Eucharist, The Mass.

The Sacrament of Penance, Embracing Contrition, Confession and Satisfaction.

As the mass is the great aggregate of Romish doctrine, the confessional is the chief executive of the papal system. By it, the decrees of the infallible Church are applied and carried out with an unequaled measure of minuteness and rigor. The history of the confessional is of the highest moment.

Of course, there are confessions of sin made to Protestant ministers now, and such avowals were common in the experience of the early clergy. But they were wholly voluntary when given, and they were not general.

Chrysostom says: “It is not necessary that thou shouldst confess in the presence of witnesses; let the inquiry after thy sins be made in thy own thoughts; let this judgment be without any witnesses; let God only see thee confessing.” In another place he says: “Why art thou ashamed and blushing to confess thy sins? Dost thou discover them to a man, that he should reproach thee? Dost thou confess them to thy fellow-servant, that he should bring thee upon the open stage? Thou only showest thy wound to him who is thy Lord, thy care-taker, thy physician, and thy friend. And he says to thee: I do not compel thee to go into the public theater, and take many witnesses; confess thy sins in private to me alone, that I may heal thy wound, and deliver thee from thy grief.”

Commenting on the words, “Let a man examine himself, and so let him eat of that bread and drink of that cup,” Chrysostom says: “He does not bid one man examine another, but every onw himself, making the judgment private, and the trial without witnesses.” Daillé has collected nearly twenty passages from the writings of this eloquent and orthodox father, showing that auricular confession had no existence in his day.

Basil says: “I do not make confession with my lips to appear to the world, but inwardly in my heart, where no eye sees; the groanings of my heart are sufficient for confession, and the lamentations which are sent up to thee, my God, from the bottom of my heart.”

Ambrose says: “Tears wash away sin which men are ashamed to confess with the voice; weeping provides at once both for pardon and bashfulness.”

St. Augustine, expounding the words: “I said I will declare my own wickedness against myself unto the Lord, and so thou forgavest the iniquity of my heart,” says: “His confession was not yet come to his mouth, yet God heard the voice of his heart; which implies that God accepts and pardons the penitent and contrite heart, even before any formal declaration is made by vocal confession either to God or man.”

In his confession he speaks with contempt of telling his sins to human beings: “What, therefore, have I to do with men, that they should hear my confessions, as if they could heal all my diseases?”

Laurentius of Novara, in the north of Italy, who flourished A.D. 507, says: “After baptism, God has appointed thee a remedy within thyself; he hath put remission within thy own power, that thou needest not to seek a priest when necessity requires; but thou thyself, now, as a skillful master always at hand, mayest correct thy own error within thyself, and wash away thy sin by repentance.”

When Theodosius, in a fit of guilty rage, slew seven thousand people in Thessalonica, A. D. 390, and afterwards came to Milan, Ambrose refused to permit the emperor to approach the Lord’s table or even to enter the church. He wrote him the following letter:

“Sin can be removed only by tears and repentance. No angel or archangel can forgive sin; and the Lord himself, who only was able to say to us, ‘I am with you, when we sin, forgives the sins of those only who come to him with repentance. Add not to the sin already committed still another—that of presuming to partake of the holy supper unworthily, which has redounded to the ruin of many. I have no occasion to be obstinate with you, but I have cause to fear for you. I dare not distribute the holy elements if you mean to be present and receive them. Shall I venture to do that which I should not presume to do if the blood of one innocent individual had been poured out where the blood of so many innocent persons has been shed?”

For eight months the doors of the sacred edifice, which were open to the lowliest slave and the meanest beggar, were closed against the greatest ruler in the world. At length, Ambrose, with difficulty, was persuaded to permit the emperor to enter, not the church, but the porch, the place of the public penitents; and, stripped of the insignia of royalty, prostrate on the pavement, beating his breast, tearing his hair, watering the ground with his tears, the conqueror in many battles obtained absolution.

During these eight months Theodoret says: “The emperor shut himself up in his palaces, mourned bitterly, and shed floods of tears.” He appealed to Ambrose, “By the mercy of our common Lord, to unloose from him these bonds, and not to shut against him the door which is opened by the Lord to all who truly repent;” and then, as a proof of his sincerity, Ambrose required him to make a law to cancel all decrees in future made in haste and anger; and that when sentence of death or proscription is passed against any one thirty days shall elapse before it is executed, at the expiration of which the matter is to be reconsidered and settled. During all this long period Theodosius never saw Ambrose, or any priest, or entered any confessional. He performed the penance customary: in those days, and he was restored to church privileges.

The learned Bingham says that: “When the crimes of great and heinous sinners were public, notorious, and scandalous, they were required to go through a long course of penance publicly in the church. As to private crimes, they laid no necessity upon the consciences of men to make either public or private confession of them to any beside God.”

Penances in the early Church.

About A. D. 390, in Rome there was a place appointed for the reception of penitents, where they stood mourning during the public service, from which they were excluded. They cast themselves upon the ground with groans and lamentations; the bishop who conducts the ceremony prostrates himself and weeps; the people burst into tears and groan aloud; then the bishop rises from his humble position and summons up the people, and after praying for the penitents he dismisses them. This custom, with slight changes, was universal.

Different Classes of Penitents.

Some were only candidates, seeking to be admitted into the list of ecclesiastical penitents: their place was at the church door, when, clothed in sackcloth, and covered with filthiness and horror, they lay prostrate, begging the prayers of the faithful, as they entered the sacred edifice, and entreating to be numbered with those to whom the church proposed, at some period, to extend forgiveness. Speaking of these, Tertullian says: “The exomologesis is the discipline of a man’s humbling and prostrating himself . . . . It obliges a man to change his clothing and his food, to lie in sackcloth and ashes, to defile his body by neglect of dress and ornament, to afflict his soul with sorrow, …. to groan and weep and cry unto the Lord God, day and night, to prostrate himself before the presbyters of the church, to kneel before the friends of God, and beg of all the brethren that they would become petitioners for his pardon.” Here was a very public confession, but nothing like the confessional of the popes.

The second class of penitents was called Hearers; they were allowed to pass through the discipline appointed for testing those who professed sorrow for some notorious offense. They were placed in the narthex or lowest part of the church, and were allowed to hear the Scriptures read and the sermon, but had to retire before the commencement of the common prayers.

The third class of penitents was designated Prostrators. These persons knelt around the pulpit in humble reverence, while all the people prayed for them, and the bishop gave them the imposition of hands and his benediction,

The fourth class was known as Bystanders. They were allowed to remain throughout the entire service, including the observance of the Lord’s Supper, but they were not permitted to present the ordinary gifts donated by the faithful on the Lord’s day, or to partake of the eucharist. There was a class of people so execrably wicked that Tertullian says of them: “There were some impious furies of lust so far transgressing all the laws of nature, both with respect to bodies and sex, that they not only expelled them from the doors of the church, but from every covered place belonging to it, as being monsters rather than common vices.”

Penance seldom permitted Twice in the early Churches.

Tertullian called one penance after baptism the second, regarding the repentance of baptism as the first, and he was satisfied that there should be no third penance. His words are: “God has placed in the vestibule of the church, a second repentance which opens to those that knock: but now only once, because now, a second time; never more, because the last was vain and to no purpose.”

Ambrose says: “They are deservedly reproved who think of doing penance often, because they grow wanton against Christ; for if they did penance truly, they would not think it should be repeated; because as there is but one baptism, so there is but one penance, which, moreover, is performed publicly. For we ought daily to be sorry for sin; but that is for lesser sins, and the other for greater.”

Augustine says: “Wisely and usefully it was provided that there should be a place for that humblest penance but once in the church, lest the medicine becoming contemptible, should be less useful to the sick.”

Siricius, Pope of Rome in the fourth century, says: “Forasmuch as they, who after penance, return like dogs to their vomit, or swine to their wallowing in the mire, cannot have the benefit of a second penance, we decree that they shall communicate with the faithful in prayer only, and be present at the celebration of the eucharist, but not partake of the feast at the Lord’s table.”

Here there was no weekly or annual confession with its penances; once after baptism this grievous duty might be performed, but generally, for a length of time, that ended penances and public confessions for life.

The Severity of Penance.

For some sins men were required to do penance during the whole of their lives, and absolution was only granted them in death. And should they recover, after having received it, they were compelled to resume their old position of shame and sorrow. The common course of penance consigned men for ten, fifteen, or twenty years to its various humiliating stages.; So that to repeat such a process would have required a considerable life, as well as a change in church regulations.

The Penitentiary Confessor.

About A.D. 250, there were many who had fallen from the faith through the fierce persecution of Decius. Among these, there were persons of different grades of criminality. And as public penance was the universal law of the churches for each notorious offender, a minister was designated in all centers of Christian population to hear the crimes of apostates, that they might be able to take their proper place among the sad ones at the church doors, or inside the porch, or near the pulpit on their knees, according to the grade of their sinfulness. One presbyter attended to this duty for all Constantinople in A.D. 390; for the office survived the scenes which called it into life, and continued to fix the grade of public penitents. A noble lady who had visited the penitentiary presbyter, was unfortunate in the church with a deacon; the public became indignant against the semi-confessional, and Nectarius, the bishop, abolished the office. This was the first instance of the suppression of this odious institution; but Sozomen tells us that the example was followed by the bishops of every region.

Absolution in the early Church for public Confessing Penitents.

After the long, distressing penance was completed, the candidate for restoration knelt down between the knees of the bishop; or, in his absence, between those of the presbyter, who, laying his hand upon his head, solemnly blessed and absolved him. The people received him with transports of joy, as one escaped from the coils of the old serpent, and he was restored to participation in the Lord’s Supper.

The Form of Absolution.

They were received into communion with imposition of hands, and the prayer of the whole church for them. The following prayer of absolution, from the Apostolical Constitutions, is probably as old as the fourth century:

“O Lord Jesus Christ, son of the living God, thou shepherd and lamb, that takest away the sins of the world, that forgavest the debt to the two debtors, and grantedst remission of sins to the sinful woman, and gavest to the sick of the palsy both a cure and a pardon of sins, remit, blot out, and pardon our sins, both voluntary and involuntary, whatever we have done wittingly or unwittingly, by transgression and disobedience, which thy spirit knows better than we ourselves. And whereinsoever thy servants have erred from thy commandments, in word or deed, as men carrying flesh about them, and living in the world, or seduced by the instigation of Satan, or whatever curse or peculiar anathema they are fallen under, I pray and beseech thine ineffable goodness to absolve them with thy word, and remit their curse and anathema, according to thy mercy. O Lord and master, hear my prayer for thy servants; thou that forgettest injuries, overlook all their failings, pardon their offenses, both voluntary and involuntary, and deliver them from eternal punishment. For thou art he that hast commanded us, saying: Whatsoever ye shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven; and whatsoever ye shall loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven: because thou art one God, the God that canst have mercy and forgive sins; and to thee, with the eternal Father, and the quickening Spirit, belongs glory, now and forever, world without end. Amen.”

A form of absolution like this existed for centuries in all parts of the Christian world. Cardinal Bona and Illyricus published an old Latin Missal about two centuries ago, with this absolution:

“He that forgave the sinful woman all her sins, for which she shed tears, and opened the gates of paradise to the thief upon a single confession, make you partakers of his redemption, and absolve you from all the bond of your sins, and heal those infirm members by the medicine of his mercy, and restore them to the body of his holy Church by his grace, and keep them whole and sound forever.”

It is absolutely certain that the form of absolution: “I absolve you (absolvo te),” was not known in the practice of Christians till the commencement of the thirteenth century. It was, down to that period, a prayer to God for remission and absolution. Thomas Aquinas, about the year 1250, was one of the first who wrote in defense of the form: “I absolve thee.” In his day, the expression excited opposition, and was an undoubted novelty.

The confessional in the middle ages.

Isidore of Seville, speaking of this practice in the early part of the seventh century says: “There are two kinds of confession (exomologesis), the one of praise, the other of sins; and both the one and the other are chiefly made to God.”

Hincmar, a leading French bishop of the ninth century says: “Our light and daily sins, according to the exhortation of St. James, are daily to be confessed to those that are our equals: and such sins, we may believe, will be cleansed by their daily prayers, and our own acts of piety, if with a charitable mind, we truly say in the Lord’s prayer: Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive them that trespass against us.”

The second Council of Chalons, in A. D. 813, in its thirty-third canon declares: “Some say that we ought to confess our sins to God alone; others affirm that they ought to be confessed to priests: both are done with great benefit in the holy church; so that we confess our sins to God, who does forgive them; and according to the apostle’s institution, we confess them to each other and pray for each other that we may be saved. So that the confession made to God purges from sin; and that which is made to the priest informs us how we ought to be purged from them.” … Here it is boldly asserted that God only forgives sins, that he pardons them through no priest, and that the priest only shows the way to Christ, the cleansing fountain.

Lanfranc, who became Archbishop of Canterbury in A.D. 1070, in a tract on the secrecy of confession, says: “The confession of public sins ought to be made to the priests, by whose ministry the Church binds and looses that of which it takes public cognizance; but that one may confess private sins to all the ecclesiastics, and even to laymen; since we read that there have been holy fathers, who were the guides of souls, though they were not in holy orders.”

Here there is no distinction between mortal and venial sins; the sins considered are public iniquities, and secret sins, however atrocious; and according to the greatest prelate, except Gregory VII, in the eleventh century, and according to a more learned bishop than Gregory, all private sins may be confessed to a layman.

Ivo, Bishop of Chartres, in the early part of the twelfth century, expresses in his 186th letter, the opinion then beginning to become general: “That confession of common and small faults, may be made to anyone, but that great offenses are to be confessed only to those who have the power of binding and loosing.” This is substantially the papal doctrine today.

Up to A. D. 1215, the confession of sin was an optional thing in the Church of Rome. No canon or bull compelled it; it had been increasing in popularity for two centuries; it was highly recommended, but still it had no sovereign sanction, no authority to RULE THE ROMAN CHURCH, and in A.D. 1215, for the first time in papal history,

Innocent III. was lord of the Christian Church at this time. Ambitious to establish a number of superstitions, he summoned the fourth Council of the Lateran, A. D. 1215, whose twenty-first canon reads:

“Every one of the faithful of both sexes, after he shall have reached years of discretion, shall, by himself alone, faithfully confess all his sins, at least once a year, to his own priest, and strive to perform according to his ability the penance imposed upon him, reverently partaking of the sacrament of the eucharist, at least at Easter; unless, perhaps, by the advice of his priest, for some reasonable cause, he should judge that for a time he should abstain from partaking of it; otherwise, let the living be hindered from entering the church, and let the dead be deprived of Christian burial. On this account this salutory statute shall be frequently published in the churches that no one may pretend as an excuse, the blindness of ignorance. But if any one shall wish to confess his sins to a foreign priest, for proper reasons, he must first ask and obtain a license from his own priest, since otherwise he would not be able to bind or loose him.”

Calvin, though a somewhat stern man, commenting on this famous decree, says:

“The barbarism of the diction is sufficient to deprive the law of all credit. For the good fathers enjoin that: ‘Every person of both sexes shall, once in each year, make a particular confession of all sins to the proper priest;’ but some wits facetiously object, that this precept binds none but hermaphrodites, and relates to no one who is either a male or a female.”

He farther in the same connection asserts the indisputable fact that: “It is certain from the testimony of their own histories that there was no fixed law, or constitution, respecting confession till the time of Innocent III., that its friends were accustomed to cite nothing older in favor of the practice than the Council of the Lateran.”

This decree subjected those who refused it obedience to the worst form of excommunication; which in that age meant a horrible death and the confiscation of all property. It was the darkest age of the last two thousand years in culture and morals, and fitly gave birth to transubstantiation, the confessional and the inquisition, The confessional had its church birth not an hour earlier than A, D. 1215.

The modern confessional.

The confessional as it exists today is chiefly the work of the fathers of Trent, and those who lived in the age immediately after. That synod issued the following canons on penance:

“If any one shall deny that three acts are required for the whole and perfect remission of the sins of a penitent, as the substance of the sacrament of penance, that is to say contrition, confession and satisfaction, which are called the three parts of penance; or shall say that there are only two parts of penance, the terrors struck in the conscience when the sin is avowed, and the faith conceived from the gospel or absolution, by which any one believes that through Christ his sins are remitted; let him be accursed.”

“If any one shall deny that sacramental confession was either instituted by divine authority, or that it is necessary to salvation; or shall say that the secret mode of confessing to a priest alone, which the Catholic Church has always observed from the beginning, and still observes, is foreign to the institution and appointment of Christ, and is a human invention; let him be accursed.”

“If any one shall say that in the sacrament of penance it is not necessary by divine command, for the remission of sins, to confess all and every mortal sin, of which recollection may be had, with due and diligent premeditation, even secret offenses, and those which are against the last two precepts of the decalogue, and the circumstances which change the species of sin; but that this confession is useful only, for instructing and consoling the penitent, and was formerly observed only for imposing canonical satisfaction, or shall say that those who desire to confess all their sins, wish to leave nothing for the divine mercy to pardon; or finally that it is not lawful to confess venial sins; let him be accursed.”

Butler’s Catechism says: “The chief mortal sins are seven: pride, covetousness, lust, anger, gluttony, envy, sloth.”

“If any one shall say that sacramental absolution, by a priest, is not a judicial act, but a mere ministry to pronounce and declare that sins are remitted to the person making confession, provided that he only believes that he is absolved, even though the priest should not absolve seriously but in joke; or shall say that the confession of a penitent is not required that the priest may absolve him; let him be accursed.”

“If any one shall say that the whole penalty together with the guilt is always remitted by God, and that the satisfaction of penitents is no other thing than the faith by which they apprehend that Christ has made satisfaction for them; let him be accursed.”

“If any one shall say that priests, who are in mortal sin, have not the power of binding and loosing, or that priests are not the only ministers of absolution . . . . . let him he accursed.”

“The holy Synod (of Trent) teaches that the form of the sacrament of penance, in which its force especially lies, is placed in the words: I absolve thee, etc.” And this absolution is not in words merely, for the Catechism of the Council of Trent says: “But the ministers of God truly as it were absolve.” And the same Catechism gives the priest authority for this or any other act in the confessional, by declaring that he represents Christ in it; and therefore is invested with divine attributes and powers. The words are: “Moreover, in the priest who sits a legitimate judge over him, he should venerate the person and power of Christ the Lord; for in administering the sacrament of penance, as in the other sacraments, the priest discharges the office of Christ.”

The Catechism of Trent teaches that, “Priest and penitent should be most careful that their conversation in the confessional be held in secret; and hence, no one can, on any account, confess by messenger or letter, as in that way nothing can be treated secretly.”

The Catechism of the Council of Trent says that, “Confession should be enjoined on a child from the time when he has the power of discerning between good and evil.” And it declares that, “Above all, the faithful should be most careful to cleanse their souls from sin by frequent confession.”

It declares that, “Theologians give the name of satisfaction to express that compensation by which a man makes some reparation to God for the sins he has committed.”

Such are papal teachings in modern times about the confessional. Without contrition, confession and penance, there can be no perfect remission of sins. Confession of sin to a priest is necessary to salvation. All and every mortal sin, even the most secret and infamous, must be confessed to a priest, or there can be no pardon from God. The priest is the judge of the soul, and in the confessional, sitting instead of Jesus Christ, he can keep the sins of any man bound upon him, or loose them, according to his discretion.

God never remits the sins of a man through faith only, says the twelfth canon of the Council of Trent on penance. That council, instead of being governed by the Spirit of God, was led by the spirit of contradiction to Christ—that is, by Antichrist. For God’s word faithfully translated, in the Catholic Vulgate, says: “He that believeth on me hath eternal life;” John vi. 47: (Qui credit in me, habet vitam eternam). “For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that every one who believes on him might not perish, but might have eternal life;” John iii. 16: (Sic enim Deus dilexit mundum, ut Filium suum unigenitum daret: ut omnis, qui credit in eum, non percat, sed habeat vitam zternam.) “But the just lives by faith;” Rom. i.17: (Justus autem ex fide vivit). The spirit that framed this canon is the spirit of ANTICHRIST in its full growth. They who believe on Jesus, without confession, absolution, or penance, are saved for eternity, notwithstanding the curses of councils, personal infirmities, or the warfare of the Prince of Darkness.

Sacerdotal Secrecy.

Du Pin reports a part of the twenty-first canon of the fourth Council of the Lateran, A.D. 1215, which declares that, “Those who shall disclose any sin, which has been revealed to them in confession, shall, be condemned, not only to be deposed, but also to be confined during life in a monastery, there to do penance for it.”

“Kneeling down at the side of your ghostly father, make the sign of the cross, saying: ‘In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.’”

Then the penitent asks the priest’s blessing in these words: “Pray, father, give me your blessing, for I have sinned.” After this the penitent repeats the Confiteor: “I confess to Almighty God, to blessed Mary, ever Virgin, to blessed Michael, the archangel, to blessed John the Baptist, to the holy Apostles Peter and Paul, and to you, father, that I have sinned exceedingly, in thought, word and deed, through my fault, through my fault, through my most grievous fault.” According to Hogan, the penitent, on her knees, has her lips nearly close to the cheek of the priest.

The Questions of the Confessional.

Many of these are too horrible to transcribe, and they shall not appear in this work. Those who wish to see the beastly vileness of the filthiest institution on the face of the earth, can consult Bailly, Peter Dens, and Saint Alphonsus Liguori.

Michelet, the celebrated French author, speaks of the manual placed in the hands of the young priest to guide his questions in the confessional, as “Addressed to a world of festering filth, which the religious wars left behind them. You will find in them such crimes as could never be committed except by the horrid soldiery of the Duke of Alva, or those bands without country, law, or God, which Wallenstein raised, true wandering Sodomites, which the old ones would have held in horror. And this young priest, who, according to you, believes that the world is still that frightful world, comes to the confessional with all that villainous knowledge; his imagination furnished with monstrous cases; you place him in contact with a child who has not left her mother, who knows nothing, who has nothing to tell, whose greatest crime consists in not having learned her catechism, or in having wounded a butterfly. I shudder at the questions he is about to put to her; at all that he is about to teach her in his conscientious brutality!” .

On the sixth commandment: “Thou shalt not commit adultery.”

“Have you been guilty of any acts of impurity? Under this head all sins against purity must be carefully examined, as well as whatever tends to their commission or indulgence. Have you been guilty of filthy talking? of reading immodest books? of indecency of dress? of looking at unchaste objects? of taking any dangerous or improper liberties ?

“N. B. As the sins against this and the ninth commandment, (Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife) are most grievous, and at the same time most various, the prudent counsel of your director (priest) will assist you, if necessary, in more particular examination.” — Garden of the Soul, page 199.

The Mission Book in the English language, a work of great popularity in the Catholic Church, suggests the following questions under the sixth and ninth commandments:

“Have you dwelt willfully and with complaisance, upon impure thoughts or imaginations? Have you in fact consented to them in your mind? How often?”

“Have you made use of impure language or allusions; or listened to it willingly and with complaisance? Was it sometimes before persons of another sex? Have you sung immodest songs, or listened to them? How often?”

“Have you been guilty of improper and dangerous freedoms with any of the other sex? How far have you carried this sinful conduct? Was the companion of your guilt a single person? How often? A relation? How often? A married person? How often?”

“Have you written improper letters or received them? How often? Have you gazed immodestly upon yourself or others; upon pictures or statues, or any object which could excite desires? How often? Have you indulged in habits of secret sin? How long? How often?”

“Have you, by the freedom of your manners, or your immodest dress, been the cause of temptation to others? Was this also your intention? Have you read impure books, or newspapers? How often? Have you lent them to others? Have you exposed yourself voluntarily to the occasions of sin by means of dances, shows, theaters, etc., by intemperance, by reading romances and plays, by walking out at night, by frequenting society, or by remaining alone with persons of a different sex? Have you been guilty of seduction? How often? Have your sins against these two commandments been sometimes of an unnatural kind? How often?”

A parent is required to examine his or her conscience, with a view to the confessional, on this matter: “Have you exposed the innocence of your children to danger by letting them sleep together without distinction, or by taking them to your own bed, or keeping them in the same room, when already old enough to be scandalized? How often?”

A wife, at the confessional, must be ready to answer these questions: “Have you been respectful and obedient to your husband in everything reasonable? Have you refused him his marriage rights? How often? Have you not persuaded him to offend God against the dictates of nature and of conscience? How often?”

Every question put by the priest must be answered on peril of damnation; he sits instead of Christ, you are confessing to God, the voice of the priest is Immanuel’s; it is the Almighty that addresses the trembling penitent. And for this reason the priest hears everything, EVERYTHING, however shocking, shameful, frivolous, frightful; everything in thoughts, feelings, words, looks, and deeds.

And Michelet is right in describing a husband whose wife frequents the confessional as in a humiliating position; “It is,” says he, “a humiliating thing to be seen, followed into the most intimate intimacy by an invisible witness, who. regulates you, and assigns to you, your part; to meet in the street a man who knows better than yourself your most secret acts of weakness, who humbly salutes you and turns aside and laughs.”

These questions just quoted are found in some shape in the prayer books everywhere in use in the Catholic Church; they are in the language of the people; they are modest, compared to the frightful questions compiled by theologians for the use of priests, and covered by the Latin tongue; and yet what blushes, shame, horror, and outrages upon delicacy these questions involve! That the modesty of women should be placed on the rack in the confessional by a bachelor priest, full of curiosity as well as sanctity, and torn, lacerated, and disjointed, under the awful sanctions of the Almighty, is indeed a dreadful thought.

Gavin tells us that in his time, in Spain, they had a class of priests who were known as Deaf Confessors. These men were not really deaf, but they acted as if they were. They lent an ear to penitents of every grade; they asked no questions about the secrets of any heart; and after each penitent had made his own statement to the confessor, he received a certificate which relieved him from the penalties of the church for a year. Is it any wonder that the. Deaf Confessors were visited by throngs; that immense numbers of women should send for them or come to them, and that day and night they should be compelled to ply their calling with unresting activity? Would it not be a positive advantage to the world, and especially to religion, if every confessor was smitten with temporary but real deafness the moment he entered his wretched den of torture?

The confessional is the most odious system of espionage ever invented by cunning despots. It is the most flagitious outrage upon the rights of husbands and wives, parents and children, the sinning and the sinned against, that ever shocked modesty or ground trembling hearts under its fatal heel. It is strongly believed to be the greatest incitement to vice that a holy God ever permitted; frightful examples of which are on record. It turns priests into odious receptacles for the accumulated stench and nastiness of all the foul corruptions of thousands, making them sons of the MAN OF SIN, ready bearers of the iniquities of whole communities.

This plague claims to start from the Scriptures. James is quoted as authority for it: “Confess therefore your sins one to another; and pray one for another that you may be saved,” v. 16, (Vulgate: Confitemini ergo alterutrum peccata vestra; et orate pro invicem ut salvemini). But this Scripture is quite as good authority for priests confessing to laymen or women, as it is for either party confessing to them. It is not: Confess your sins to the priest and he will absolve you. And if James had known anything of priestly confession, he would never have used the exhortation, “Confess therefore your sins one to another.” The other authority from Scripture is in Matt. xviii. 18: “Whatsoever ye shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatsoever ye shall loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.”

The same promise is given in Matt. xvi. 19, and John xx. 23. It is argued that as the apostles received power to free men from their sins, or bind their sins upon them, the confessional was instituted by that authority. But the inference is not quite just. Ananias and Sapphira made no confession of sin to Peter; nor did any mortal bear witness against them to him. Peter could bind and loose because the Holy Spirit rested so powerfully upon him that he could see the acts of those who were away from his bodily sight. He needed no confession box; and besides, the pope is not Peter, his bishops are not apostles. After the calling of Paul there were no more apostles; and they could have no successors, after the generation which knew Jesus had passed away, Acts i. 21-2. No man lives who walked with Christ and his apostles during his whole ministry, who saw him alive from the dead, so as to be a witness of his resurrection; and as Peter in this passage declares that such men are needed, there can be no successors to the apostles, or to their powers of binding and loosing; nor did they need the confessional to enable them to discharge their duties, and exercise their privileges.

The confessional has neither EXISTENCE NOR SANCTION FROM THE SCRIPTURES; it was WHOLLY UNKNOWN in all ancient churches; it had no LEGAL LIFE in the Catholic Church before the year TWELVE HUNDRED AND FIFTEEN; it is in itself a withering curse, a cruel tyranny, without one redeeming quality; and as a MODERN INNOVATION, AND AN INSTRUMENT OF OPPRESSION it should be banished from the world.

Continued in XIII. Extreme Unction

All chapters of The Papal System by William Cathcart

Definitions:

pop·er·y
n.
The doctrines, practices, and rituals of the Roman Catholic Church. This term is used by Protestants to show opposition for Roman Catholic practices and tenets. That’s why they are called “Protest-ants”. A true Protestant protests the Pope, his cardinals, bishops, priests, and all their pagan practices. If you do not, don’t call yourself a Protestant even though you may call yourself a Christian and are not a Roman Catholic or a member of the Orthodox, Coptic or other non-protestant group.

Puseyism
n.
The principles of Edward Bouverie Pusey (1800–1882), English churchman and one of the leaders of the Oxford Movement. The meaning will become clearer in this book.

Jesuitism
n.
The system, principles, or practices of the Jesuits.

Described in a series of letters by Luigi Desanctis, 1905.

As an Italian Roman Catholic priest, an Official Censor of the Inquisition and thoroughly acquainted with a French Provincial who was the Secretary for the Order, Desanctis was converted to the Christ of the Bible. In a series of letters written in 1849, he describes personal experiences including his imprisonment in the cells of the Inquisition in Rome. His description of the murdered within the underground dungeons of the Inquisition discovered by the Italians in 1849 are right out of Edgar Allen Poe’s The Pit and the Pendulum. The sufferers were buried up to their necks in dry lime while others were enchained, walled up with bricks and left to die. The absolute and universal power of the Company and his discourses with the godly Waldensian are overpowering.

Translator’s preface.

These letters were published by Luigi Desanctis under the title of Roma Papale in 1865, at Florence, with copious notes. They had previously appeared in the Record newspaper, in English, under the title of Popery, Puseyism, and Jesuitism, and then were published as a book in English, French, and German, running through many editions as Popery and Jesuitism, which works seem almost to have disappeared, for only one copy have I traced.

Roma Papale was given to my husband when we were in Rome (1872). He was greatly struck with its contents, but being deeply engaged on the works of the early Spanish Reformers, left it untranslated.

Now, in my eighty-first. year, at the instance at my friend, Mrs. Henry Jennings, an Honorary Deputation of the “Women’s Protestant Union,” I have, in a simple manner, but I believe faithfully, rendered it into English, with the help of my niece, Ada Meyer, and republish it under the original title, omitting a long Conclusion and the Notes which were written for Italy. .

I trust the work may lead to the enlightenment of some of my countrymen.

Maria Betts. Pembury, 1903.

I am gratified ta know that the First Edition. of these valuable Letters of Desanctis has been so warmly received, that a Second Edition of this cheap issue is required. I hope that this Edition, to which several Illustrations have been added, may have a still wider circulation. Desanctis’ original Italian M.S. is preserved in the Protestant Theological Library at Rome, and it is encouraging to hear that there is a strong desire fer a cheap Edition in Italian.

MARIA BETTS. Pembury, 1905.

The letters which we now publish for the first time in Italian are not new. They were published in English in 1852, and had three editions in that language. They were then translated into French and German, and in these languages also they have passed through various editions.

They were at first composed for England, and were published in The Record, a journal of the English Church. They bore for title: “Popery, Puseyism, and Jesuitism,” and their scope was to show the union of these three sects in making war on true Evangelical Christianity. But the English editor, perhaps not wishing to irritate the great Puseyite party in England, suppressed in the title the word “Puseyism,” and published the book under the title of “Popery and Jesuitism”; which title is preserved in the French and German editions.

But the publication of these letters would be of little profit or interest to Italy, as they were written for England, therefore the author, leaving the original plan of the work, has so re-cast these letters as to render them interesting to Italian readers.

Unfortunately, Papal Rome under the religious aspect is not known even in Italy; the organisation of the Court of Rome, the manner in which it manages its affairs, the hidden springs which move all the machinery of Roman Catholicism, are mysteries to many Italians. We do not flatter ourselves to have laid bare all these mysteries, but we hope in hope in our book to have given an idea of them.

As to the doctrines of Roman Catholicism, we have not exposed them all — our aim not being to make a controversial book – but we have sought to expose some practical points of Roman Catholicism as seen in action in Rome. He who wishes to know Roman Catholicism as it is, must study it; in Rome, and study it, not in books, but see it in action in the Pope, in the Cardinals, and in the .Is, md in the Roman congregation. Books often only give a false, and always an incomplete, idea of Roman Catholicism. One finds in books either the barbarous and superstitious Papacy of the Middle Ages, or the poetical Papacy of Chateaubriand.

If you observe the Papacy in different countries, you will find it most varied. In the south of Italy you will still find all the superstitions of the medieval age; in England, and in Germany, where Roman Catholics are mixed with Protestants, you will find a Papacy less superstitious and more tolerant, to be transformed into superstition and intolerance in the day when it shall have become dominant.

It is a certain fact, that after the Council of Trent, Roman Catholicism was entirely fused into Jesuitism. Jesuitism is not very scrupulous; it knows, according to the circumstances of the times and places, how to invest itself with new forms, and to appear even liberal, whilst officially it condemns liberalism.

We have a speaking example of this under our eyes. Pius IX., in his Encyclical and in his Syllabus, solemnly condemns all the principles of liberty and progress, and at the same time we see Theologians, Catholics, Priests, and Bishops pretending to be Liberals and Progressives, remaining attached to Catholicism and the Pope. Thus the people do not know whom to believe, and Catholicism presents itself to tyrants and to retrogrades armed with the tyrannical and retrograde Encyclical; it presents itself to the Liberals armed with the reasons of the Neocatholic Theologians, who affect Liberalism; it presents itself to the people, to deceive them, under the aspect of religion.

These tactics are precisely the fundamental tactics of Jesuitism, which is based upon this principle, amply explained in our book, that all means are good when they conduce to the end.

The originator of this impious maxim was Ignatius Loyola. The Roman Court accepted it, and thus it is obliged to submit to Jesuitism, and leave to it the care of managing its interests, so that Jesuitism acts with great zeal every time that the interests of the Roman Court are united to its own. But if the interests of the one are separated and opposed to the interests of the other, then Jesuitism is the first to rebel against the Roman Court, and then that must yield to the immense influence of Jesuitism. The day that Catholicism is separated from Jesuitism will be the day of its death.

To have a just idea of the immorality of the Roman clergy it is necessary to have been educated and to have lived, as the author of this book has done for many years, amongst the priests and friars. It is only there that you can know the life of those pretended servants of God. There you know how those ecclesiastics pass days and hours in idleness, in the most futile, and very often the most immoral, conversations. There you know the cabals and subterfuges of these servants of God, to reach after and lay hold of a bishopric or the charge of a convent.

But we do not wish to say by this that all priests and all friars are bad or dishonourable men; there are some good ones, but they are rare exceptions. We are persuaded that there are also honourable Jesuits, but such as these are an almost imperceptible minority. They are men who have not known, or could shake off, the prejudices of youth, and whilst becoming old have remained childish. These have not had either knowledge or power to unfetter reason and religious prejudice from the shackles of their early education; they retain as infallible truth the legends with which their youthful minds were filled, and retain as the representative of God the man, who in the name of God, treads under foot the most holy rights of man. Such as these act, if you will, in good faith, but their good faith is the effect of culpable ignorance, created and fomented by Jesuitism.

If you seek to learn the disorders in the nuns’ convents, the author of this book has known them well. In the course of twelve years he has been sent by the Cardinal Vicar to almost all the convents of Rome, either as Preacher or extraordinary Confessor, or as spiritual Director, and thus has known all the horrors which are hidden between those walls. When he last year read Signora Caracciolo’s book on “The Mysteries of the Neapolitan Cloister,” he was obliged to confess that the Neapolitan nuns were much better than the Rome, with some exceptions.

The author of this book not only knows the disorders which he has witnessed, but he knows many others, having had occasion, through these same relations he had in Rome, to read the registers of the Vicariat, and to know much dissoluteness, both of friars and nuns, brought before the Congregations of Bishops and regulars, and of Discipline. Had he wished to speak in his book of such disorders he would have made a scandalous book; but he has written not to scandalize, but to instruct and to edify; and he hopes that Christian readers will appreciate his reserve.

To know that Roman Catholicism is the religion of money, you need to go to Rome, to enter the Chancery, and the Roman Court of equity, and to see in what way bishoprics, canonries, benefices, matrimonial dispensations, and all spiritual favors are bought, to see how the price is haggled over, and to see a class of persons authorised to be the agents of such sales, under the specious title of Apostolic Commissioners.

With regard to the doctrine of Popery you need not seek for it in the books of those theologians who, like Bossuet and Wiseman, have described a Catholicism quite different to that which it really is, and thus ensnare sincere Protestants to enter the Roman Church. You must go to Rome, and observing all things with a searching eye, you will see that real Roman Catholicism has three different doctrines – the official doctrine, which is very elastic, and as such, may be understood in not a bad sense. That doctrine serves as a weapon to the Jesuits and their adherents; and with the double meaning to that doctrine they show faithful Catholics that the Protestants calumniate Catholicism. They have a second doctrine, which they call the theological doctrine, which goes much further than the official doctrine, but still is restrained within certain limits. Finally, there is the real doctrine, that which is taught to the people, and which they practise; which is full of superstitions and often full of impiety. We have given some examples of these three different doctrines in our books which we have published on purgatory, on the mass, and on the Pope. We will cite here, also, two examples. Bossuet and other theologians, who have written against Protestants, maintain that it is not true that the Roman Church prohibits the reading of the Bible in the vulgar tongue, because there is no decree of the General Council which prohibits such reading. The Roman theologians maintain instead, that the Church prohibits the reading of the Bible translated by Protestants, because it is falsified. But these two assertions are false, and are contradicted by the real doctrine of the Romish Church, which, in the 4th rule of the Index, prohibits the reading of versions of the Bible made by Catholic authors. Bossuet, uniting with the official doctrine, which says that images should be venerated, denies that the Roman Church adores them; but the theologians, reasonably interpreting the decree of the Council of Trent, which orders the veneration of images according to the decree of the second Nicene Council, which says that they ought to be adored, explain that adoration, which they call the worship of “dulia,” as inferior adoration; whilst the real doctrine admits a true and proper adoration, kneeling before the images and crosses, praying to them, and offering incense to them.

Popery Jesuitised can only be known in its reality in Rome. Only in the Secretariat of State, in the Secretariat of extraordinary ecclesiastical affairs, in the Congregation of the Propaganda, and in the Congregation of the Inquisition, can you learn the elucidation of all that mystery of iniquity; there alone can you learn the subterfuges and the evil arts that they adopt to draw all the kingdoms of the earth under the yoke of the Pope. It is an incredible thing to say, but it is, nevertheless true; Rome is glad of the progress of infidelity and rationalism, because it hopes, and not without reason, that a country which becomes infidel is more easily made subject to Popery.

Rome Jesuitised knows how to draw for itself an admirable profit from love of the fine arts. It knows that the world is carnal, and the worldly cannot comprehend the things of the Spirit, because they are spiritually discerned; thus, in place of the worship in spirit and in truth taught by Christ, it has substituted a worship carnal and material, to retain in its bosom carnal men under pretext of religion.

The policy of Jesuitised Rome is contradictory and deceitful; it proclaims and condemns at the same time liberty of conscience; it proclaims it in the countries where it does not rule, to be able thus gradually to sow confusion, and one day to get dominion. It condemns it in the countries where it rules, for fear of losing this dominion. Such conduct shows evidently that it does not act on any higher principle than that of its own interest.

I should never be able to finish were I to enumerate a11 the monstrosities which are included in the fusion of Popery with Jesuitism. I could have desired to explain more at length this theme, but then I should have had write many volumes, and this generation does not love voluminous works – hence I must content myself with giving a simple a1lusion to papal Rome in this present work.

Nevertheless, in presence of the facts cited, and the express judgments of the author, the public has a right to know from what sources he has derived his information, and what credit they may merit. We think it our duty to forestall the request of our readers On this point, so that they may know that he is not writing a romance, but that he reports public and incontestable facts. The author is a Roman by birth, and was educated from his early youth in ecclesiastical life – he has lived for almost twenty-two years in a Congregation of priests, who are in some measure affiliated to the Jesuits; he himself was one of the warmest friends of the Jesuits, because he believed them to be the main support of Catholicism; and he believed Roman Catholicism to be the only true religion. The author of this book has for fifteen years exercised the office of Confessor in Rome, and has exercised that office, not only in the public churches, but in the convents, in almost all the cloisters of nuns, in the colleges, in the prisons, in the galleys, and amongst the military. How much he has been able to learn during fifteen years of office no one can imagine. He has been for eight years parish priest in one of the principal churches of Rome – the Church of the Magdalene; he was esteemed by his ecclesiastical superiors, who have many times confided to him the most delicate commissions, and he ever preserves a hundred autograph documents of his superiors, which show that. his conduct all the time he was in Rome was always such as to merit their eulogy. Let this be said in answer to the calumniator-Father Perrone-and others of the same class, who have copied from Perrone the calumnies they have poured out against the author. He challenges all his calumniators to set up an honourable jury to examine the documents he has, and pronounce sentence. All this should assure readers that the author has known the facts he narrates.

With regard to the opinions which the author permits himself to give in this book, readers may be assured that he was in a position to give them. After having received academical degrees he was for some years Professor of Theology in Rome itself, he had acquired the degree of Censore Emerito (Emeritus Censor) in the Theological Academy of the Roman University, and was a member of various academies. The famous Cardinal Micara, Dean of the Sacred College, had chosen him to be one of the prosinodali examiners of the clergy of his diocese. He has been for ten years Qualificator, or Divinity Confessor, of the Sacred Roman and Universal Inquisition; in consequence of which he was in a position not only to be well-informed, but also to give his judgment on the facts.

Perhaps it will be asked on what account I have left a position so good, a career which could open up the way for me to the first ecclesiastical dignities, in order to throw myself into the arms of a troublesome and uncertain future. I have never been pleased with stories which have been written about conversions, because they are mainly a. panegyric which the converted one writes of himself; and strong in this opinion I shall not write the story of my conversion, only I shall say to him who will believe it, that the motives that have moved me abandon Rome, and take refuge in a strange land, under the care of Providence, spring from preferring the glory that comes from God to that which comes from men; heavenly benefits to earthly blessings; true peace of conscience, which is only found in Christ, to the false peace the world gives.

This is the secret of my conversion, and as for those who will not believe it, I await them before the tribunal of Christ, when all the secrets of hearts shall be manifested, and there they will see if I have lied. I should feel degraded if I answered those who think that I embraced Evangelical religion in order to give vent to my passions. All who know me can conscientiously say that such as accusation is a calumny; and then I had had such wishes, so contrary to Christianity, I need not have abandoned Rome; I might have remained at my post, and have acted as do so many cardinals, prelates, and priests.

I ought also to add that I have never had any serious unpleasantness with my ecclesiastical superiors; nay, rather, Cardinal Patrizi, my immediate Superior, loved me and showed me the greatest esteem; he is still living, and could witness for me. Cardinal Ferretti, then Secretary of State, loved me, and I preserve some autograph letters written to me some time after my departure from Rome, which show that Pius IX., Cardinal Patrizi, Cardinal Ferretti, and all Rome, wished me well; and when Cardinal Feretti, in 1848, came to Malta, where I was, he publicly gave me the greatest proofs of his esteem. You have only then the impudent effrontery of Father Perrone to calumniate me. If an apparently just reproof could be given me for leaving Rome, it might be a reproof of ingratitude for having abandoned Superiors who so loved me, and who were so disposed to benefit me. But the voice of my conscience justifies me from this reproof, and also the voice of the Divine Word which tells me that we ought to obey God rather than man, and that it would be no profit to me to gain the whole world at the price of my eternal salvation.

Readers will easily understand that the plan of this book is fictitious; the four principal personages, who are in the letters, represent the four different doctrines with which one is more or less confronted. Enrico represents the fervent and intelligent Catholicism of a young man full of zeal. He is the ideal of that class of theological students who go to Rome to receive their religious education, then go into Protestant countries to carry on the Catholic-Jesuit propaganda. Signor Pasquali is the ideal of an evangelical Christian, without sectarian spirit, who follows the religion of the Gospel as it is written, and as the apostle of the Gentiles preached it to our Italian fathers. The author wished to make Pasquali belong to the Waldensian Church, in order to render just homage to that Church, which honours our Italy, and which will always be, whether it wishes or not, the mother or eldest sister of all the evangelical churches which have come out of, or will come out of, Italy. Mr. Manson has been brought on the scene to give a specimen of honest and sincere Puseyism. Lastly, Mr. Sweeteman is an honest defender of Evangelical Anglicanism.

These four principal personages are imaginary; the other personages, however, are real, known by the author; the character which he gives to them is a true one, and the author could state all their names. One difficulty yet remains for readers. They may ask how I have learnt to know Jesuitism, so as to describe it this manner. To that I reply that Abbot P______, a most learned ex-Jesuit, well known in all Rome, was my friend, and from him I learned many things. I was also most friendly with the Jesuits. Father Perrone, who now calls me ignorant, twenty years ago invited me many times to examine and try his theological students; Father Rootan, a famous General of the Jesuits, loved me much, and gave me his book on the exercises of St. Ignatius, which is only given to great friends of the Jesuits, because it contains the unfolding of the fundamental maxim of the Jesuits, that all means are good, if only they lead to the end. I have been three times to perform the exercises of St. Ignatius in the Jesuit Convent of St. Eusebius; the first time when I was an enthusiast for the Jesuits, the second time when the study of the Word of God had begun to open my mind, and then I began to see the wickedness of the Jesuit doctrines. I went there the third time, but only to well study those doctrines and to learn the true explanation of them from the two famous Jesuit Fathers–Zuliani and Rossini.

The letters bear the date of 1847-1849. Some insignificant changes have taken place in Rome since that time. For instance, there has been some (amelioration) in the condition of the Jews; but this came to pass, not so much from the exigency of the times, as at the instance of Signor Rothschild, who refused to give money to the Pope if their condition was not ameliorated; but the apparent amelioration has only increased the cruel persecution of those unfortunates.

We wish that this book may have, in its original language, the same reception which it has had in the foreign into which it has been’ translated.

Florence, February, 1865

LETTER I. Exercises of St. Ignatius (Loyola).

[ENRICO TO Eugenio.]
Rome, November, 1846.

My DEAR EUGENIO,-
Yon have good reason to complain of my negligence in having allowed so long a time to pass without writing to you-but, what would you? In the schooldays I have not a moment or time; the autumnal vacation I passed partly in going through all the lessons of the year – and partly in the spiritual exercises of St. Ignatius. But now I will no longer be so negligent towards the dear friend of my childhood. I will write to you every week by stealing some hours of sleep.

I am sorry not to be able adequately to answer your request. You wish to know from me what I think about Pius IX. and his reforms. You know well, dear Eugenio, that I understand little or nothing of public affairs, that I lead a very retired life, and attend with all my might to theological studies; consequently, I am the person the least capable of informing you about such things; I converse with none but the good Fathers of the Company of Jesus, who are my masters, my directors, my friends. These good Fathers, however, tell me that the concessions which Pius IX made to the Liberals will be followed by the bringing about of great injury to our most holy religion. This is all I know upon this point–nor do I care to know more.

Perhaps you, who are a Protestant, and educated in the pernicious doctrine of independent examination, will laugh at such fears; but if you had had the fortune to be born within the pale of the Holy Catholic Apostolic Roman Church, as I have been, you would understand that the religion of Jesus Christ is a yoke, truly a light yoke, as we read in Matthew xi. 30; but, nevertheless, is always a yoke that one should not lighten; it must weigh and press on the neck lovingly but absolutely. Now, to leave the people so much liberty, the good Fathers say, is as if they took off the bridle from the colt. They add, what is true, that Jesus Christ ordained His disciples, and through them all bishops, and especially the Pope, who is the bishop of bishops and His vicar, to constrain and to force all to enter into His Church–compelle entrars, Luke xiv. 23: and it seems that Pius IX. instead, will open the door that all may go out, by causing to return to his States all the Liberals exiled by the most holy Gregory XVI., who are so many rapacious wolves, and who will devour the flock. So say the good Fathers. Besides, I think only of one thing – that is, the salvation of my soul. My masters appear to be satisfied with me, and I hope next year to have finished my theological studies and return to my dear Geneva. Oh, how I could wish to embrace you again as a brother in Jesus Christ! You are good, you are upright in heart, and I hope for your conversion. In the meantime, I will relate to you what has happened to me lately, in order that you may know how much the good Jesuit Fathers are calumniated by those who do not know them.

At the time of the autumn vacation I had the privilege of being admitted to perform the spiritual exercises of St. Ignatius in the religious house of St. Eusebius. In the last ten days of October the exercises are performed in that religious house only by ecclesiastics – there were fifty in all; there were a cardinal, four prelates, some parish priests, different brothers, the remainder all priests; I was the only clerk.

The church and house annexed to St. Eusebius, given to the Jesuit Fathers by Leo XII., is situated on the Esquiline Hill, and covers a. great part of the remains of the hot Baths of Gordian. The convent, or house, has been destined by the good Fathers as a retreat for those pious persons who desire to perform the exercises of St. Ignatius; and many times in the year those good Fathers fill that house with persons, who for the small cost of thirty-five paoli are admitted there for ten days to perform these pious exercises under the direction of the Fathers. In your religion there are no such things, and I will, therefore, describe to you with”some precision these exercises, that you may have an idea of the infinite advantages which we Catholics have over Protestants.

At least a week before the day appointed for entrance, it is necessary to present yourself to the Fathers and provide yourself with a ticket. The good Fathers wish to know some days previously who those are who desire to perform the holy exercises, that they may inform themselves about such persons, with the sacred aim of being able better to direct their consciences. Besides, they wish to be secure and know for certain that those who go to these exercises are proper persons, who do not go for evil purposes.

Scarcely do you set foot in the religious house than two Fathers, with pious courtesy, receive you and conduct you to the little cell which is appointed for you; already your name is printed in large letters and put on an elegant card over the door of your cell, which is neat and very simply furnished. A tolerably comfortable bed, a little table, with necessaries for writing, two straw chairs, a prayer chair, a receptacle for holy water, a crucifix, and a card on which are fixed the rules to be observed-that is all the furniture of the cell. About half-an-hour after your entrance one of the Fathers comes to the cell, and with the most affectionate words informs himself of of your health, and in the kindest and most loving manner inquires the motives which urged you to make use of the holy exercises; and that with the sacred aim of being better able to direct your conscience. This first visit over, which is made to all, the bell rings, which calls all to the chapel.

The chapel is situated in the centre of the house; four long corridors, where the rooms are, end at the chapel as a centre. It is dedicated to the Virgin, and the picture over the alter represents her seated on a cloud, with the infant Jesus on her left arm, whilst with the right she presents to St. Ignatius the book or the Spiritual Exercises. In the centre of the chapel, upon a green carpet stretched on the pavement, is a large crucifix of brass, and every one coming into the chapel, before going to his place, prostrates himself before that cross and kisses it. When all are in their places a Father comes, seats himself in the arm-chair placed on the altar step, and begins the introductory discourse. The subject of that introductory sermon was taken from St. Mark vi:31: -“Come ye apart into a desert place, and rest awhile.” From that text the good Father showed the absolute necessity for every Christian, and especially for every ecclesiastic, to retire for holy exercises, because Jesus Christ did so in the forty days that He was in the desert, and because He ordered the apostles to do so, as clearly appears from the text. Then he said that all the excesses into which the clergy of the mediaeval age fell were occasioned because they abandoned the practice of the holy exercises; and, therefore, God raised up St. Ignatius to suggest them afresh, but with better method, and the Holy Church has greatly recommended them. He then passed on to give the rules, how to perform them with profit, and spoke until some strokes of the bell warned him that he should cease.

Through an unforeseen circumstance I then came to know the signification of those strokes of the bell. It is because during the time of the sermon those good Fathers, zealous for the greater glory of God and the good of souls, go the round of all the rooms and examine the luggage of all, not to take anything, but only to know what letters, what books, what objects the exerciser has with him, what he writes, and this in order to be enlightened how to regulate his conscience. You see that this is a pious work, carried out for the good of those who perform these holy exercises. The strokes of the bell are to warn the Father that the examination is ended. After the sermon each one goes to his room, and finds upon his kneeling chair a bronze lamp-stand, with one single burner, and a little book printed in large characters, in which is the compendium of the sermon which has been preached, which compendium of every sermon is found each time you go from the preaching to your room. In this you see the wisdom of the Fathers, who do not give liberty to the preacher to say what he wishes, but oblige him to say the things approved by the Elders. After half-an-hour, which ought to be occupied in meditation, you go to the common supper.

During the dinner and the supper one of the Fathers reads the admirable origin of the exercises of “St. Ignatius, the marvelous conversions which accrue from them, and the miracles with which God has willed to manifest His pleasure in and approval of those exercises; all which things were collected and published by Father Carlo Gregorio Rosignoli. After supper each one returns in silence to his room, and then the good Fathers go about visiting all and holding holy conversation with all on matters of conscience. The evening finishes with the examination of conscience, which is made in common, in the chapel. under the direction of the Fathers.

The next day, which is, properly speaking, the first day of the exercises, is entirely devoted to meditation and explanation of the great maxim, called by St. lgnatius the foundation of the Christian life, because it is really the basis of the whole religious edifice; a maxim which has given so many saints to the church, and which is the principal foundation of all the actions of the good Fathers. The maxim is this:_”Man is created in order that he may praise and reverence his Lord and his God, and that serving Him he may save his soul.” The old translation said:_”And that serving Him he may be finally saved.” But the most pious Father Rookan. the General of the Jesuits, has corrected the old translation upon the Spanish autograph, that which the Virgin gave to St. Ignatius in Manresa, which says: “may save his soul.” St. Ignatius proceeds to say that “all the things that are on earth were created on man’s account, in order that these should help him to fulfill the end of his creation.” See how man is ennobled!

From this principle St. Ignatius draws two conclusions ~the first, that “we ought to make use of, or abstain from, created things as far as they are profitable or injurious to the carrying out of our end”; the second, that “we ought to be indifferent in the choice of created things, which are only means to attain the end; hence, in the choice of means, we must not allow our fancy to judge as to their intrinsic value, but we should only see if the means that we select will conduct us to the end or not.” The Christian ought not to consider such things as worldlings, who understand little or nothing of spiritual things, consider them, but ought only to take care to select those means which best. conduce to the attainment of the end. Upon this fundamental maxim they make three long sermons, and I assure you that these are not too much in order to root out that prejudice which our pride has implanted in our heart, viz., wishing to judge the means in themselves, and not rather to judge them in relation to the end.

In fact, I had much difficulty in fully admitting the principle of St. Ignatius; it appeared to me that the salvation of the soul was by the grace of God; that service to the Lord was an effect of that . grace; hence I could not understand how the salvation of the soul was the effect of my service rendered to the Lord. It appeared to me that St. Ignatius should have spoken of grace and of love, but I found nothing of that.

According to the rules, I wrote down my difficulties and consigned them to the Father Director. In the evening there came to me a venerable Father, having in his hand the paper I had written, and he spoke to me in this manner: “One can easily see,” he said, smiling, “that you still suffer from the influence of Geneva. Your Calvinists carry everything to extreme, and their rigorous influence makes itself felt also on the Catholic population; but we shall find a remedy for it. In the meantime, my son,, learn that truth, like virtue, does not exist in extremes, the proper medium is the great doctrine which reconciles all. Recall the theological doctrines which . you have learnt from our Father Perrone, and all your difficulty will vanish. You know that justification, which is the principle of our salvation, is by grace, bull not grace that is entirely gratuitous; to receive it, it is necessary that the man should be prepared for it, and he merits it if not de condigno, but at least de congruo. You must remember that the Council of Trent in the 6th Session, at the 9th Canon fulminates anathema against the Protestants who teach that man is justified by faith and not by works. Remember the doctrine of our Cardinal Bellarmino, who, commenting on the chapter cited at the Council of Trent, says in his Book I. on Justification, chapter xiii., that it is necessary that justification should find in the man seven dispositions – that is, faith, fear, hope, love of God, penitence, hatred to sin, and the purpose of receiving the Sacraments. You know that justification can, or ought to, be augmented by us through mortification, and the observance of the commandments of God and the Church, as the Council of Trent teaches at the 6th session, Chapter X. With these considerations all your difficulties will vanish; the salvation of the soul in a certain sense is by grace, although we may and ought to merit it. It is grace because it is a favour of God, but it depends on ourselves, inasmuch as we prepare ourselves to receive justification, and, receiving it, we augment it even to the attainment of life eternal. You see, then, with what reason St. Ignatius teachers us that we save ourselves in serving God. Then, with regard to love, if St. Ignatius does not mention it, he does not exclude it. But here,” continued the good Father, “I warn you; the book of the exercises was given to St. Ignatius by the Virgin with her own hands, as you see in the picture in the Chapel; it is, therefore, a divine revelation; hence you must be on your guard against pushing criticism too far; 1ess discussion, my son, and more submission.”

You cannot think how much good these words of the Father Director did me. They imposed silence on Satan, who suggested in my mind all those difficulties; and from that time I set myself, with all docility. to discern in the book of the holy Patriarchs his divine doctrine.

The third day the meditations are -first, an the sin of the angels; secondly, on the sin of Adam; thirdly, on the sins of men, always applying the great foundation maxim, that is, that sin is a deviation from the end, and that this consists specially in choosing the wrong means to attain it. That day and the two that follow are designed to instill into the sinner a salutary fear; hence all is arranged with that view. The shutters of the windows are almost entirely shut, and only sufficient light is allowed to enter the room to prevent you from stumbling. This will seem a trifle; but that solitude, that silence, that darkness, united to the gloomy ideas of the meditations, to terrify, that you feel impelled at once to open all your conscience to the good Fathers. Besides this, the rule prescribes that you should mortify yourself as to food and sleep. All these things together are a blessed combination to produce such fervour as it is difficult to resist.

During the fourth day mediation is continued upon subjects of holy terror-you meditate upon death and judgment. And here I wish to relate a little anecdote which will show you the holy art that the good Fathers adopt to cause the good impression on of those holy maxims to remain on the mind. Returning to my room full of fervour after the first meditation of the morning, which was upon death, I threw myself on my knees on my prayer chair, and bending down my forehead to pray with great fervour, I was thrown back by a. blow, occasioned by my forehead having struck against a hard body which was placed upon my prayer chair. I looked in’ terror, and imagine what was my fright to find that I had struck my forehead against a skull, placed there in order to be a speaking image of death. After the second sermon on the same subject, I went to my prayer chair with greater caution; but instead of the skull I found a coloured picture pasted upon cardboard; it was the . representation of a dead body in complete dissolution, rats ran over it from all sides to satisfy themselves with this putrifying flesh; : the limbs were falling away, and the worms swarmed upon the dead body. Under the picture there was this motto: -“Such as I am, thou wilt be.” I defy the hardest heart to resist such shocks. After the sermon on hell, I found the picture of a lost soul surrounded with flames, demons, and serpents, and with monsters of every kind tormenting it.

The fifth day the sermons were upon individual judgment, universal judgment, and upon the judgment that Jesus Christ will execute in an especial manner upon ecclesiastics; and I assure you that those sermons were not less terrifying, During these day of’ terror, the good Fathers came to hear the confessions of the exercisers, and each one prepared to give a general confession of his whole life, beginning from infancy.

The sixth day a new method begins; the shutters of the windows are opened wider to give greater light, the corridors themselves are more illuminated, all mortifications are suspended, and the table is more delicate. The great meditations on the two banners and their followers occupy this day, in which the application of the great fundamental maxim is particularly given; and on this day, for those who can understand it, there is the development of the great spiritual machinery of the holy exercises. In the meditations on the two banners, St. Ignatius conducts the Christian first to the plains of Damascus, where God created man, and makes him see Jesus, who, raising His Cross, invites men to follow Him in the way of abnegation, humility, and penitence, but few are those who follow Him. Then, with a truly inspired impetus, he transports the man to the vast plains of Babylon, and here he shows Satan, seated on a chair of fire and smoke, who calls men to follow him by the path of pleasure, and many follow him. Man must enlist under one of the Captains, enroll himself under one of these two banners. Well, then the exerciser imagines himself there in the midst, on the point of choosing. Oh, dear Eugenio, what a solemn moment in my life was that day! That day was a day of exaltation of spirit, and God was sensibly felt in all.

After the sermon we went to our rooms, and all the good Fathers were in movement to visit all, and thus maintain their fervour. On that day is made the so-called exercise of election., and this is what it consists in. Either you are already in a fixed and immutable state, as for example, are the priests; or you have not yet definitively chosen, as in my case; in both cases you ought to make your exercise of election. It is done thus. You divide a sheet of paper into three columns; in the first you write the reasons which you have, or which you have had, to choose that state in which you are, or desire to be; in the second, the reasons which made you, or will make you, contented in that state; in the third, the contrary reasons. That page ought to be, in a word, the state of your conscience, in order to listen to the counsel of the good Fathers, who, from their experience, will direct you in your eleolion. If you con. sign this writing to the Father Director, as almost all do, it is in order that he may better know the state of your conscience, and, besides, he receives it under the seal of the confessional, and after he has read it, he burns it.

And here I will refute another calumny which is spoken against these good Fathers, viz., that the house of St. Eusebius is, at it were, a snare to entice young men and make them Jesuits. It is false, my dear friend, quite false; and I will give you a proof. I, for example, had chosen to become a Jesuit, as it appeared to me the most secure means of saving myself; however, the Father Director made me observe that I had not chosen well the means that would conduce to the greater glory of God, but had allowed myself to be led away by my egotism. “The greater glory of God exacts,” said he to me, “that you return to your own country; there God will open a wide field for you, and were you a Jesuit, you would not be able to return there. Remain then a Jesuit in heart and not in dress; maintain our friendship, allow yourself to be directed, by us, but return to your country as a simple priest, and God will be therein more glorified.”

After so solemn a day the exercises that remained were not so interesting. On the seventh day you meditate on the life of Jesus Christ as a whole, because it is the model of the life of a Christian, and specially of a priest. On the eighth day you meditate on Hie passion and death; on the ninth, on the resurrection, the ascension, and the descent of the Holy Spirit. On the tenth, there is only a sermon on the love of God. The morning of the ninth day the Reverend Father General came to perform Mass and to give a pious exhortation on devotion to the Sacred Heart of Mary, and on the obligation that all ecclesiastics have to propagate such devotion. After that we were taken leave of by the good Fathers, with tears in their eyes.

Do you not see, my dear Eugenio, with what holy arts those good Fathers seek the salvation of souls and the glory of God? Your Calvinists and Methodists do nothing of the kind. I came out of that holy house quite another man to what I was when I went in. I could wish that all men were Catholics, and as much as in me lies I shall do all that I can for the special conversion of Protestants; indeed, God has already put me on the track of an Anglican minister. I have begun with him the work of conversion, and I have good hopes of it. In the next letter I will tell you how I met with him, and what is the result of the discussion commenced. Adieu, dear Eugenio; love always your
Enrico.

LETTER II. The Puseyite and the Jesuit.

Rome, November, 1846
DEAR EUGENIO,-
I am the happiest man in the world. You will remember that in my last letter I told: you of having formed an acquaintance with a minister of the Anglican Church; well, you will not believe it, but I have already almost succeeded in converting him. I should never have believed that the conversion of a Protestant priest could be so easy a matter, nor have imagined that their arguments were so weak, that it needed only a little logic and a little good sense to reduce them to nothing. But I hope the story which I have to relate to you will be of great benefit to you.

Scarcely had I left the religious house of St. Eusebius, where, as I wrote to you, I had gone through the spiritual exercises of St. Ignatius, than I went to the Church of St. Peter to acquire plenary indulgence. My religious acts to this end being finished, I stayed to observe the superb monuments of Christian art, which render that church the greatest marvel in the world, and I particularly stopped before the superb mausoleum of Pope Rezzonico, the work of the immortal Canova. I am not an artist, but such a monument is capable of inspiring anyone with enthusiasm. That statue of the Pope, in marble as white as snow, kneeling with hands clasped, in the attitude of prayer, has an expression so true, that you feel inclined to hold your breath to avoid disturbing that holy meditation. The artist has drawn his inspiration from the fervent prayer this Pope made, that God would cause him to die rather than that he should be obliged to repress the Jesuits, who are the moat powerful support of our holy Church. Those two lions, the most beautiful that have ever come from the chisel of man, making the finest contrast to the benevolence expressed on the face of the Pope, the principal figure of the monument, fascinate and delight you.

Whilst I was thus, almost in ecstasy, considering this mausoleum, I heard a slight noise near to me; I turned and saw a man of about thirty years of age, with a sympathetic face, dressed entirely in black, having a coat that descended beneath, his knees, fastened in front by a long row of buttons, that only permitted a small portion of a white cravat to be seen. He, like me, was occupied in admiring this marvel of modern art. At first I took him far a priest, but seeing in his hands a top (a cilindro) hat, I found I was mistaken. He approached me, gracefully saluting me, and began to speak to me of the magnificence of that monument; he wished to know the artist, and asked me about the actions of the Pope who was honoured by so magnificent a mausoleum. “It is certain,” he said to me, that this Pope must have rendered great services to religion to have merited a monument so immortal.” I answered that Clement XIII. had been a really holy Pope; that his life had been one tissue of trials; that all the Catholic Courts had tormented him, because not only did he refuse to suppress the Jesuits, but rather protected them against all. We then came out, of the church together.

I did not know who this was with me. From his physiognomy and pronunciation I judged him to be an Englishman. His dress was rather that of an ecclesiastic, and as I know that in England priests and friars cannot dress in their habits, but wear coats which are only not exactly similar to those of the laity, I thought he might be a priest. I was on the point of questioning him on this subject, when he said to me: “This is, indeed, a grand temple, and worthy of the majesty of God; we in England have no idea of such an one” “Pardon me,” I asked, “are you Catholic or Protestant?” “I am a Catholic,” he answered me, “but not a Roman Catholic; I am a minister of the Anglican Church, and belong to that class which we call High Church. Our Church is Catholic and Apostolic; it retains the Apolitical: succession in its bishops and in its priests, and all the doctrines and practices of venerable antiquity.”

Then I saw that my interlocutor was a Protestant priest, and I thanked God from my heart that He gave me so soon an opportunity for exercising my missionary zeal. Nevertheless, I will not hide from you that I was somewhat embarrassed, and with all my best intentions I did not know how to begin a discourse on his conversion. He, in the meanwhile, asked me many questions upon ecclesiastical matters. Finally, I sought to introduce the subject, asking him what he thought regarding the separation of the Anglican from the Roman Church – that is, whether he judged it to be a good or bad thing.

My question was a direct one, and he, heaving a deep sigh, replied: “That separation has been the greatest misfortune for the poor English Church; the separation was a necessity, but a necessity created by the obstinacy of men who would yield in nothing. The questions were taken up with too much heat, and also they were on each side somewhat exaggerated; there was no compromising, and thus the separation became necessary; but it was very fatal necessity. Both the Anglican Church and the Roman Church have lost much by the separation.”

In the meantime, we had arrived at his lodging; he shook my hand, gave me his card, and said to me: “I much love the priests of the Roman Church, I shall be very pleased to see you again and speak with you concerning the Roman religion. Adieu.”

You can imagine what my surprise was after such a conversation; that a Protestant, and Protestant minister, could speak with such veneration, I may say love, of the Roman Catholic Church, appeared an inexplicable phenomenon. I had, up to that time, imagined that the Protestants were rabid enemies of Catholics, and particularly of their ecclesiastics; and I found instead, in this man, not only great courtesy, but also assured benevolence.

The evening of that day I went to the Roman College to consult my theological professor about the plan I should follow, in order to succeed in the conversion of this Protestant. I represented the case to him, and he, after reflecting a little while, said to me: “I think that your Englishman is a Puseyite.” I then prayed the good Father to give me an exact notion of Puseyism, because I had heard it spoken of, but had no clear idea of it.

“It would be a very long thing,” answered the good Father”, “to unravel the story of the religious movement of Oxford, called Puseyism, from Dr. Pusey, who is at the head of it. If you only knew what trouble that movement costs our good Fathers who are in England, either in having excited it or in supporting it! It produces truly good fruit, and will produce greater, lint it coats much. But that is enough; it will little interest yon, at least, at present; that which ought to interest you is to know the conduct you should maintain with such an Anglican minister in your discussions, and it is as to this that I wish to instruct you now.

“Ascertain accurately in the first place if you have to do with a’ Puseyite. Certainly the conversation he held with you leaves scarcely any room to doubt; but you never can be too cautious. You must better assure yourself of it. With such an aim you should begin to speak of the Church and of its ministers, but limit yourself to speaking of the bishops, priests, and deacons, without alluding to the other orders. You will say pleasantly and in no tone of discussion, that where you find Apostolical succession, there is the true Church. If he is a Puseyite he ought to agree entirely with that doctrine. Then you, to be better assured, will speak of the episcopate as a thing of Divine institution in the Church, and touch gracefully upon the doctrine of the superiority of bishops over priests by Divine right. Speak of the power of the keys, and of the power to absolve sins left by Jesus Christ to the ministers of His Church; the power that is preserved in the Church of Apostolical succession, transmitted by regular ordination; then begin to speak of auricular confession, but on this point do not quote passages from the Bible, limit yourself to saying that the practice of it dates back to the first ages of the Church, and say that our Father Marchi has discovered confessionals in the Catacombs, and you will see that this discovery will interest him very much.

“Yon need not take the Puseyites to the Bible, my son; they admit the authority of the Bible, but they admit, as we do, its supreme, but not sole, authority; they admit, likewise, the authority of tradition, the authority of the Church, the interpretation of the Fathers, and, above all, they occupy themselves with ecclesiastical antiquity; they repudiate the Protestant principle of free examination, from which you see clearly that they approach us very nearly. Nevertheless, be cautious, I repeat to you, not to take up with him the tone of discussion, nor show too much zeal. Ascertain if he agrees with these doctrines; if he agrees, he is a Puseyite, and then I counsel you not to advance further in your conversation without first consulting me.”

“Pardon me, my Father,” I then interposed; “do the Puseyites really admit such doctrines?”

“They admit these,” he replied, “and many others besides. They admit, for example, the adoration of the Eucharist, although they will not admit transubstantiation; they admit, although with some restriction, the worship of the cross and images; they admit prayers for the dead; of justification they speak almost in the same terms as the Council of Trent; they praise monastic vows and the celibacy of priests; they desire the re-establishment of convents and have founded some; they make use of crowns; of crucifixes, of medals; they light candles on their altars, and adorn them with flowers; they praise generally all the customs of our church, which can be justified by antiquity; and they desire to unite themselves by , some arrangement to the Roman Church, from which their fathers so imprudently separated themselves; and note well that the Puseyites are not like those obstinate Methodists, who attach themselves to the Bible, and so strongly, that they will not agree with anything that is not in the Bible. It is a terrible thing to have to fight with those people; but the Puseyites are much more reasonable, they admit the authority of the Church and all that can be proved consonant with ecclesiastical antiquity.”

“And why, my dear Father, do you not seek to make them Catholics? It appears to me that if they admit such principles, it would be very easy to convert them to our holy religion.”

“There is nothing easier, my son, than the conversion of a Puseyite; if he wishes to be logical he must become a Catholic. Admitting, for example, that the only true Church is that which has the Apostolical succession in its ministry, succession that is transmitted by the hands of the bishops, what is the consequence? It can only be this. The Roman Church is the true Church, because this has such a succession; and, admitting that the rule of faith is not only in the Bible, but is found also in tradition, and in the authority of the Church, it follows, consequently, that all the Protestant churches, who admit no other rule of faith than the Bible, are in error, and that the Roman Church alone has the truth. Thus you see clearly that a little logic is sufficient to make Catholics of all the Puseyites who will reason sincerely. But do you think that it would be for the greater glory of God to seek to convert the Puseyites to Catholicism? No, my son, the Puseyite movement must not be destroyed, but preserved and nourished; it has already been well received among the English aristocracy, by the Anglican clergy, in Parliament, and, perhaps, also in a still higher circle. Let us skilfully foster it, rather than destroy it, and it will infallibly bring forth its fruits; this is seeking the greater glory of God. But suppose that all the Puseyites became Catholics, that would do little good, but great evil; the Protestants would be alarmed, and our hopes and our endeavors by this means to bring back the English nation to the bosom of Holy Mother Church would be dissipated, and all our gain would be reduced to causing some thousand individuals to declare themselves Catholics, who are already so in heart, without having made explicit declaration. From time to time it is well that some Puseyite doctor should declare himself Catholic in order that under our instructions he may better conduct the movement; but it is not well that many should do so. Puseyism is a living testimony, in the midst of our enemies, of the necessity of Catholicism; it is a worm that, carefully preserved, as we strive to preserve it, will eat up the old Protestantism until it has destroyed it. England must expiate the great sin of its separation from Rome, and it will expiate it, most certainly. I know what I say, but I cannot tell you any more.”

“But in the meantime, my Father, all our good Puseyite friends are lost, dying outside the pale of our Holy Mother Church, and this appears to me a great evil.”

“Do not sorrow on that account, my son; our good Fathers, who are in England, provide for this untoward event, if we may call it so; they are furnished with all the power of our Holy Father to receive the recantation of the dying, when this can be done with prudence and quietly; when. they cannot do this, patience; their damnation cannot be imputed to us. You well know the end justifies the means; our aim is most holy, which is, the conversion of England; and the most fitting means to attain this end is Puseyism. You who have just come from the holy exercises know that our Holy Father Ignatius teaches that all means are good when they conduce to the end. Prudence, which is the first of the cardinal virtues, teaches us aIways to permit a small evil in order to attain a. greater good; thus the sick man allows the amputation of his leg to save the remainder of his body; in the same way we must resign ourselves to seeing the loss of some hundred Puseyites, in order that one day England may be converted. Therefore, follow my counsel; do not give yourself so much trouble to convert this man; lead him here to us. Father Marchi will take him to the Catacombs, and will show him those monuments of Christian antiquity which will further confirm him in his opinions; and he can do much more for our Holy Church in England as a Puseyite than as a Catholic.”

I confess to you, dear Eugenio, that I was not quite persuaded by the reasonings of my master; nevertheless, I saw in them profound prudence quite above my inexperience; still I felt in my heart I know not what, which prevented my following these counsels to the letter as I ought to have done. I thought over them a good part of the night, and decided to make use of these counsels only as far as they would help me to the conversion of my Englishman, which I did not feel disposed: to give up. Having made this decision, the following morning I went to find my Englishman, who received me with extreme kindness, as if I had been an old friend of his. We began our conversation about religion. I will not stop to detail this conversation, which circulated round those points indicated to me by my master, and with which my Englishman almost entirely agreed. Then I wished him to go further. He admitted that the only real Church of Jesus Christ is that visible company (societa visibile) established on the day of Pentecost, which has for its founders the Apostles, for its heads their successors, and for members all those who profess Christianity. From this principle, admitted by my interlocutor, I drew consequences against him, that is, if the true Church is a visible company, a visible body, it must have a visible head. If, as he admitted, the heads of the Church, viz., the bishops, are the successors of the Apostles, there must likewise be amongst them an order; hence, a head of the bishops, and consequently of the church; and he only could be such from among the bishops who is the successor of St. Peter.

Mr. Manson, for such was the name of my Englishman, was somewhat embarrassed, and I was transported with joy and delighted that I had not obeyed by master. Mr. Manson saw that he could not do away with the consequences which I had drawn from his principles, that he could not logically remain a Puseyite without admitting the primacy of the Pope, and all his prerogatives as Head of the Church. He sought to defend himself as he best could, saying that the Roman Church had degenerated in many points from the beautiful and pure Catholic doctrine of antiquity. I made him observe that even if it were so (which I did not admit), my conclusion would not on that account be less true or less just; for admitting that that alone is the true Church of Jesus Christ in which is preserved the Apostolic succession, there could be no doubt of the Apostolic succession of the Roman Church; it follows therefore, that the Roman Church is the only true one, and as outside the true Church of Jesus Christ there is no salvation, so one must either belong to the Roman Catholic Church or be lost for ever.

I would not and could not admit that the Roman Church had degenerated from the doctrines of antiquity, and repeated with pleasure that expression of “antiquity”; because, to say the truth, controversies with Protestants are a little tiresome for us, when one must only discuss with the Bible; you Protestants not admitting either the authority of tradition or the interpretation of the infallible Church, we find ourselves on difficult ground with you. But if, besides the Bible. you admit tradition, and the authority of the Church, and refer to ecclesiastical antiquity, to prove doctrines and justify customs, then the advantage is all for us, and our victory is certain. I, therefore, asked Mr. Manson what those doctrines were in which the Rom.n Church had, according to his opinion, degenerated from venerable antiquity?

Then he seemed to me somewhat embarrassed; he said many things rather unconnected, but from his discourse I gathered that he spake of worship in the Latin tongue, and of Communion in one kind only; customs, he said, that the Roman Church had adopted, but which it could not sustain by antiquity.

I prepared to show him from these same principles that such customs, although they may be called modern; did not show that the Roman Church, having adopted them, was in error, because such things do not pertain to dogma but to discipline; and as he himself admitted, the Church, that is, the bishops assembled together, having supreme authority in affairs of discipline in the Church, had had the right to change that discipline. To say that the changes were errors, you must prove either that the’ Church has no authority in affairs of discipline, or that these things pertain to dogma, or that they have been changed without good, reason.

It was at this point of my reasoning, when already I felt certain of victory, that the servant entered to announce two visitors. We rose to receive them, and two gentlemen entered, one of them a young Englishman; the other, his tutor, an Italian. a man of about fifty years of age. I then took leave with great vexation. Mr. Manson asked me my address, and promised that he would come and see me to continue our conversation, which had much interested him, and thus we parted.

I do not see the moment, dear Eugenio, to bring this affair to an end; the conversion of this man is certain. When he shall come, and we shall have continued the discussion, I will write to you at once. – Love your most affectionate
Enrico.

LETTER III. The Waldensian and the Jesuit.

Rome, December 1st, 1846
My DEAR EUGENIO,-
There is a proverb here in Rome which says “Man proposes, and God disposes,” and this proverb is today verified in me. I proposed to myself the conversion of a Puseyite to Catholicism, and God has disposed to make me, perhaps, the instrument of the conversion of two other Protestants. But will you believe it, my good friend, the opposition to such “conversions I found rather on the side of my masters than on the side of the Protestants; but the good Fathers acted thus from prudence, and from no other motive; nevertheless, such prudence I cannot comprehend. That which God will. shall suffice; I leave all in His hands, and to you, as the friend of my childhood, I will confide all, being sure of your discretion.

I related to you how I was parted from Mr. Manson by the arrival of those two foreigners. It was noon when I left him; two hours after I received a note from Father P_____, who is one of my masters, in which I was invited to present myself the same evening to him at the Roman College, as he wished to speak with me on interesting matters. I went at the hour indicated. Father P_____ received me at first rather gravely, but after a little while, resuming his accustomed paternal tone, he said to me: “My son, the exercises of St. Ignatius have profited you but little, it appears to me.”

I was mortified at the reproof, which appeared to ma unmerited, and I asked the Father to explain himself.

“What have you done this morning?”

Then I began frankly to relate to him the conversation I had with Mr. Manson, but he interrupted me: “I know all. and that is why, my son, I have called you to come to me. You have not been willing.to follow my counsel; you have set yourself to dispute, and have ruined all.”

It was impossible to understand the words oi the good Father. I almost held the victory over my Englishman in my hand, and my theological master reproved me and told me that I had ruined all! I begged him to explain himself better.

“My son,” answered the good Father, “if you had acted according to my counsel, your visit would not have been so long. Those gentlemen who arrived would not have found you there, and if they had found you, they would not have found you in the heat of discussion; their visit would have passed as a complimentary one, and all would have ended well. But do you know what happened after your departure? Those two gentlemen wished to know of what the Abbe was talking, that he seemed so excited. Mr. Manson told them, and thus it has come to pass, that they also wish to have some discussion with you.”

“Oh, my Father,” I interrupted, “so much the better; truth is on my side, and I fear nothing!”

“Presumption! my son, presumption! You do nob know with whom you would have to do; those two are not yet Puseyites, like Mr. Manson, but are two obstinate Protestants who will attack you with the Bible, and you will not know how to answer them. The Bible interpreted in its true sense, that in which our Holy Mother Church gives it, destroys all heresy; but when you dispute with those who do not admit that sense, they make it appear that the Bible is against us. Holy Mother Church does not permit even inquisitors to dispute with heretics upon the Bible alone. No, my son, if you have committed the first error, do not commit the second. Withdraw from this discussion; excuse yourself far want of time; you have now the schools, and may occupy yourself with anything else. Only manage·to bring your Englishman to me, . and do not think of anything further.”

The discourse of my master had not convinced me; but thinking that my duty was to obey him, I parted from him determined not to visit my Englishman again, and if he should urge me to continue the discussion, to excuse myself in the best manner possible. . But I repeat it: “Man proposes, and God disposes.” Circumstances prevented me from remaining firm in my first resolution.

The next morning, when I returned! home after school, I found Mr. Manson awaiting me. After the customary courtesies, he related to me that those two gentlemen who had interrupted our conversation had wished to know upon what subject we were discussing and having been told, they had shown great interest in it, and desired to continue it. He told me that Mr. Sweeteman, the younger of them, was the son of a very rich English gentleman; that he had known this young man in Oxford, where he was prosecuting his studies; but as he had become enamored with the doctrines of Dr. Pusey, his father, who was an assiduous reader of The Record, had taken it into his head that his son might become a Catholic, and had sent him to Rome in the persuasion that, seeing the Court of Rome closely, he would become horrified at it. With that aim he had given him as a tutor Signor Pasquali, the elder gentleman, who accompanied him. He told me that Signor Pasquali was a Piedmontese, who belonged to the Waldensian sect, and who, as he well knew Rome and the Roman Church, was engaged to mow Mr. Sweeteman all the corruption of Catholicism. “I,” continued he, “am not a Roman Catholic, but those fanatics do not please me who find everything bad in the Roman Church. The Roman Church, certainly, has its errors, but it merits respect, being the most ancient of all the Christian churches. Therefore, let us unite to show Signor Pasquali his fanaticism.”

This discourse was a strong temptation to me no longer to obey my master; but I had the strength to resist and to excuse myself, saying that I was very sorry not to be able to enter into the discussion; that, my time was fully occupied; that I ought to prosecute my studies, which left no time at my disposal. It seemed that Mr. Manson was satisfied with my excuse, and did not insist. He waited a moment, then he said to me: “At least, you will not deny me a moment this evening to take a cup of tea with me; you have no lessons in the evening.” It seemed to me too difficult to refuse, and I accepted the invitation.

I went at the appointed hour, but Mr. Manson was not alone, as I had expected; Mr. Sweeteman and Signor Pasquali were already with him. I had not foreseen this meeting, if I had I should not have gone; but as I was there it did not seem fitting to retire, only I renewed in my heart the purpose of not entering into any discussions. Mr. Manson introduced me to both, according to English etiquette. We talked of many things; then Mr. Manson began to speak of the beautiful churches that are seen in Rome, and of the stupendous monuments of antiquity, especially the ecclesiastical, and concluded with saying that if those Dissenters who cry out so much against the Roman Church could see Rome, and conscientiously consider its monuments, observing its magnificent temples, the majesty of its rites and of its hierarchy, it is certain they would not exclaim so much against it.

“My opinion is quite opposed to your, “said the Waldensian; and I maintain that a sincere Protestant who sees Rome as it is, finds precisely in its monuments, in its temples, in its hierarchy, in its rites, the strongest arguments to condemn it and to judge it as fallen from the pristine faith preached by St. Paul to the inhabitants of that city. I also say that if a sincere and enlightened Roman Catholic, not brought up in prejudice, would seriously examine these things, he would have to abandon his Church if he wished to be a logical Christian.” They said many things upon this question. Mr. Manson warmly maintained his position; the Waldensian, cold as ice, did not concede an inch of grown. Mr. Sweeteman sought to maintain the intermediate position, and I trembled at heart, but was silent, because I would not disobey my master. But I thought within myself that without disobedience I might enter into the conversation, because they did not speak on the subject of the Bible, but of monuments and rites.

Whilst I was in this uncertainty, Mr. Sweeteman addressed himself to me, saying: “Signor Abbe, you ought not to be silent on a question which so closely concerns you.” “Signor Abbe is silent,” said the Waldensian, “because he knows well that reason is on my side, but it does not suit him to confess it.”

At these words I felt my face become burning and a feeling of holy zeal excited me to fling myself on that obstinate heretic to teach him to speak better of our holy religion. I no longer remembered the prudent counsels of my master, and with a voice suffocated with indignation, I replied that my silence was quite the reverse of a tacit approval; it was rather compassion for his obstinacy in error, which made him reason wrongly; and I was, silent because such sophisms did not appear to me worthy of answer. “How,” I added, “seeing such monuments which attest the venerable antiquity of Catholicism, can you conclude that it is false? Must a religion, to be true, be modern?”

The Waldensian, instead of being offended, took my hand in sign of friendship, and pressing mine in his, said: “This confirms me still more in the good opinion that I had conceived of you; you are a sincere Roman Catholic; you are such because you believe the truth; should you come to know yourself in error I am certain that you will abandon Roman Catholicism to embrace the Gospel.”

You cannot imagine, my dear Eugenio, how such a proposition offended me. I abandon the holy Catholic religion! I would rather die before having a single doubt as to its truth. Then I remembered the exhortation of my master, and appreciated his prudence. I repented not having followed his wise counsels, and proposed no longer to embarrass myself with heretics of this kind. I considered how best quickly to leave the house, so as not to set foot in it again, and contented myself with replying that Signor Pasquali was a thousand miles wide of the truth with regard to me.

“Well,” replied the Waldensian,” “to prove it I give you a challenge, not of words, but of deeds. You will have the kindness to conduct us to those monuments which, according to you, prove the truth of Roman Catholicism; we will examine them together, and I give you my word of honour, that if with them you succeed in convincing me of the truth of Catholicism, I will immediately become a Catholic; on the other hand, if I succeed in convincing you of the contrary, you will do what your conscience shall dictate to you. But if you do not accept a challenge so reasonable, and all to your advantage, you will permit me to believe that you are already persuaded of being in the wrong.”

Though such a proposal attracted me, yet I resolved to obey my master, and excused myself with want of time; but the Waldensian showed me that as it was the question of leading to the truth three men whom I believed to be in error, I ought to sacrifice to such a great work every other occupation; he made me observe besides, that, having already begun the discussion with Mr. Manson, the excuse of want of time seemed a pretext, and, in reality, I could no longer withdraw conscientiously. “However,” he said to me. “we are not in a hurry; should it please God, we shall pass the winter in Rome; you have no lessons on Thursday; you will have fifteen days vacation at Christmas, ten at the Carnival; you can give us them Thursday and the vacations, and thus you will not occupy with us the time destined for your studies.”

I had no longer any honest excuse to offer, therefore I accepted, and it was arranged that the next Thursday we should go together -this evening was Wednesday.

On the Wednesday I went to the school, and noticed that the Professor looked at me with a stern eye, and introduced into the lesson sentences which hurt me, and as he pronounced them, he fixed a significant look upon me. “Possibly,” I said within myself, “he has become acquainted with the fact of yesterday evening; whosoever could have related it to him?” After the lesson I begged the Professor to listen to me for a. moment. When we were alone he strongly reproved. me for my disobedience, and said, “Take care, I cannot guarantee you from the terrible consequences that this may have for you.” I was afraid of the good Father’s reproofs; he turned his back to leave me, but I threw myself at his feet, clasped his knees, and besought him so earnestly, that at last he was moved and resumed his amicable tone.

“Well,” he said to me, “we will see if it is possible to present a remedy for your imprudence. “I promised to obey him punctiliously; and then the good Father conducted me to his room to give me all the suitable instruction..

I tell you all, dear Eugenio, because you are the friend of my heart, and you know the prudence of these good Fathers, who, recognising my small experience, and fearing for my youth, gave me good counsel, in order that I might come out with honour from this discussion.

When we had reached his room he said to me: “My son, as you have entered into this terrible engagement, you must come out of it with honour; tomorrow go to your appointment, but take care to go only tomorrow. You must choose a leading subject which will confirm the Puseyite, will not attack Mr. Sweeteman, will send the Waldensian to the dogs, and which it will not be difficult honorably to maintain. The success of a discussion depends very much upon the selection of the theme, and according to the compact, it is for you to select it. You have to conduct your Protestants to visit the monuments; whither do you think of conducting them?”

“To the Catacombs,” I replied.

“You could not select worse. The Waldensian will tell you that the Catacombs were public cemeteries, where they buried promiscuously Gentiles and Christians; that these could not be places of sacred meetings; that the Gentiles guarded with great care their cemeteries, and would never have allowed the Christians to celebrate there the mysteries which by them were judged profane; and if you show them the stone pulpits, the altars, and other monuments, he will tell you that they were placed there afterward, because the Gentiles would not have permitted in their cemeteries those assemblies which they would not permit elsewhere. He will tell you many other things, to which you will not be able to reply. No, my son, act according to my advice, do not conduct them to the Catacombs. The subject of your researches tomorrow must be St. Peter”s, and here is your itinerary. Conduct them to St. Peter in vinculis; and there the Father Abbe, who will be instructed by me, will show them the documents which prove that; this church was built by the Senator Pudens, and consecrated to St. Peter; he will show them also the chains with which the Apostle was bound by order of Herod and Nero. Thence descend to the Roman Forum, called the Campo Vaccino, wet conduct them to the Mamertine Prison, where he was confined; then go up to the Gianicolo, and in the church of St. Peter in Montorio, show them the place where St. Peter was crucified; conduct them to Santa Maria in Traspontia, and in the fourth chapel to the left as you enter, show them those twp columns to which the holy Apostles Peter and Paul were bound, and then scourged. Lastly,conduct them to the Vatican to see the bodies of these Holy Apostles, and the Chair of St. Peter. From all these monuments you will easily deduce that it is evident that St. Peter had his seat in Rome as Bishop, and that he died in this city; and that therefore the Bishops of Rome are his successors; and as St. Peter was the first of the Apostles, and had special promises, that is, the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven, the primacy, the right of confirming all other bishops, and infallibility; so these things have passed from him by direct succession to the succeeding Popes, who in continual sequence have gone on to our days. Here the Waldensian will dissent from you and will argue from the Bible; but you will call him to order; the challenge which was proposed and accepted was simply to discuss the monuments; the good Puseyite will be on your side, do nob doubt.”

But do you believe, my Father, that Signor Pasquali will thus quickly yield?”

“Do not try, my son, to make him yield; it would require more to conquer the obstinacy of a rather learned Waldensian. Try only to come out with honour from the embarrassment in which you are placed. He will certainly not yield; you will also see that he will begin to cavil over these monuments; you will then appear offended at some irreverent word, which will certainly come from him; you will reprove him for not keeping to the compact; you will exaggerate, if need be, your indignation; and you will leave them, and thus extricate yourself from difficulty.

I know that all which these good Fathers say is for the greater glory of God, but I tell you sincerely, I was not satisfied with these counsels; they appeared to me not straightforward, and it seemed ignominious thus to abandon the field at the most important moment. The Father saw that I hesitated, and lightly touching me on my shoulder, said to me kindly: “Poor Enrico, you are very unfortunate! The first time that you try to act the missionary you get; hold of a Puseyite, whom you ought not to convert, and of an obstinate and learned Waldensian, with whom you ought not to venture. But do not lose courage, another time you will have’ better success.”

“But could I not—”

“No,” brusquely interrupted the Father, “you cannot and must not do differently to what I have told you. Do you know what will happen if you disobey me? If you enter into questions from which you could not come out with honour, from the monuments you will pass on to the Bible, and with that cursed art with which they handle the Bible, the end will be that the Puseyite will abandon us and turn Protestant, the other will be all the more confirmed in his errors, the Waldensian will triumph, and you will have given him the victory. And what will then happen to you? Remember that the Inquisition exists in Rome, not only for heretics. but also for any one who causes the least injury to the Holy Church.” Thus saying he opened the door and took leave of me. . The last wards of my master terrified me. I went home much preoccupied with what I had done; but at home I found a letter from the Secretary of the Vicariat which ordered me to present myself immediately at the Vicariat to hear some directions from his Eminence relating to myself.

When an ecclesiastic is called in that way to the office of the Secretary of the Vicariat, it is a sign that he is accused of some fault. Without waiting a moment, I went to the Secretariat, and the priests that were occupied there exchanged between themselves glances of intelligence, and looked at me with a scornful smile. I asked for the Signor Canon Secretary, and was introduced.

The Canon Secretary, of whom I speak, is a priest of between seventy and eighty years of age, a. venerable old man, the example and model of all the priests of Rome; loved by the Pope, and revered by almost all the Cardinals; and I might almost say, venerated by all the clergy; a zealous preacher, an indefatigable confessor, he is always found equal to himself from early morning, when he rises to perform mass, up to the evening, when he plays card, which he never fails to do.

The good Canon made me sit at his side, and told me he was very grieved to be obliged to reprove me, but by his office he was forced to do so; and after many words upon the caution and prudence which ecclesiastics ought to me, in order not to compromise the Holy Church, he told me that the Cardinal Vicar was not quite satisfied with my conduct, on account of the frequent conversations I had held with Protestants; and in the name of the Cardinal Vicar he ordered me absolutely to cease from such conversations. “You know,” he added, “what the canons of the most holy Lateran Councils III. and IV. teach in regard to heretics, nevertheless, you, yesterday evening, took tea with them. How does this appear to you, my son?”

I no longer knew in what world I was, accused, reproved, menaced, and why? For a work, which seemed to me the best I had ever done in all my life. I could no longer contain myself; my heart was full, and I burst straight out into convulsive weeping which suffocated me. The Canon called for help, and the priests of the Secretariat hastened in. After I was relieved and somewhat calmed I prayed the good Canon to listen to me. All retired, and I narrated to the Canon Secretary the whole circumstances.

When I had related all, he said to me: “Be assured, the Cardinal Vicar has been differently informed; but I believe in you; your narration is most natural, and everything tells me that the thing is precisely as you have related it; and although it is not in my power to change the order of the Cardinal, nevertheless, I take the responsibility upon myself; the Cardinal is very reasonable, and will be easily persuaded. Carry out then, my son, the engagement which you have undertaken, but with prudence, for mercy’s sake. You can in no case compromise the cause of the Holy Church because you have no official character; only I pray you to be careful for your own sake, my son; such heretics are dangerous. Before you begin any discussion, say three Ave Marias to the Madonna, who, as the Holy Church teaches, ‘alone has slain all heresies,’ and then you need fear nothing.”

Thus spoke this excellent priest. Then I felt tranquilized, and decided to follow his counsels rather than those of my master. Returning home contented, I have occupied the rest of the day and this evening in writing you this letter. Tomorrow will be our first visit to the Roman antiquities, and I intend to use the programme given me by my master. After tomorrow I will write to you the result.-Love your most affectionate,

Enrico

LETTER IV. The Monuments.

Rome, January, 1841.
My dear Eugenio,-

I grieve to find in your last letter suspicion with regard to my conduct. You doubt whether the reason for which I have waited a month to write to you may have been that of not wishing to confess my defeat. No, dear friend; as yet I have never come out with loss from the dispute, rather I hope to come out victorious. I did not write to you at once because I did not wish to weary you by writing discussions; I wished to wait for the decisive victory which could not he far off, and then I should have written all to you. But since you desire to know all the details, I am willing to satisfy you. I reveal myself to you as to a friend of my heart, which you are; I hide nothing from you, not even the thoughts of my soul, certain that you will not compromise me. This, then, is what happened in our visit to the monuments. I went the appointed day to Mr. Manson and found the other two gentlemen. We took a carriage, and according to the programme of my master, I conducted my friends to the Church of 8t. Peter in in vinculis. It is situated on the south side of the Esquiline Hill. A most beautiful portico, with five arches, enclosed in elegant iron railings, forms the entrance to the magnificent basilica; which is of a light, and at the same time, majestic architecture. I shall say nothing of the most beautiful picture of St. Augustine, the work of Guercino; nor of the other, representing the liberation of St. Peter from prison, the work of Domenichino. The chef d’aeuvre of Michael Angelo, viz., the statue of Moses, destined tor the mausoleum of Julius II., eclipses all else in this church.

Mr. Manson, Mr. Sweeteman, and I stood enchanted before that statue, which shows how high the genius of Christian art can attain. The Waldensian smiled at our admiration; then, striking me lightly on the shoulder, said: “Signor Abbe, explain to me a little one thing I do not understand. Your Church says that temples are holy places. places consecrated to the Lord, houses of prayer; and adopts in its temples all that the Bible tells of the Temple at Jerusalem. How, then, can it transform its temples into studios of fine arts or museums, and thus expose itself to the profanation of us Protestants, who enter them not to pray, but to look at the objects of art?”

I answered that these statues were in the churches to excite the devotion of the people, and the more beautiful they ware the more they answered their purpose.

“Keep to common ground,” he interrupted; “we must not anticipate the question of statues, that will come in its time. But, even granting what you saw, this monument is certainly not placed here to excite devotion; but to honour the dead body of a Pope.” “To the Lord’s House,” I added, “belongeth magnificence.” “It is written, however,” he resumed, “Holiness becometh Thy house” (Psalm xciii. 5).

We passed into the sacristy, where the Father Abbot awaited us, and received us with many compliments. In the sacristy is a beautiful marble altar, and upon it a little cupboard made of precious marble, and of most beautiful work. The Father Abbot lighted four candles, put on his surplice and stole, opened the little cupboard, and drew from it a beautiful urn of rock crystal, in which the chains of St. Peter are preserved. The Father Abbot and I knelt together before these holy chains, and prayed in silence; then we kissed these relics, and! the Father Abbot shut the cupboard.

Then, having taken off the sacred vestments, he related that in the fifth century Giovenale, the Patriarch of Jerusalem., gave to the Empress Eudocia the chain with which St. Peter was manacled in Jerusalem by order of the Emperor Herod; Eudocia presented them to Pope Leo I., who brought together this and the other chain with which St. Peter was bound in Rome by order of Nero. The two holy chains coming in contact united and became one single chain, which is here preserved. Then the Empress caused this church to be rebuilt; I say rebuilt, because it was already a church, built by Pudens, and consecrated by St. Peter. Hence the title of St. Peter in vinculis.

“And is this story well certified?” asked the Waldensian.

“To doubt the truth of it,” replied the Father Abbot, gravely, “it would be necessary to doubt the evidence itself. If you will take the trouble to come up to my room, I can show you the documents which prove the truth of it.”

Then went up to the apartment of the Father Abbot, where he drew from his bookshelves the first volume of the works of Father Tillemont, and at page 172 he read these words:-

“Tradition says that St. Peter converted the Senator Pudens in Rome, that he lived in his house, and consecrated in it the first church in Rome, which became afterwards San Pietro in vinculis.”

I was consoled beyond measure, and admired the prudence of my master in having so wisely directed my visit to the monuments. Mr. Manson exclaimed, “Ah! one must come to Rome to be instructed in ecclesiastical antiquity.”

The Waldensian, with his accustomed coldness, said, “But do you believe, Father Abbot, that Tillemont really lent credence to this fact?”

“I cannot think how you can doubt it,” replied the Father Abbot; “Tillemont depended upon tradition.”

“Well,” said the Waldensian, “favour me with the second volume of Tillemont.” Having it, he sought for page 616, and showed that Tillemont based such tradition upon the Apocryphal book of The Shepherd, attributed to Hermas. And then he showed that all the events related in that book belonged to the time of Antoninus that is, towards the middle of the second century; from which one must deduce that if you have faith in such tradition, St. Peter would have been the guest of Pudens in the middle of the second century, that; is, about a century alter his death.

The Father Abbot and I were confounded by this observation; still, the Father Abbot did not lose courage, and taking from his cupboard an old martyrology in parchment, with the initials in miniature, opened it, and read, at August 1, these words in Latin: “The consecration of the first church at Rome, built and consecrated by St. Peter the Apostle.” “Here is a document much more ancient than Tillemont.”

The Waldensian looked at the martyrology, and from its characters and its miniatures he showed that it was of the XIVth century.

A document,” said he, “of at least three centuries after the fact which you wish to prove by it, proves nothing.”

“Well,” replied the Father Abbot, “here is the testimony of Cardinal Bona,” and he showed the book of that Cardinal upon the liturgy. “Here is the history of this church written by one of our Canons.” The Waldensian interrupted: “All these testimonies are more recent than those of the martyrology. But let us not go from Tillemont; see what is said at page 604 in this second volume. Read, Father Abbot:-“It cannot be believed that the Christians had churches or buildings built expressly in which to assemble for their religious exercises until alter the persecution of Severus towards the year 230 A.D’ And you could,” he added, “quote all the Fathers of the first centuries to show by their testimonies that the Christians had no churches until the third century.”

The Father Abbot became as red as a hot coal. I felt as if I could not contain myself, and excited by anger, I said to the Waldensian, “And perhaps you have something to contradict about this chain?”

“Not at all; I should be out of my mind: if I did not see it was a chain; but to be reasonably convinced that this was the chain of at. Peter I must reason with you a little about it. I must know, for example, why of the two chains (Acts xii. 6) with which St. Peter was fettered at Jerusalem, only one was preserved; and where is the other gone? I must know who preserved that chain. Whether Herod? Whether the Jews? Whether the Christians? But St. Peter left the chains on the ground in the prison. It would be well to know how, in the ruin of Jerusalem, when all was destroyed, that chain was preserved. With relation to the one at Rome you must show that St. Peter was there, which, however, is a little difficult. If he had not been to Rome, he could not have been imprisoned there. But suppose he was there, I will ask, who preserved that chain? Nero? But he, we know, was not so devout. The Christians? But who would have dared to go and ask for it? And if they had dared, would they have got it? And then you know welt that in those times the worship of relics was esteemed idolatry; it is sufficient to read Tertullian, Origen, Justin Martyr, and the other ancient Fathers, to be persuaded of this. Therefore, dear sir, let us look at other monuments in which you may be more fortunate; but these do not in the least convince me.”

This first experience taught me that I had to do with a man who knew much more than I did; and then I felt that my_ was right, and sought how to extricate myself from trouble, and wished that I had got out by means of Biblical arguments, in order to accuse him of not having kept to the contract, and thus break off the discussion with some honour. To that end, rather than conduct him to the Mamertine Prison, I took him to the church called, Domine quo vadis.

A short distance from the city, upon the Appian Way. there is a little church built on the spot. where our Lord appeared to St. Peter. In order that you may well know the fact, I transcribe the inscription upon the marble which is found in that church: – This Church is called Santa Maria delle piante, and, commonly speaking, Domine quo vadis. It is called “of the footprints,” on account of the appearance of our Lord made in it to St. Peter, when that glorious Apostle, persuaded or even compelled by the Christians to come out of prison and depart from Rome, walked by this Appian Way, and just at this place met with our Lord walking towards Rome, to whose miraculous appearance he said: ‘Domine, quo vadis?’ (Lord, whither goest Thou?); and He replied, ‘Venio Romam iterum cruciffigi‘ (I come to Rome to be crucified afresh). St. Peter immediately understood the mystery, and remembered that to him also such a death had been predicted, when Christ gave to him the government of His Church; therefore, turning round, he went back to Rome, and the Lord disappeared, and in disappearing left the impression of His feet in a paving-stone of the street. From this the Church took the name of ‘delle piante,’ and from the words of St. Peter the name Domine quo vadis? …. 1830.-” …. 1830.-”

We had scarcely arrived in front of the church, than the Waldensian stopped to read the inscription that is over the door:- “Stop; 0 passer-by, and enter into this holy temple, where you will find the footprint and figure of Our Lord Jesus Christ, when He met with St. Peter, who fled from prison. Alms are requested for wax and oil, to liberate some soul from purgatory.” After he had read this inscription, he said, “I do not think that the Signor Abbe is more fortunate in the visit to this second monument.”

We entered; upon the wall on the right of those who enter is depicted the Saviour, who with His cross on His shoulders, walks towards Rome. On the wall to the left is depicted St. Peter in the attitude of flying from Rome. In the middle of the Church there is a narrow strip of basalt pavement to represent the ancient street, and in the centre a white square stone, projecting above the pavement, and on this there is the print our Lord’s feet, and around is sculptured the verse of the Psalm, “Let us adore in the place where His feet rested.”

The Waldensian assumed a very serious expression, and cast a compassionate look upon me, and without anything more, went out of the church; Mr. Sweeteman appeared to me also scandalized Mr. Manson himself was not satisfied, and all went out.

I did not at all understand this. I also went out, and the Waldensian spoke to me, with a seriousness that made me afraid.

“Signor Abbe, I am a Christian, and cannot bear that under the aspect of religion the adorable Person of Our Lord Jesus Christ should be made ridiculous; and that the word of God should be thus abused to inculcate the adoration of a stone.”

I wished to justify the thing; but all were against me, and I held my peace. Everything went wrong with me that day. Then I resumed the programme of my master, and ordered the vetturino to drive us to St. Peter.

St. Peter in carcere is nothing but the ancient Mamertine Prison turned into a chapel. You descend by a modern staircase to the door of the prison, upon which you may still read the ancient Roman inscription. Having entered the first subterranean prison, you descend by little steps into the second, which is perpendicularly under the first. As we descend by the little steps, I made Mr. Manson notice on wall the impression of the profile of a human face, an impression which was taken from the face of St. Peter, when going down into that prison the jailer gave him a box on the ear, and caused him to strike his head against the stone wall. which, softened by the touch of the holy head, received the impress of his face. In the middle of that second subterranean prison there is a well of water, miraculously made to spring forth by St. Peter, when he converted the jailers Processo add Martiniano, and baptized them with forty-eight other prisoners.

Mr. Manson was filled with veneration for this prison, in which the Apostle St. Peter had lived, and had worked miracles. He wished to taste the miraculous water, and to preserve some of it in a little bottle, which he bought of the custodian to carry with him to England. I thought myself victorious, and in going out I asked the Waldensian if he was convinced that this was the prison of St. Peter.

“I believe,” he replied, “that this is the Mamertine Prison, because it is really in the position in which it was situated. History speaks of this prison, and tells that in it only illustrious prisoners were confined; hence it could not have held the poor fisherman of Galilee. History gives the names of prisoners who lived in this prison, but amongst them there is not the name of Peter or of Paul; on the contrary. with regard to the latter. who was really in Rome, the account in the Acts of the Apostles tells that he was not in this prison. History tells that those who entered this prison never came out alive. but were strangled there, and their bodies, to the terror of the people, were thrown from the Scale Gemonie, which looked upon the Forum. Thus we know that in this prison Jugurtha was put to death; that by order of Cicero, Lentulus, Cetegus, Statilius, Sabinius, and Ceparius, heads of the Catiline conspiracy. were strangled; in it was killed Sejan, by order of Tiberius, and Gioras, son of Simon, chief of the Jews, who had been made prisoner by Titus; but no historical document speaks either of St. Peter or of St. Paul. History tells that no one came out of this prison alive; therefore, St. Peter was not there, because, according to you, he did not die there. Moreover, you have shown me in Domine quo vadis that. St. Peter, persuaded by Christians, came out of prison. But from this prison. he could not have come out, and in it he could not have spoken with any one. There is no other way of entrance but the aperture used from above – the first aperture penetrated the upper prison, which was otherwise inaccessible. But St. Peter would have been in the lower inaccessible prison, and it would have been absolutely impossible to come out of it. It cannot be admitted that he came out by miracle as he came out of the prison at Jerusalem; for then there would have been no room for the reproof which, according to you, he received from Jesus Christ for having come out; so you see well that this prison proves nothing in your favor.”

“And the impression of the face of St. Peter on the stone? And the miraculous water? And the baptism of the prisoners? Are these, then, all impostures?”

“My dear Signor Abbe, do not allow yourself to be blinded by prejudice, but let us quietly reason. before admitting the facts as certain. The steps on which half-way down is the pretended face of St. Peter, are of recent construction. When the Mamertine dungeon was a prison the prisoners did not go down into it by those steps, which did not exist, but were let down into it through the upper aperture; so then, if these steps did not exist, St. Peter could not have passed by and left his face on the stone. As to the well, I see no miracle in that; because, wherever you dig in Rome to that level you find water, which is not at all miraculous. And then it is an absurd thing to pretend that God worked the miracle of causing the waters to rise, in order to baptize those jailers, who could easily bring water needed for the baptism, without the necessity of a miracle. Finally, it is absurd to pretend that there were, together with St. Peter and St. Paul in that prison. forty-eight other prisoners; first, because that was an exceptional prison, as we have mentioned, and then, if you measure the prison you will see it is absolutely impossible that there could have been fifty-two persons in it, unless they were packed like anchovies in a barrel.”

On hearing these reasons Mr. Manson threw away the bottle of water he had bought; Mr. Sweeteman smiled, and I bit my lips with rage, not knowing what. adequate answer to give to such reasoning. I was convinced that there must be a good answer, but I did not know it, and I was indignant that my master, in giving me the programme, had not warned me of the objections of the Waldensian, and taught me how to &newer them.

“Well,” said I, “let us go and see the place where St. Peter was crucified.”

“Do you mean,” said the Waldensian,” Bramante’s famous little temple of San Pietro in Montorio? Let us spare our poor horses that fatiguing ascent; and this is why. I have good reasons to believe that not only did St. Peter not die in Rome, but that he never came there; but even if I could be persuaded that St. Peter had died at Rome, the sight of the hole where, eighteen centuries ago, the cross of St. Peter was planted, would make me laugh. Who can believe that that hole made in the earth could have been preserved for so many centuries? Besides, although the scientific men who study Christian antiquity at Rome believe that St. Peter died in that city, they do not agree as to the place of his martyrdom. Read Bosio, read Arrighi, and many more who have written upon the martyrdom of St, Peter, and you will see that some of them maintain that St Peter was put to death on the Vatican Hill, others between the Vatican and the Janicullum, and scarcely one believes that it was on the summit of the Janiculum, where is the little temple of Bramante. Therefore, it is useless for us to go there.”

The further we proceeded, the more I found myself confused and discouraged. Nevertheless, as I had no honest reason to retire· honorably, I took courage and conducted my companions to the Church of Santa Maria in Traspontina. belonging to the Carmelite Fathers.

Entering the Church. I called to the Friar Sacristan, in order that he should show the columns of St. Peter. I hoped that the Friar would be indignant at the observations the Waldensian would make, and thus a contest would arise which would give me a good pretext to retire; but instead of this, the contrary happened.

The Friar conducted us to the fourth chapel on the left, where leaning against the two walls, encased in wood, are preserved two columns of marble. An inscription, in Latin verse tells that the two Apostles, Peter and Paul, being tied to these two columns and scourged, the image of the Saviour, which is above the altar. appeared to them, and spoke to them for some time, consoling them in their suffering. The Waldensian smiled. The Friar Sacristan, turning towards him, said, “You do not, then, believe this to be true?”

“To believe it,” he replied, “I should desire to see some document. History tells nothing of this fact, and it seems to me frivolous to believe it without any proof. Besides, these columns were found in excavating the foundations of this Church in 1563; that is fifteen centuries after the death of St. Peter; who then, after fifteen centuries, is able to attest the fact? As to the image, the imposture is too gross; it is sufficient to look at it to perceive that it is a work relatively modern. Besides, it is beyond doubt that the use of images amongst Christians began long after the time of St. Peter.”

“The gentleman is right,” said the Sacristan; “during the many years that I have shown these columns to strangers I have found very few who have believed in them. Neither do I believe in them; but what would you? Everyone must attend to his own business.”

We came out of the Church, and after taking a few steps the Waldensian prayed us to come for a moment with him into the church close by of San Giacomo Scossacavalli. On entering he showed us two great pieces of rough marble, and pointing to them, said, “There is no doubt that this is stone of the country; but read.” There was written over these marbles that St. Helena had them brought from Jerusalem; that one of them was the altar on which Abraham tied his son Isaac to sacrifice him; the other was the altar on which the infant Jesus was placed to be circumcised. “See,” he added, “what faith can be given to the monuments which are preserved in Rome.”

My discouragement increased, and I prayed to the Virgin Mary and to the Holy Apostles that they would help me.

We arrived at last at St. Peter’s. Scarcely had we entered the Church than the Waldensian said to me: “Since the Signor Abbe showed us just now two columns, I will also show you one.” Thus saying, he conducted us to the first chapel on the right on entering called the chapel della Pieta. “Here is a column, with an inscription, which says:-‘This is a pillar from the Temple of Solomon, which Jesus Christ leaned against when He preached in the Temple.’ The Bible says that the magnificent temple of Solomon was entirely destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar, so much so, that when it was rebuilt by Zerubbabel, they had to begin by excavating the foundations anew. History says that -as Jesus Christ predicted- of the temple which existed at the time of His life on earth, there has not remained one stone upon another. How is it then that this column is preserved? Such is the antiquity of these monuments!”

There remained to me no longer any hope of convincing him, except by making him see the chair of St. Peter; I, therefore, led him in front of its magnificent altar.

This imposing monument is situated in the apsis of the basilica, opposite its principal door. Four colossal statues in copper gilt, each one twenty-four palms high, lightly sustain, as if in triumph, the chair of St. Peter, which is under a lining of copper gilt, adorned with magnificent work of sculpture and chiseling.

The four colossal statues represent two doctors of the Latin Church, viz., St. Augustine and St. Ambrose; and two doctors of the Greek Church, viz., St. Athanasius and St. John Chrysostom. A group of angels, sporting among small golden clouds, serves as a crown to a transparent dove, representing the Holy Spirit, which, in the midst of a large elliptical window of painted glass, seems to throw rays of light on the chair, and so to establish a sort of communication between and heaven.

So magnificent and surprising is the work that Mr. Sweeteman, who had never seen it, was struck with admiration, and Mr. Manson said, “I hope that Signor Pasquali will have nothing to object to so magnificent a monument.”

“I have nothing to say from the side of its magnificence; nothing more could have been done to gratify the senses; but I have my reasons to believe that that seat, supported by four doctors and honoured with special sumptuousness, instead of being the sea of the humble Apostle of the Lord, is the seat of Soliman, Caliph of Babylon, or of Saladin of Jerusalem.”

I could no longer resist such horrible blasphemy; I know not how far my zeal would have led me, but a convulsive tremor seized me; they led me home, and I was obliged to go to bed.

Tomorrow, if it pleases God, I will write you the remainder of this adventure.-Your friend,

Enrico.

LETTER V. The Monuments. (Continued.)

Rome, January, 1847.
My DEAR EUGENIO,-
Without preamble I will continue my interrupted narrative. The day after the accident which occurred to me in the Church of St. Peter, I received a letter from the Waldensian, which I transcribe as follows, to show you more than ever my sincerity; and, although our religious convictions divide us, nevertheless. I look upon you as a brother, as well as the friend of my; heart, from whom I hide nothing, even when it is against myself. This, then, is what the Waldensian wrote to me:-

“SIGNOR ABBE.-I am greatly grieved at what took place yesterday. I confess that I was a little too immoderate; that speaking to a sincere Catholic, as you are, I ought to have taken more care and measured my words; therefore, I ask your pardon, if I offended you by my plain speaking. But apart from my tone, which was rather that of a professor, I believe I have good reasons as to the main point of the question.

“I say I have good reasons to believe that that venerated seat or chair, as you call it, above the altar, of which the festival is celebrated every year on the 18th of January, instead of being the seat of the Apostle St. Peter, is that of Soliman, Caliph of Babylon, or of Saladin, Caliph of Jerusalem. In order that you may believe I have not said this heedlessly, or to insult you, here are the proofs, which, if they are not most convincing to prove that that seat belonged to a Turk, nevertheless are as to show that it could not have belonged to St. Peter.

“In the first place I cannot persuade myself that the most humble Peter would ever have had a special chair for himself. I cannot suppose that for the sake of a seat St. Peter would have transgressed the commandment of Jesus Christ (:Matt. xx. 25-27). I love St. Peter much, and therefore, I cannot believe that he was either a prevaricator or liar; he himself says in his first Epistle, chap, v. 1, that he was only an elder like all the others.

“Think well over it, I pray you; how can one believe after that, that he would. wish to have a chair for himself, falsifying by that fact everything that he had said and taught? But tell me, I pray you, where could he have kept such a seat? In his house? But why, of all his furniture, did they only preserve this seat? You will say that it was the seat on which he officiated in the Church. But I have already shown that there were no churches in those times. The Acts of the Apostles, and the Apostolic letters, tell us that they celebrated worship from house to house. I do not think you will suppose that St. Peter went from house to house drawing his chair after him.

“But let us suppose that of which there is no proof, that St. Peter was in Rome, and that he had a distinct seat in which to officiate. I ask you, what are the proofs that show that this is really the seat of St. Peter? Do not tell me that the Pope, who is infallible, says so; because I will answer you that, according to your own principles, the Pope is infallible in dogma, but not in fact. And then who would have preserved this seat? Certainly not the Christians; because the veneration of relics only began at the end of the fourth century. And if the Christians had preserved it, how was it that it was not found until the seventeenth century? These are some of the reasons for which I cannot believe that this is the seat of St. Peter. To all this add the principal reason drawn from the Bible and from history, which show that St. Peter never came to Rome, and you will see that my motives for not believing in that seat are, as one may say, as just and reasonable as possible.

“Still, I will obstinately maintain that which is so displeasing for you to hear, which is, that that seat may have belonged to a Mahometan. I said so on the authority of Lady Morgan, who, in her work on Italy, in the fourth volume, says that the sacrilegious curiosity of the French at the time when they occupied Rome, in the beginning of this century, overcame all obstacles, in order to see so famous a seat. They took off its copper covering, and drew out the seat, and, examining it diligently, found there engraved in Arabic characters these words:- ‘There is one God, and Mahomet is His prophet.’ I do not know if Lady Morgan tells the truth, but the answers that have been made to her are by no means conclusive. You perhaps know the answer which seems the best; that it is impossible it should be the seat of a Mussulman, because they do not use seats. It is true that usually they do not make use of seats as we do, but of cushions, sofas, stools; but their Muftis use seats, and even chairs, to preach from, and sometimes even their sovereigns use such for thrones. It might then have been the seat of a Mufti. The convincing argument would be to draw out this seat, and let all who would, examine it; but that will never be done.

“You know, Signor Abbe, that I greatly love the good Benedictine Tillemont. He was a learned man, a monk, and a good Catholic; I hope you will not refuse his testimony. Well, Tillemont was incredulous, as I am, about this chair. In his travels in Italy, he says, ‘It is pretended that in Rome there is the episcopal chair of St. Peter, and Baronio says that it is of wood. Nevertheless, some who have seen that which was destined to be placed solemnly on the altar in 1666, affirm that it was of ivory, and that the ornaments are not more ancient than three or four centuries, and the sculptures represent the twelve labours of Hercules.’ That is what Tillemont says.

“You will tell me that Tillemont is opposed to what Baronio says. I could answer you that both these writers were most zealous Catholics; both learned, both able historians; the contradiction then between them about this seat is a proof of the falsity of it–so much the more, that in the passage cited, Tillemont shows that he does not believe in the authenticity of this chair. But now I remember to have read in my youth (I do not recollect in what book) what explains all, and takes away all contradiction between the two writers. The festival of the chair of St. Peter had existed for about half a century, before the seat was placed for veneration. Amongst the relics that are in Rome existed a seat which is said to have belonged to St. Peter; and Pope Clement VIII. thought of causing it to be venerated, but Cardinal Baronio showed him that the bas-reliefs represented the twelve labours of Hercules, and consequently this could not be the seat on which St. Peter officiated. The Pope was persuaded; nevertheless, it was necessary to have a chair of St. Peter. Then they sought in the depository of relics, and substituted for the first, a second ancient seat of wood, and this is that of which Baronio speaks, while Tillemont speaks of the first. But sixty years after the death of Baronio, when Alexander VII. was constructing the altar of the chair, as you see it today, they did not know which of the two should be placed for veneration; not the first, on account of the mythological sculpture; not the second, because it was of Gothic style, and that was sufficient to show that it could not have belonged to St. Peter. The Pope, then, knowing that amongst the relics there was a seat, brought as a relic from the Crusades, ordered this to be taken and brought for . veneration; hut no one had perceived the Arabic inscription recorded by Lady Morgan.

“As for the rest, let us not question about a seat; a seat is at the best nothing hut a seat, and it is not suitable to base our faith upon a seat. Were it as clear as the daylight that this was the identical seat of St. Peter, it would not prove his presence in Rome, because it might have been carried thither. And if it were true that St. Peter was in Rome, the presence of the Apostle nineteen centuries ago, would prove nothing as to the Roman religion being true.

“I have been tractable and allowed myself to be led by you where you wished; now I pray you to let me lead you tomorrow; but I promise you that from this time, I will enter into no controversy; and thus you may be sure of not having to dispute with heretics, and may come without fear of disobeying either your confessor or your master.

“With regard to your master, I ought to bell you that Mr. Mason has discharged his servant, because I discovered, by certain proofs, that he was a spy of the Jesuits. You ought to know such a thing. May God open your eyes as to your dear masters.- Au revoir, yours, etc., “L. Pasquali.”

The last words of this letter produced a terrible effect upon me; now I understood how my master had known all that I did or said with my friends. Such a procedure appeared to me base and disloyal, and irritated me, so that I determined not to allow myself to be thus blindly led by the Jesuit Fathers. Besides, the letter of Signor Pasquali convinced me that I had been wrongly guided by my master. Why, indeed, prevent me from discussing frankly and loyally, with the Bible in my hand? Why oblige me to discuss the monuments? And why then point out such uncertain monuments? These reflections made me accept the invitation of the Waldensian, and made me determine not to speak again of this discussion with my master. Tho next day all four of us met, and Signor Pasquali conducted us to see the Arch of Titus. This precious monument of history and of art is situated at the beginning of the road that the Romans call Sacra. It is the triumphal monument raised by the Senate and Roman people to Titus for his famous and complete victory over the Jews.

“These are,” said the Waldensian, “the sacred antiquities that I love; not, indeed, those that the followers of Dr. Pusey seek with such avidity; on the veracity of these monuments not the least doubt can fall.”

“Pardon me,” said Mr. Manson, “we ought not to despise ecclesiastical antiquities.”

“And. I do not despise them, but I leave them in their place,” said the Waldensian. “They are precious for ecclesiastical history when they are authentic, and carefully studied are precious also to the Christian. They show the beginning and the date of the corruptions and abuses introduced into religion; but to give them a theological place, as if they were a rule of faith, seems to be the excess of human aberration. If a thing is true because it is ancient, we ought logically to say, then Paganism ought to be truer than Christianity, because it is the more ancient. We shall be judged upon the Gospel, not upon antiquity. The antiquities that ought to be held in great esteem by the Christian are those which testify to the Word at God, as does this monument.”

Then he showed that this monument was, both for the Jews and unbelievers a testimony of the truth of the Divine Word. “Let them read Deuteronomy xxviii, St. Matthew xxiv., St. Mark xiii, St. Luke xxi., and then let them look at this monument raised by the Gentiles, who knew nothing of such prophecies, and deny if they can the veracity and divinity of God’s Word.”

From the Arch of Titus we ascended the neighboring side of the Palatine Hill to see the ruins of the Palace of the Caesars.

“See,” said the Waldensian, “a beautiful monument of ecclesiastical antiquity. These rough materials are the ruins of the two great Palatine libraries, one Greek, and the other Latin, where the precious manuscripts of our ancestors were collected, and which Pope Gregory I., called the Great, caused to be burnt.”

Then he showed us the part of the palace built by Augustus, that called after Tiberius, that of Caligula, and that of Nero, and exclaimed: “It is written, ‘The house of the wicked shall be overthrown’ (Proverbs xiv. II). Here are those who caused themselves to be called gods, who called themselves eternal; but He that dwelleth in the heavens shall laugh at them (Psalm 2:4), and having given to His Son the heathen for an inheritance, He broke these, and will break the proud with a rod of iron, and dashed them, and will dash them, in pieces like a potter’s vessel. These foundations which alone remain of the palaces of those who called themselves masters of the whole world, preach the truth of that word, that •there is no wisdom, nor understanding, nor counsel against the Lord'” (Prov. xxi. 30).

The solemn tone with which he pronounced these words, the profound conviction which could be read on his countenance, had as imposing effect, such as I cannot describe, and which charmed one. Mr. Manson was silent, and followed him fascinated, and I felt myself compelled to respect the man whom the day before I had wished to put to death, had it been lawful so to do. The day before he was an adversary, a. heretic, who attacked the Holy Church; the day after he was a man who showed the most profound convictions of Christianity. Nevertheless. a man so profoundly religious must be eternally lost, because he does not belong to our Holy Church. Such a thought revived my pity and compassion for him, and rekindled my zeal to procure with all my power his conversion.

We then went to the Amphitheater of Flavius, called popularly the Colosseum. You have read in history that Flavius Vespasian, after the destruction of Jerusalem, caused to to be built this amphitheater, the most spacious and the most magnificent of any which up to this time have existed. It was capable of containing easily 100,000 spectators, served for games of gladiators, and hunting of wild beasts; and then, by a miracle of art, the vast arena was converted. into a lake, and immediately served for naval sports. You know, also, that in times of persecution Christians were exposed in that arena to be devoured by wild beasts.

Now this amphitheater has been by the piety of the Popes transformed into a holy place. An immense cross is planted in the midst of the arena, and around are fourteen chapels, where are represented the incidents of the passion of our Lord; and before them is performed the pious exercise called the Via Crucis. Thus, in the place where in the times of pagan Rome resounded the roaring of wild beasts, the lamentable cries of the victims, the ferocious applause of a brutal public, echoes instead the pathetic song of devout Christians, who meditate on the death of the immaculate Lamb.

We had scarcely entered this vast edifice when Signor Pasquali seemed absorbed in deep thought, and remained for some moments as if in ecstasy, and we stood still looking at him. Rousing himself he exclaimed: “O, my dear friends! how can I express the crowd of religious thoughts which are awakened in me by this admirable monument! He who unconsciously executed the Divine judgments against the people who put Christ to death, and made to recoil on their own head the blood of the God-Man Whom they had cursed, caused this monument to be raised as an eternal memorial of the destruction of that people; and that people, reduced to slavery, working in chains, erected this monument, which perpetuates the memory of their punishment. Gaudenzio, a Christian, is the architect of it; and God gave him the inspiration for it; yes, God, because neither before nor since has a conception more beautiful or more majestic proceeded from the human mind.” Then he want on to describe the horrors of the gladiatorial games; the ferocity of the Roman people, who applauded this carnage; the imperturbable impassiveness of those monsters, who called themselves Emperors, in receiving the homage of those who killed one another in order to provide amusement for their august lord.

He passed on to describe the combats of the martyrs, but in such vivid colors that he drew tears from our eyes. Then, warmed with a holy enthusiasm, he exclaimed: “0, holy religion of Christ! here, here, thou didst triumph in the blood of thy sons, here thou didst manifest thy divine power to the astonished world. But when the Caesars ceased to persecute thee, and wished thee to sit with them on their throne, thou didst fly to hide thyself, and like a modern Joseph, in flying left thy mantle; thou didst hide thyself in the desert; but that mantle of thine was put on his shoulders by that man who in thy name first sat on the throne of the Caesars; thence he drove them and reigned alone in thy name; under that mantle were concealed pride, despotism, and fanaticism, an infernal trio which reigned covered with the mantle which thou didst leave.”

We were frightened with the emphasis, with the tone of voice, but still more with the conceptions of this extraordinary man. He was continuing, when a monotonous singing was heard at the entrance of the amphitheater. Such a sound made him start and stopped him. A procession of persons, dressed in grey sackcloth, with the head and face covered by a hood of the same stuff, with only two holes to allow them to see through, entered the Colosseum, singing in a rough and monotonous voice the praises of the Cross. The procession was preceded by a great wooden cross, painted black, carried by one of the confraternity, and closed by a barefooted friar of St. Francis, with his head uncovered. Behind these came a few old lay-brothers, preceded also by a cross carried by one of them. The object of this procession was to perform the exercise of the Via Crucis, praying before the fourteen chapels.

Mr. Manson and Mr. Sweeteman turned to me to know what this procession signified. I replied that it was a pious confraternity of penitents, who, every Friday and every Sunday, go to perform this pious exercise of the Via Crucis at the Colosseum. We stayed a little while, the friar mounted a kind of pulpit on the rubble, the confraternity formed a semi-circle, the lay-brothers placed themselves behind them, and the friar began to preach. We remained at a convenient distance, but so as to be able to hear. Unfortunately, that friar was either ignorant or felt constraint from our presence, and did not know what he said, saying such silly things as even to scandalize the brave Mr. Manson. Fortunately the Waldensian was so immersed in thought that he heard nothing.

We left the amphitheater, and on our way home Signor Pasquali asked us if we had been satisfied with our walk. We answered in the affirmative; but I added that the mode of discussion by means of the monuments was too long, and would never lead us to practical conclusions; however, I wished to convince Mr. Manson of his error, and therefore desired to be allowed to discuss with him.

“I hope,” replied the Waldensian, “that the Signor Abbe does not believe that the soul of Mr. Manson is more precious than ours. Let him, however, discuss, but I do not think he will wish to exclude us from the discussion. Let us discuss in good faith, and without any other resolve than that of seeking the truth. Let each one put aside his peculiar doctrines, to seek truth in the Word Of God alone. We four differ upon many points; the Signor Abbe is a Roman Catholic; Mr. Manson belongs to that which calls itself the High Church of England, or, as others call it, the theological school of Oxford; Mr. Sweeteman belongs to the English Church, and I to the Primitive Christian Church; let not one of us then obstinately maintain his Church, but together amicably seek the truth; so much the more as we all know that it is not the Church which saves us, but Jesus Christ. What do you gentlemen say to this?”

All consented, and agreed to begin the discussion.

I confess, dear Eugenio, that this Waldensian has enchanted me. I, who had heard so much evil spoken of them; who had read in so many books the most horrible things as to their ignorance, their disloyalty, and, also, as to their bad habits, found myself dumbfounded in the presence of this man, who was learned, ‘but made no ostentation whatever of his knowledge; and was a man of profound piety and of austere virtue, but without any affectation. The only evil which is to be found in him is error; but I hope with the Divine help to undeceive him. In the next letter I will give you an account of the first discussion.-Adieu,
ENRICO.

LETTER VI. The Discussion.

My DEAR EUGENIO,-.
It is too true that one should think well before promising anything. I promised you to relate faithfully the whole discussion I should have with my friends, and now I almost repent of my promise, and could desire not to have made it. And do you know why? I fear that hearing the arguments of the Waldensian will but confirm you in your Protestant errors. But I pique myself upon being an honorable man, and so I faithfully keep my promise. Only I pray you not to judge me hastily. You will well understand that I cannot in one letter relate the whole discussion; and it may be that in one you will find the arguments of my opponents, in another my answers. Therefore, wait to have all the letters before giving your judgment.

As the day was not fixed on which we were to begin our discussion, I profited by this forgetfulness, and for many days I did not allow myself to see Mr. Manson, ready to make that circumstance a plausible excuse for not having gone.

To write to you with all sincerity, I had two plausible motives for delay; the first was to prepare myself by study for the discussion; the second, because I hoped that there would arise some opportunity for discussing tete-a-tete with Mr. Manson, without the tiresome presence of the Waldensian, who, to tell you the truth, causes me to feel not a little restraint. If this could take place, I felt certain of victory; Mr. Manson would become a Catholic, and thus I should come out of the affair with honour. Night and day I thought over the way in which to realize such a project.

Whilst I was thus thinking, the landlady of the house where I was a boarder, came into my room, and with much politeness told me that she could no longer keep me, as she positively had need of my room. Do what I could, I was unable to find out why I had deserved to be sent out of her house. I only recognized clearly that she unwillingly obeyed some mysterious order. It came into my mind that her confessor, a Jesuit Father, had given her this order, but I had no proof of it. Then I went to a convent, took a room, and caused my effects to be transported thither. My friends, not seeing me, went to seek for me, but my landlady, who knew where I gone gone to lodge, told them she did not know my address. In the school, also, there occurred a change with regard to me. The professor no longer looked on me, as at first, with a kindly eye. From time to time also he launched sarcasm against the Catholic friends of heretics, and ridiculed those who, before having finished their theological course, and without having any mission, pretended to discuss with them. Then he cast on me a very significant look, which was not lost on my companions.

All these things, whilst, on the one hand, they irritated me, on the other hand gave me sorrow, and made me determine not to embarrass myself by discussion. I thanked God that I had changed my lodging, because thus, perhaps my friends would seek me no longer, and I should get free.

The convent where I went to live did not close its door until late. One evening, whilst I was in my study, I heard a knock at the door; I opened it, aand saw my three Protestant friends.

“Poor Signor Abbe,” said the Waldensian, shaking my hamd with great affection, “you are found out; your good Jesuit Fathers do not wish that you should enter into discussion with me. I will not compromise you against your will. We are come to propose two courses, and you shall choose that which you like best; the first course is to continue, or rather, to begin our discussions, the second is, to release you from your word, if your conscience should permit you to leave in error three souls whom you think lost. If you accept this course, I pray you to reflect that you cannot prevent us from thinking that you fear discussion, and that your masters,.who prevent you; have more fear than you.” (Webmaster’s emphasis.)

I accepted discussion, and then it was arranged that, to avoid espionage as much as possible, it should take place sometime in my room, sometime elsewhere.

Matters thus arranged, the Waldensian began to discuss the doctrine of justification, which he said was the fundamental doctrine of Christianity. To tell the truth, I am not very strong on that doctrine; on the contrary, until now it has seemed to me the most obscure and most involved doctrine of our theology, and I did not much like our discussion to begin with that. I proposed, therefore, that we should begin with the supremacy of the Pope. “The supremacy admitted,” said I, “as a legitimate consequence one must admit all the Catholic doctrine taught by him who is the successor of St. Peter, and the infallible Head of the Church, established by Jesus Christ Himself; and once exclude the supremacy all Catholicism must necessarily fall.” They made some difficulties, but at last my proposition was accepted. Then Signor Pasquali rising from his seat, said: “Before we begin to discuss, we ought to invoke the assistance of the Holy Spirit,” and he invited me to pray. I excused myself by saying that we were not accustomed to extempore prayer. Then he turned to Mr. Manson who said he had not his prayer-book with him. “The prayer-book of the Christian is a renewed heart,” said the Waldensian; and rising his eyes to heaven he uttered so fervent a prayer, as to draw tears from my eyes. This prayer amazed me. “However” said I to myself, “can a heretic pray with so much faith, with so much fervour! How can he, with such confidence, invoke Jesus Christ!” I, who had only known the doctrine of the Protestants by what I had heard my masters of it in lessons and in preaching, and by what I had read of it in our books, found myself in a very different position to that which I had imagined, when face to face with this Waldensian.

Signor Pasquali, having finished his prayer, made us observe that truth being a unity, in treating of a religious question, it can only be found in the Bible; but that as the different religious systems interpret the doctrines of the Bible differently, he thought for the better understanding of, and to hasten the solution of the question on the supremacy of the Pope, it would be well that each one should explain his belief on that point, in order that, confronting there different beliefs with the Bible, we might come to a decisive conclusion.

Such a proposal pleased all, and I began to explain in few words the Catholic doctrine on the supremacy of the Pope, reserving the demonstration of it to the fitting moment. I said then that Jesus Christ had declared St. Peter the head and the prince of the Apostles; that He had constituted him His vicar, and in that quality had left him as visible Head of His Church. I said that the dignity of St. Peter was not a personal thing, but was to be transmitted to his successors, and since the Roman Pontiff is the successor of St. Peter, he has the same prerogatives that Jesus Christ gave to St. Peter, and he has transmitted these to his successors-viz.: supremacy and infallibility. This is the doctrine of the Catholic Church, and I am ready to prove it with the Bible.

“I agree,” said Mr. Manson, “as regards the supremacy of St. Peter; I admit Apostolic succession in the Bishop of Rome, and I should recognize him also as Head of the Church, provided his authority should not be arbitrary but regulated by the ecclesiastical canons, established by councils. But I cannot admit his infallibility, because the monuments of ecclesiastical antiquity show that many Popes have erred.”

“With regard to myself,” said Mr. Sweeteman, “I do not admit so much. In the things of religion, I know no other authority than that of the Bible and that of the Church, which I do not think can be represented by one single man. The Bishop of Rome is a bishop like all others, he may be considered the Primate of all Italy, but I should never believe him to be the Head or Sovereign of the Church. If you speak of him only as first in honor, I shall not find great difficulty in according this to him, but never as first in authority. I recognise the authority of the Church in the Episcopate, and not in one single man.”

The Waldensian then drew from his pocket a Bible, and placing it on the table, said, “Now that each one of you has expressed what he believes concerning the authority of the Pope, I must expound my doctrine; but I myself cannot expound anything – the Bible is my only authority in matters of religion. Religions systems are for the most part fallacious; the Bible alone cannot lead astray; let us then justly and simply attend to its instructions; and I think that by this method, if we discuss sincerely, we shall easily find ourselves agreed, because all four confess that all religious doctrine ought to have its foundation in the Bible.”

The rest of “The Discussion” is on hold for now.

Continued from The Papal System – X. Confirmation.

THESE three terms designate one institution, and when that solemn observance is viewed as it is presented in the Scriptures, the Protestant doctrine is undoubtedly the true one. In the English Catholic version in Matt. xxvi. 26-30, it is said:

“Whilst they were at supper, Jesus took bread, and blessed,and broke, and gave to his disciples, and said, Take ye and eat; this is my body; and, taking the chalice, he gave thanks, and gave to them, saying: Drink ye all of this; for this is my blood of the new testament which shall be shed for many unto remission of sins. And I say unto you, I will not drink from henceforth of this fruit of the vine until that day when I shall drink it with you new in the kingdom of my Father. And a hymn being said, they went out unto Mount Olivet.”

In Mark xiv. 22-26, it is said:

“Whilst they were eating, Jesus took bread, and blessing, broke, and gave to them, and said: Take ye, this is my body; and having taken the chalice, giving thanks, he gave it to them. And they all drank of it, And he said to them: This is my blood of the new testament, which shall be shed for many. Amen, I say to you, that I will drink no more of the fruit of the vine until that day when I shall drink it new in the kingdom of God. And when they had said an hymn, they went forth to the Mount of Olives.”

And in Luke xxii. 19, 20, it is said:

“And taking bread, he gave thanks, and broke, and gave to them, saying: This is my body which is given for you. Do this for a commemoration of me. In like manner, the chalice, also, after he had supped, saying: This is the chalice, the new testament in my blood, which shall be shed for you.”

And in 1 Cor. xi. 23-27, it is said:

“The Lord Jesus, the same night in which he was betrayed, took bread, and, giving thanks, broke, and said: Take ye and eat; this is my body which shall be delivered for you: this do for the commemoration of me. In like manner, also, the chalice, after he had supped, saying: This chalice is the new testament in my blood; this do ye as often as you shall drink for the commemoration of me. For as often as you shall eat this bread and drink the chalice, you shall show the death of the Lord till he come.”

Such are the accounts given of the Lord’s Supper in the words of a Catholic version. Paul calls the body of the Lord bread twice after consecration, showing that it was bread. He says that the Lord’s Supper “shows the death of the Lord till he come,” declaring emphatically that the Lord is not in it, that he is away. The Saviour calls the cup: “This fruit of the vine,” in Matt. xxvi. 29, after consecration, and not blood: showing that it was unchanged. And as for the saying, “This is my body,” it means simply that the broken bread was a picture of his torn body, just as the words, “The Lord God is a sun and shield,” mean that the sun is a figure of the light which God gives, and the shield a figure of the defense which he bestows. No one, in his senses, while Christ uttered these words, would have imagined that the bread was his body, or the cup his blood. His body was entire at that moment; not a drop of his blood was spilled; and, hence, the supper is a “showing forth the Lord’s death till he come ”—a commemoration of the death of an absent Saviour.

The priests scorn the idea that there could be any figure in the declaration: “This is my body;” but when Paul says: “For as often as you shall eat this bread and drink the chalice,” they must grant that it is not the chalice but its contents that are to be drunk, If it is not a figurative expression, the priests of Rome should swallow the cup as well as the contents. The words, “I am the vine, I am the door,” are literal if the expression is not figurative, “This is my body.” No community would suffer more than the Catholic Church from a non-figurative interpretation of every scripture word. In the Catholic New Testament, Matt. xvi. 22, 23, it is said: “And Peter taking him began to rebuke him, saying: Lord, be it far from thee, this shall not be unto thee; who turning said to Peter: GO BEHIND ME, SATAN, THOU ART A SCANDAL UNTO ME, because thou savourest not the things that are of God, but the things that are of men.” If the words, “This is my body,” must be taken literally, we would mildly insist that Christ’s address to Peter shall be taken literally too when he said to him: “Go behind me, Satan, thou art a scandal unto me.” According to that interpretation, Peter is the chief of devils; and the Church of Rome, built on Simon, is founded on Beelzebub himself. A literal interpretation of the words, “This is my body,” leads to sacred cannibalism; and of the saying in Matt. xvi. 22, 23, makes Peter the devil, and Lucifer the foundation of the Papal Church. A figurative view of both passages is the true one.

The Lord’s Supper after the First and inside the Sixth Century.

The name missa or mass was applied very early to the supper. After a portion of the service at public worship was over, a deacon arose and said: “Ite, missa est [ecclesia]—depart, the assembly is dismissed.” Immediately all the non-church members withdrew.

At public worship in early times there was a twofold missa, the missa catecheumenorum, and the missa fidelium, the former describing the united worship of the unbelieving, the catechumens (those being taught the principles of Christianity), and the faithful church members; and the latter the observances of the communicants when the others had withdrawn. The word mass for many centuries had no odor of popery about it.

The Elements.

After the united service of the whole people was over, and before the beginning of the supper of the faithful, it was customary for every one to make offerings according to his ability. These gifts were placed upon the communion table by the minister. On this occasion it was deemed peculiarly disgraceful to appear before the Lord empty-handed. These donations were used to support the clergy, to relieve the poor, and to furnish bread and wine for the Lord’s table. The bread was common, such as served for the ordinary use of the people. The wine was mixed with water from very ancient times in all the churches. Some of the leading fathers regarded this practice as resulting from an express command of Christ.

The Prayer and Consecration Ceremonies of the Supper.

The elements being placed on the table, a deacon brought water to the bishop and his presbyters to wash their hands, signifying the purity which men should have who approach God. Then the deacon cried out, “Mutually embrace and kiss one another.” This holy kiss was very ancient, and was specially given at the supper as a token of reconciliation, forgiveness, and goodwill. Then the whole congregation with the minister began the COMMON PRAYER, a very lengthy and appropriate supplication, for the peace and welfare of the entire Church, for the tranquility of the world, for the prosperity of the age, for fruitful seasons, for kings, emperors, and all in authority, for soldiers and armies, believers and unbelievers, friends and companions, for the sick and distressed, and for all that stood in need of help. After the prayer the minister said to the people: “The Lord be with you;” and the people answered, “And with thy spirit.”

Then the minister proceeded to the prayer of consecration, consisting of expressions of fervent gratitude to God for the death, resurrection and ascension of his Son, for the shedding of his blood, and the celebration of it in the supper. This usually ended with the Lord’s Prayer, and a hearty and universal acclamation of “amen” from all that were present. After the prayer of consecration the minister cried out: “Holy things to holy persons,” the people answering, “There is one holy, one Lord Jesus Christ.” Then he exhorted them to share in the holy mysteries, by singing, “Come taste and see that the Lord is good.” Then the bishop or presbyter broke the bread and gave it to the deacon, who distributed it to the communicants. During the time of celebration they sung hymns and psalms. The whole observance was concluded by prayer and thanksgiving, that God had given them such great privileges.

Posture at the Lord’s Supper.

Riddle says: “It would appear from direct evidence still extant, that for the most part, if not always, communicants received the consecrated elements standing.” According to Cave, the apostles received it reclining on couches after the Jewish custom of eating, but in the third century participants at the Lord’s table received the eucharist standing. Eusebius preserves a letter of Dionysius of Alexandria addressed to Xystus, Bishop of Rome, in which he speaks of an old communicant who doubted his baptism because it was received among heretics, and Dionysius tried to quiet his conscience by reminding him that for a long time he had “been in the habit of hearing the thanksgiving, and repeating the amen, and standing at the table, and extending his hand to receive the sacred elements.” Dionysius was a very distinguished bishop, and it is evident from this letter to the Bishop of Rome, that he was tenacious of the customs of the Church everywhere, and was afraid to make innovations. So that standing, and not kneeling, the attitude of worship, was the posture in which the eucharist was received in the early Church.

The Supper was Received on an empty Stomach.

St. Augustine says that the disciples at the first supper were not fasting, but now, for the honor of so great a sacrament, fasting before partaking of it is the custom of the whole world.

The Frequency of Observing the Supper.

According to Cave, it was dispensed daily in the early churches for some time; this was the use in Carthage in the third century, and in Rome and Milan in the fourth. In some eastern churches the supper was celebrated four times a week. From once a day it declined to once a week, then to once a month, and then to thrice a year, at Christmas, Easter, and Whitsuntide (Pentecost).

The Fragments of the Supper.

It was usual in early times to keep the remains of the eucharist for the innocent children of the church; and on a particular day they were brought there fasting, and partook of them. In some instances, wine was sprinkled upon them. At Constantinople, in the time of Justinian, according to Evagrius, it was an old custom to bring boys of a tender age from the schools to eat these fragments.

Pieces of the eucharist Carried Home.

Among the primitive disciples it was quite common for Christians to take to their dwellings portions of the Lord’s Supper. These they used to strengthen their faith in times of persecution, and to increase their love for each other. Nor was it very uncommon to carry it to sea, or about the body as a charm to ward off dangers and evil spirits.

Ministers sent the eucharist to each other,

This practice, at one time, was very common, and it was perpetuated as a token of peace and love between those who made these fraternal but singular exchanges. Ireneus, as quoted by Ensebius, tells Victor, Bishop of Rome, that his predecessors, Anicetus, Pius, Hyginus, Telesphorus and Xystus, had sent the eucharist to ministers of churches with which Victor was engaged in a thoroughly popish quarrel, though popery was so little known in that day that Ireneus calls the men presbyters who governed the Church of Rome, over which Victor presided.

No Adoration of the eucharist in the Early Church.

There was no elevation of the elements in any part of the Christian world for seven hundred years after Christ. This occurred first among the Greeks; and it was done, not for adoration, but to represent our Saviour’s elevation on the cross and his resurrection from the dead. Among the Latins there was no elevation of the elements before the eleventh century, and then it was for the same reason as led the Greeks to practice it. The first author, according to Bingham, who gives adoration as the reason for the elevation of the host is Gulielmus Durantus, who wrote about 1386. The adoration of the host had no existence before the twelfth century.

There was no Altar in the Early Church.

The communion table was simply the table of the Lord. Coleman is not mistaken when he says: “It was unknown until the third century.” Du Pin says: “Christians in the third century did not give the name altar to the table upon which they celebrated the eucharist.” Nor did they dream of a sacrifice, though the word was sometimes used, just as altar was, in and subsequent to the third century. Isidore, of Seville, who died in A.D. 636, according to Du Pin, gives us the conception of the eucharist as a sacrifice common in his day. Speaking of it, he says: “It is called a sacrifice because it is made sacred by a mystical prayer, in remembrance of the passion of our Lord. He defineth a sacrament the sign of a holy thing, communicating holiness.” Isidore was one of the most influential bishops of his day.

The Communicants in the Ancient Church.

The eucharist was first given to the bishop, then to the presbyters, then to the deacons, subdeacons, readers, singers, and ascetics, the deaconesses, virgins, and widows, then the children, and then all the people in order. This is the custom described in the Apostolical Constitutions, and probably it continued from the middle of the third till the sixth century.

After the united meeting of communicants and non-communicants was dismissed, and just as the supper is about to be celebrated, a deacon solemnly warned all the catechumens (that is all unbaptized persons, though preparing to unite with the church), all persons under the censure of the church, and all unbelievers, to retire from the sanctuary. The eucharist was only for baptized Christians in good standing.

The Dying receive the eucharist.

In the last struggles of the departing, as early as the third century, the Lord’s Supper was carried to them; and it was often dropped into their mouths when they were unable to lift it up themselves. Eusebius records a case of this kind: an old man named Serapion, speechless, except at short intervals, had the eucharist sent to him, and put in his mouth; and soon after receiving it he expired. Such was the custom in those days.

The Dead had the eucharist placed in their Mouths.

In Africa they sometimes baptized the dead; and it was not uncommon in the same country, and in France, prior to A. D. 578, to give the Lord’s Supper to deceased persons. It was also practiced in the East as late as the seventh century. The third Council of Carthage, the Synod of Auxerre in France, and the Council of Trullo in Constantinople, condemned these outrageous follies.

Infants receive the eucharist.

In North Africa the communion of infants was first introduced. The Christians in that region supposed that the declarations in the sixth chapter of St. John’s Gospel referred to external participation in the Lord’s Supper; that act, as they understood it, was a mystical eating of the flesh, and drinking of the blood of the Son of God, without which there could be no eternal life; and regarding such communion as necessary to salvation, they gave it to infants.“ It is beyond dispute,” says Bingham, “that baptized infants were immediately admitted to the eucharist.” He quotes Radulphus Ardens, who lived in the beginning of the twelfth century, as declaring it to be the custom to give little children the eucharist in his day, immediately after baptism; and he refers to a direction in the old Ordo Romanus, composed in the ninth century, that “Infants, after baptism, should not eat any food, nor seek the breast without great necessity, till they had communicated in the sacrament of the body of Christ.”

In the twelfth century this custom was superseded in France, but there is reason for supposing that it lived longer in Germany and Switzerland. “The whole primitive Church, Greek and Latin, from Cyprian’s time, gave the communion to infants;” in the West, the practice began to die in the twelfth century. In the East the custom is universal at this day. ‘This usage was commended by the greatest names in the early Church. Augustine of Hippo, who had only one equal among all the fathers, commenting on the words: “Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you;” and supposing these words to allude to the eucharist, asks: “Dare any one be so bold as to say that this sentence does not belong to little children, or that they can have life without partaking of this body and blood” (of the supper).

Pope Innocent, the contemporary of Augustine, undoubtedly expresses the same opinion in his Epistle to Augustine, and the Council of Milevis. Pope Gelasius, about A.D. 495, writes in reference to the eucharist: “No one should venture to exclude any child from this sacrament, without which no one can attain to eternal life.”

But the infallible Council of Trent denounces and curses the sayings and practices of all Christendom for ages, including popes of Rome, who could not err in matters of faith, and yet did commit centuries of consecrated blunders, if the fathers of Trent were not mistaken. Their decree is: “If any one shall say that the communion of the eucharist is necessary for children before they arrive at years of discretion; let him be accursed.”

Singular Conceits about the Supper itself among the Primitive Christians.

In North Africa, when the eucharist ceased to be observed every day, it was customary to carry home some of the bread without the wine, and enjoy daily communion in this way. This is the first example of communion in one kind in the Christian Church, and it began in the end of the third century. But the eucharist was administered in both kinds in the churches without variation till the twelfth century. And just to show how the supper could be made defective in either element, children who were not able to eat bread, received the eucharist in wine only, and in this way, as was imagined, they were entitled to eternal life. Sometimes the bread was dipped in the wine, and the two united were given to children, and to weak or dying persons, who could not otherwise have swallowed the bread.

One ancient sect substituted water for wine in the eucharist, and from this custom were sometimes called Aquarians. The Council of Auxerre condemned some who offered honey and water instead of wine; others used milk for wine; and others substituted grapes. In the fourth century, there was a community who thought the eucharist was not properly celebrated unless cheese was offered with the bread. These people were called Artotyrites, that is, Bread-Cheesians. But these perversions of the ordinance were confined to few persons, and died out in a comparatively short time.

There was another denomination, which held that no visible elements could represent the divine mysteries; that perfect knowledge was their redemption; and, as a result of their opinions, they rejected the eucharist in every form. These ancient Quakers were called Ascodrutae.

There were no private eucharists or masses in the ancient Church. Even Bellarmine candidly owns that there is no express testimony to he found among the ancients that they ever offered the sacrifice without the communion of one or more persons beside the priest (nusquam expresse legitur a veteribus oblatum sacrificium sine communione alicujus vel aliquorum preter ipsum sacerdotem).

At the Synod of Paris, under Gregory IV., A.D. 829, a decree was passed, stating that a culpable custom had crept in, in many places, partly by negligence, and partly by covetousness; that some presbyters celebrate mass without any attendants; the decree then proceeds to order “every bishop to take care that no presbyter in his diocese shall presume to celebrate mass by himself alone” (provideat que unusquisque episcoporum, ne in sua parochia quisquam presbyterorum missam solus celebrare preesumat). At this period, the practice had just “crept in,” and it is emphatically condemned.

Bingham is sustained by all Christian antiquity in his statement: “The eucharist was not intended as a sacrifice to be offered by a single priest in a corner, without communicants or assistants, or for the intention, or at the cost, of some particular persons, paying for it; but for a communion to the whole Church, as the primitive Church always used it: and there is not an example to be found of the contrary practice.

The Opinions of the Primitive Church, after the First Century, on the Nature of the eucharist.

The early Christians fell into the Lutheran view of the Lord’s Supper soon after the last of the apostles entered upon his rest. No man ever abhorred transubstantiation more than the mighty reformer of Wittemberg. But while he avowed his abhorrence of the doctrine that the eucharist was the body and blood of Christ, he taught distinctly that: “The body and blood of Christ are truly present in the sacrament, in the form of bread and wine, and there distributed and received.” He would say with other Protestants, that the bread and wine were symbols of the body and blood of the Lord; but he went beyond them in declaring that the body and blood of Christ are truly present in the sacrament. This was substantially the opinion of the Church from the second till the end of the ninth century.

A Romanist now never speaks of his mass as a figure, sign, or likeness of Christ’s body; to him, it is the very body born of the Virgin. The early Christians spoke of the eucharist as the body and blood of the Lord, and yet freely called it bread and wine, after consecration, and frequently designated the elements figures and similitudes of the body and blood of Christ: showing that they did not believe that the bread and wine were the literal flesh and blood of the Saviour.

Tertullian repeatedly uses a sentence like this about the supper: “He made bread his body by saying: This is my body; that is a figure of my body.”

Ignatius, speaking about the eucharist, says: “Breaking one bread, which is the medicine of immortality, a remedy against death.” He regarded the loaf as bread after it was broken and consecrated.

Clemens Alexandrinus, writing about the supper, says: “For be ye sure he did also drink wine, for he also was a man; and he blessed wine when he said: Take, drink; this is my blood, the blood of the vine: for this expression: ‘Shed for many for the remission of sins,’ signifies, allegorically, a holy stream of gladness.” The consecrated cup is the blood of the vine, after the blessing has fallen upon it, and it signifies, allegorically, a holy stream of gladness.

Cyprian, reasoning with one who had used water in the eucharist instead of wine, argues: “For since Christ says: I am the true vine, the blood of Christ is not, therefore, water, but wine; nor can his blood appear to be in the cup by which we have been redeemed and made alive, when the wine is absent from the chalice, by which the blood of Christ is represented.”

Eusebius says: “He gave to his disciples the symbols of divine economy, commanding the image of his own body to be made.” Surely, the great Bishop of Caesarea had no faith in transubstantiation. In his interpretation of John vi., Eusebius says: “We are not to believe that Christ spoke of his present body, or enjoined the drinking of his corporeal and sensuous blood, but the words which he speaks are spirit and life; so that his words themselves are his flesh and blood.”

Chrysostom says: “As the bread before it is sanctified is called bread, but after the divine grace has sanctified it by the mediation of the priest, it is no longer called bread, but dignified with the name of the body of the Lord, though the nature of bread remain in it.”

Ambrose says: “Make this our oblation a chosen, rational, acceptable oblation, because it is made for a figure of the body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

Augustine states, that “The Lord did not hesitate to say ‘This is my body,’ when he gave the sign of his body.” “Christ admitted Judas to that banquet, in which he commended and delivered unto his disciples the figure of his body and blood.”

Jerome states that Christ “did not offer water, but wine as a type of his blood.”

Pope Gelasius writes in A.D.490: “Doubtless the sacraments of the body and blood of Christ which we receive, are a divine thing; and, therefore, by them we are made partakers of the divine nature, and yet the substance and nature of bread and wine do not cease to be in them; and, indeed, the image and similitude of the body and blood of Christ are celebrated in, the mysterious action.”

Facundus, an African bishop, about A.D. 590, wrote: “The sacrament of adoption may be called adoption, as we call the sacrament of his body and blood, which is in the consecrated bread and cup, his body and blood, not because the bread is properly his body, or the cup his blood, but because they contain the mystery of his body and blood.”

Isidore, Bishop of Seville, writing about A.D. 680, says: “The bread, because it nourishes and strengthens our bodies, is therefore called the body of Christ, and the wine, because it creates blood in our flesh, is called the blood of Christ.” This distinguished bishop saw in the sacramental elements only resemblances of the Saviour’s body and blood.

The transition period from consubstantiation to transubstantiation.

Up till the early part of the ninth century, the Christian Church had not been disturbed by controversies about the eucharist. A few heretics occasionally attempted to make innovations even upon it, but they were soon quieted, and the belief of centuries flowed calmly on in worshiping hearts.

Paschasius Radbert was the first man who promulgated the doctrine of transubstantiation, though he used another name; for that term was not yet applied to the doctrine. He was a monk, a native of Soissons, and a man of great acuteness of mind. He wrote, in A.D. 831, a book “Concerning the Body and Blood of our Saviour,” in which he took the ground, that the wine of the sacrament is “The very blood that ran out of the Saviour’s side upon the cross, and that for that reason water is mingled with the eucharistical wine;” and that the bread of the Lord’s Supper “is the very flesh of our Saviour which was born of the Virgin.” This was the first formal and unmistakable announcement of transubstantiation ever made by one man to another.

Even Du Pin substantially admits this by saying about Radbert’s book: “It was not usual in those times to say positively that the body of Christ in the eucharist was the same that was born of the Virgin, and to assert it so plainly.” And he sustains this opinion by quoting a declaration of the celebrated Father Mabillon, asserting that “Before the book of Paschasius on the Body and Blood of the Lord, all Catholics confessed that the true body and true blood of Christ the Lord existed assuredly in the eucharist; and likewise, that in it the bread and wine were changed. But no one at the time of Paschasius had heard that that body was the same which was born of the Virgin Mary.”

This is just the point of the whole controversy. The Lutherans, and the early Christians for centuries taught, that the body and blood of Christ were received in the elements, though neither believed that the bread had ceased to be bread, or that the wine had lost its original properties. Du Pin and Mabillon are Catholic witnesses that Radbert’s doctrine was a novelty.

But this monstrous creation, when it was first taught, stirred up the leading men of Europe to oppose it; and those who resisted it were a multitude. Two anonymous writers gave it a complete exposure; and as the commotions excited by the controversy threatened a schism in the Church, Charles the Bald expressed his fears of such a rupture to Bertram, and with a view to quiet the angry passions aroused by Radhert, he asked him to answer these two questions in a treatise: “Are the body and blood of Christ in the eucharist? If so, is it the body born of the Virgin?” The very existence of such a trouble in the Catholic countries subject to Charles, and the pressure on him to quiet his own mind and the anxieties of his subjects show, still farther, that Radbert was only an innovator. The first question he answers by proving that the “Body and blood of Christ received in the church by the mouth of the faithful are figures, if considered in the visible form of the bread and wine. But if considered in their hidden qualities they are the body and blood of Christ.”

The second question he answers by proving that the body and blood which the faithful participate in in the eucharist are quite another thing, both in the sign and the thing signified, from the body born of the Virgin and seen on the cross. Bertram was a man of commanding influence and intellect. John Scotus, another man of the highest culture, was consulted by Charles on the same subject, and at his request wrote a work to show that “The sacraments of the altar are not the real body and blood of our Saviour, but only a commemoration of them.”

Rabanus Maurus, Archbishop of Mentz, about A. D. 825, says: “Lately indeed some persons, not thinking rightly concerning the sacrament of the body and blood of the Lord, have said that that very body and blood of the Lord which was born from the Virgin Mary is the same as that which is received from the altar. In opposition to which error, as far as lay in our power, writing to the Abbot Egilus, we propounded what ought to be believed.”

Herigar, Abbot of Laub, in the territory of Liege, wrote a book against Radbert.

Du Pin says that “among the authors of the ninth century that have cursorily treated of this matter, Amalatius, Florus, and Druthmarus speak of the eucharist like Bertram.” And Bingham adds to the enemies of Radbert’s theory, in addition to those already named: Walafridus, Strabo, Heribaldus, Lupus, Frudegardus, Prudentins, Trieassin, Alfricus, and the Saxon homilies, Fulbertus Carnotensis, Luthericus Scnonensis, Berno Augiensis,” and others he says might be mentioned.

At first the doctrine of Radbert was repugnant to the cultivated and the godly, but it was broached in a rude age, and the monks favored it; the materialistic character of European thought assisted it, and gradually it had a host of friends and was prepared to frown down all opposition.

Berenger was born at Tours, near the beginning of the eleventh century; he was endowed with a clear understanding; and blessed with an able and pious teacher in Fulbert of Chartres. He was at first the principal of the Cathedral School of Tours, and afterwards archdeacon of Angers. Berenger adopted the views of the eucharist held with impunity and defended with vigor by John Scotus and Bertram two centuries before. But times were changed; his learning, piety, and eloquence gave him extensive influence, and his opinions great success. This however only excited his enemies to greater fury, and made them resolve to silence the good archdeacon or slay him. Lanfranc, his old friend, took the side of his enemies; others proved equally conscientious or treacherous; he was excommunicated by a Roman council, condemned by all grades of dignitaries, and rescued from destruction by Gregory VII. Through his protection he spent his last years in peace. Gregory called upon the Archbishop of Tours and the Bishop of Angers, to defend him against his enemies; and he granted him a Bull, excommunicating those who should injure him in person or estate or call him “Heretic.”

Those favors made some doubt Gregory’s orthodoxy; and with reason. Gregory was a man of unequaled intellect, and could quickly detect the absurdity of transubstantiation. Besides, that doctrine though very popular in the eleventh century, was not yet a dogma of the Church; and it was only two hundred years old. Berenger denying transubstantiation to his social friends, passed the evening of his days, “admired for innumerable good qualities, and especially for humility and almsgiving.”

The name transubstantiation first applied to the mass.

The eucharist had been known by several new names after the days of Radbert. Transitio was one of these. Hildebert of Tours, the famous city of Berenger, gave it its immortal name—transubstantiation.

The eucharistic bread of the Romish Church consists of cakes of meal and water, small, round and thin, in the shape of wafers. This style appears to have been brought into general use after the rise of the controversy with the Greek Church, in a. D, 1053.

Transubstantiation is incorporated into the Church of Rome.

In A.D. 1215, Innocent III. was pope. He was a man of distinguished talents. From childhood, he had suspended his common sense when thinking about Radbert’s doctrine. He knew that it was in no creed, canon, or authorized standard of the Church of which he was the head. He felt that it was absurd to require men to receive a doctrine to which the Church had never given that adoption so freely conceded to other dogmas not half so momentous. He assembled a Council in Rome, in the Lateran Church, A. D. 1215, consisting of 412 bishops, in whose hearing he read seventy canons which he had drawn up, and in which they seemed to acquiesce; among these was the famous canon, which, FOR THE FIRST TIME, gave transubstantiation a legal place in the Catholic Church. The important part of the canon is:

“But there is one universal Church of the faithful, out of which no one at all is saved; in which Jesus Christ himself is at once priest and sacrifice; whose body and blood, in the sacrament of the altar, are truly contained under the species of bread and wine, which, through the divine power, are transubstantiated, the bread into the body, and the wine into the blood; that for the fulfillment of the mystery of unity, we may receive of his that which he received of ours.”

The Mass is declared a propitiatory Sacrifice.

The Council of Trent, nearly 350 years later, took another step, and declared the host an atoning sacrifice:

“And, since in the divine sacrifice which is performed in the mass, the same Christ is contained and offered in an unbloody manner, who, on the altar of the cross, offered himself, with blood, once for all; the holy Synod teaches that that sacrifice is, and becomes of itself, truly propitiatory, so that if, with a true heart and right faith, with fear and reverence, we approach to God, contrite and penitent, we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need. The Lord, forsooth, being appeased by the offering of this, and granting grace and the gift of repentance, remits crimes and sins, even great ones; for it is one and the same host, the same person now offering by the ministry of the priests, who then offered himself upon the cross, only in a different manner of offering; and by this unbloody sacrifice, the fruits of that bloody one are abundantly received; only far be it that any dishonor should be done to that by this. Wherefore, according to the tradition of the apostles, offering is duly made, not only for the sins, pains, satisfactions, and other necessities of the faithful who are alive, but also for the dead in Christ, who are not yet wholly cleansed.”

Christ is in the Mass, Soul, Body, and Divinity.

The Synod of Trent says: “If any one shall deny that in the sacrament of the most holy eucharist, there is contained really, truly, and substantially, the body and blood, together with the soul and divinity, of our Lord Jesus Christ, and so whole Christ, but shall say he is only in it in sign, or figure, or power, let him be accursed.” This curse falls harmlessly upon the whole Christian world, including Roman popes, for more than eight centuries.

There are no Bread and Wine in the Mass after Consecration.

The fathers at Trent declare that: “If any shall say that in the holy sacrament of the eucharist, there remains the substance of bread and wine, together with the body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, and shall deny that wonderful and remarkable conversion of the whole substance of the bread into the body, and of the whole substance of the wine into the blood, while only the appearance of bread and wine remains, which conversion the Catholic Church most appropriately names transubstantiation; let him be accursed.”

A whole Christ in every particle of the Mass.

The Tridentine Council says: “If any one shall deny that Christ entire is contained in the venerable sacrament of the eucharist, under each species and, when they are divided, under every particle of each kind; let him be accursed.”

The eucharist Worshipped as God.

The Council of Trent asserts that: “There is, therefore, no reason to doubt but that all Christ’s faithful people, in their veneration, should render this most holy sacrament the SAME WORSHIP which is due to the true God, according to the custom which the Catholic Church has always received.”

A Day Appointed to Commemorate and Worship the Body of (eucharist) Christ.

In A.D. 1264, Urban IV. set apart Corpus Christi (body of Christ) day in honor of the deity, adopted into the Church A.D. 1215, by Innocent III. and the Fourth Council of the Lateran; the wheaten god. According to Du Pin, Urban’s institution was confirmed by the Council of Vienne, A.D. 1311, and Clement V. This transubstantiated god is a novelty in the Church of Jesus.

The eucharist carried around in Procession for Worship.

The Council of Trent declares that “The church of God has very piously and religiously introduced the custom that in every year, on some special feast day, this illustrious and venerable sacrament should be celebrated with particular veneration and solemnity, and that it should be carried about in procession, in a reverent and honorable manner, through the highways and public places.”

The following description of the annual procession of the host is a specimen of what occurred for centuries in the old world: “The Corpus Christi procession begins to move out exactly at nine in the morning; it consists of forty communities of friars who have converts in this town. They follow one another in two lines, according to established precedent. Next appears the long train of relics belonging to the cathedral, in vases of gold and silver: a tooth of St. Christopher, an agate cup belonging to Clement, the successor of St. Peter, an arm of St. Bartholomew, a head of one of the eleven thousand virgins, a part of St. Peter’s body, and of the bodies of St. Lawrence and St. Blaise, a thorn from the Saviour’s crown, a fragment of the true cross, and the bones of several other saints. Then the prebendaries (clergy) and canons, attended by inferior ministers. The streets are profusely decorated and are shaded with a thick awning; they are covered with rushes. Under these circumstances, the appearance of the host in the streets is exceedingly imposing. Encircled by jewels of the greatest brilliancy, surrounded by lighted tapers, and enthroned on the massive yet elegant temple of silver, no sooner has it moved to the door of the church than the bells announce its presence with deafening sound, the bands of military music mix their animating notes with the solemn hymns of the singers, clouds of incense rise before the moving shrine, and the ear is thrilled by the loud voice of command and by the clash of the arms which the kneeling soldiers strike down to the ground, When the concealed bearers of the shrine present it at the top of the long street, where the route commences, the multitudes which crowd: both the pavement and the windows fall prostrate in profound adoration, without venturing to rise up till the object of their awe is out of sight.”

Procession of the Host to the Sick.

In Spain it was customary for a priest in taking the eucharist to the dying to be carried in “a sedan chair and to be attended by a party of soldiers and a bellman. The bellman, as they pass along, gives three strokes, in allusion to the three persons of the Trinity, and then ceases. At this well known sound, whatever be the state of the weather or the condition of the streets, every one drops on his knees, and continues in this devout posture till the object of his adoration is out of sight. If the procession should pass a theater or a festive gathering, the actors on the stage immediately drop on their knees, and so do the dancers in the ball-room.”

There is no trace of the use of incense at the Lord’s Supper before the end of the sixth century.

A Minister Living in the Greatest Iniquity can make Jesus Christ out of Flour and Water.

The Council of Trent says: “If any one shall declare that a minister, in mortal sin, cannot perform or confer a sacrament, provided he shall observe all the essentials which appertain to the performing or conferring a sacrament; let him be accursed.” Truly the thought is curious that right reverend Judas, even at the time Satan entered him, and filled him with mortal sin, could regenerate a man by baptism or manufacture the Saviour out of wheat and water! And yet no priest out of the mortal sin of inexcusable ignorance, and in the fear and love of Christ, would be likely to continue long the deity-making business, or the office of imparting the other papal sacraments. So that the admission of mortal sinners into the calling of dispensing the sacraments is politic, and indispensably necessary.

Half communion

For the first twelve hundred years the faithful of both sexes regularly and without question received the eucharist under the forms of bread and wine. Transubstantiation, teaching the people that the cup was the blood that flowed through the Saviour’s physical heart, inspired them and their priests with horror lest a drop of it should fall on the ground, or hang on a layman’s beard; it was unquestionably the prime cause why the cup was taken from the laity. It is of course still used in celebrating mass, and regularly emptied by the priest, but tasted by no one else.

Two Popes denounce Half Communion.

Gelasius complains: “That some received the bread, but abstained from the cup; whom he condemns as guilty of superstition, and orders that they should either receive in both kinds, or else be excluded from both, because one and the same mystery cannot be divided without grand sacrilege.” Leo the Great denounces them with equal vehemence: “They receive the body of Christ,” says he, “with unworthy mouth, but refuse to drink the blood of our redemption, such men’s sacrilegious dissimulation being discovered, let them be marked, and by the authority of the priesthood cast out of the society of the faithful.”

Gelasius was a respectable pontiff, but Leo the Great deserved his title: he was one of the ablest churchmen, and most celebrated popes that ever lived, and his condemnation of half communion in Catholic eyes should strip it of all authority.

The Council of Constance decrees that the Laity shall not have the Cup in the eucharist.

In A.D. 1215, the synod of Constance prohibited the cup to the laity in the following words: “. . . . and in like manner, though this sacrament was received in the primitive Church by the faithful under both kinds, yet to escape any dangers and scandals, the custom has reasonably been introduced, that it be received by the officiating persons under both kinds, but by the laity only under the kind of bread.” …. Fourteen hundred years after the eucharist was instituted, a body of bishops burn Christ’s two great servants, John Huss and Jerome of Prague; and destroy half of his own glorious image in the Lord’s Supper.

Trent and the prohibition of the cup.

The Council of Constance could not mutilate the Lord’s Supper and make men satisfied with the sacrilegious change. After its impious alterations of divine institutions, and diabolical burnings were over, agitation about the forbidden cup shook Europe, and a hundred years later it was just as active as ever. Soon after the assembling of the Council of Trent, which met A.D. 1545, demands came in by almost every mail for the cup, not from Protestants; they had it already; but from Catholics; from the Emperor Charles V., Ferdinand, his brother, Charles IX., King of France, the Duke of Bavaria, and from a multitude in all classes of society. The result is thus expressed:

“If any one shall say, that by the command of God, or by the necessity of salvation, all and each of the faithful in Christ should partake of each species of the most holy sacrament of the eucharist; let him be accursed.”

“If any one shall say that the holy Catholic Church was not moved by just causes and reasons to communicate with laymen, and even clergymen not celebrating mass under the species of bread only; or that in that course she has erred; let him be accursed.”

Finally the council, perplexed by the threatening attitude of the leading Catholic laymen of Europe, and yet fearing to injure the authority of general synods by repealing the decree of the infallible Council of Constance, referred the whole matter to the pope: “To give the cup to any person, nation, or kingdom, if fair reasons agreeable to Christian charity urged it; and to fix the conditions upon which the concession should be granted.” The popes have never exercised this discretionary power; and the formal decrees of Trent have bound all Catholics ever since they were issued.

The Words that change the Bread and Wine into the Body and Blood of Jesus.

“By these words: Do this in commemoration of me, Jesus gave his apostles and their successors, the bishops and priests of the Church, the power to change the bread and the wine into his most holy body and blood. The priest blesses the bread and wine as Christ did; he speaks over them the same words of consecration which Christ spoke; and thus the bread and wine are changed now on the altar, as they were at the last supper, into the body and blood of Jesus Christ.”

The Sacrifice of the Mass a Modern Invention.

You will search in vain through all the writings of Christians, for the idea of transubstantiation, before the book of Paschasius Radbert was written in the ninth century. At that time the doctrine met with violent opposition from all quarters, and especially from the first thinkers in the Christian Church. Gradually the idea became popular, and in the twelfth century a name was born for it, then in the thirteenth it was formally installed as a dogma of the Church. We firmly and DEFIANTLY declare TRANSUBSTANTIATION A NOVELTY; and as the whole system of Romanism rests upon it, that system is founded not upon the Rock of Ages, but the sands of earth, and it will surely perish in the storms destined to overthrow every scheme of error.

The Catholic version of the Scriptures makes Jesus say: “Thou wilt not leave my soul in hell, neither wilt thou suffer thy holy one to see corruption.” Acts ii. 27. Now every wafer swallowed by Catholics enters the physical system, and corrupts with the decaying body, if not sooner. Every fragment of Christ’s body that ever entered the stomach of one of the faithful, has seen corruption already in the bodies of all the dead, or will see it in the moldering remains of all the living.

Every miracle of Christ was an apparent miracle; it could be tested by the senses; and the wonder had to be acknowledged by friend and foe. When he turned the water into wine at the wedding, let us suppose that it had the taste of water still, and its clear appearance; and that he and his mother assured the festive company that their senses deceived them, that it was really wine. How many at the marriage would have believed Jesus? Such a statement would have blasted the Saviour’s veracity forever among these people. Or when he feeds the thousands with the five loaves and two fishes, let us suppose that the miracle is of the mass order, that there is no increase of the loaves and fishes of which the people have any sensible evidence. He breaks them in little pieces, giving a portion to each: when the hungry multitude swallow the little morsels, they cry out: “What folly to give us these atoms!” Says Jesus: “I have magnified them by miracle into a sufficiency to satisfy you all.” “You have!” they reply. “It looked small, it felt small, it tasted small; and we are ravenously hungry as if it had been small.” “Ah,” he replies, “but your senses, deceive you, you cannot trust them.”

If the Saviour had been capable of such a piece of imposition, these thousands would have branded Him as the most deceitful and barefaced trickster that ever tried to take advantage of human credulity. Every miracle of Jesus appeared a supernatural occurrence to those who beheld it. The mass shows no change. It appears bread, its friends say it is flesh and blood; it is certainly a case of false appearances; it is no miracle of Jesus. His were all real, visible, undoubted.

A story is told of the celebrated Duke of Buckingham, that he consented to receive the ministrations of a priest during an illness, The duke, even in sickness, loved a joke, and as the father made some effort to convert him, he feigned a sort of dreamy unconsciousness of his presence. He held a cork in his hand, which he treated as if it were a splendid horse; he spoke of its height, its action, its beauty, and addressed it as an old equine acquaintance. The priest tried to convince him that it was not a horse, that he was certainly mistaken; that if he would look at it he would see it was not a horse but only a cork; that if he would scent it he would learn that it was a cork; that if he would taste it he would be satisfied that it was a cork; that if he would feel it he would perceive it was but a cork; that if he would listen to it for years he would never hear the snorts, neighing or breathing of a horse. The duke professed his conviction that it was only a cork. As conversation progressed, the eucharist was introduced, and the priest declared it to be Jesus Christ, soul, body, and divinity. The duke expressed his astonishment at the statement of the father; intimated that he must be somewhat beside himself: for if you touch it you will understand that it is not a human body, if you look at it you can only receive that conviction, if you taste it you will discover nothing but water and flour; if you scent it you will find no odor of flesh and blood. And he informed the father that a man must be out of his mind who believed a thing so contrary to his senses.

We receive all knowledge through our senses. If we cannot believe each of them in its own limited sphere, when each is in healthful exercise, we are not safe in believing anything. Our taste, touch, scent, sight, testify that the priest’s wafer is not Christ’s body and blood, but the flour and water of the cook. He tells us that it is Christ’s body, but he gives no evidence to establish the truth of his statement, except such testimony as would prove Christ to be a literal rock, lamb, corner-stone, sun, door, vine, shepherd, or morning star, between which objects and Jesus, in some features of his person or work, there is such a resemblance as led him to be called by their names; or such evidence as would prove Peter, the foundation of the Romish Church, to be the devil.

Were the keen old satirist living who laughed so immoderately at the follies of Egyptian idolatry, and who derisively complimented that people in the well-known words: “O holy nations, for whom these divinities grow in the gardens!” with what cultivated, heathen scorn, he would address his degenerate Roman fellow citizens, and exclaim: “O happy pontiff! O blessed papal fold, whose god grows in every ear of wheat, whose divinity is made by a baker and a priest, and then swallowed!”

The human body of Christ is in heaven; and as no material substance can be in two places at one time, or in a hundred thousand places at one time, the wafer-body of Christ is an imposition, a plain, unmitigated counterfeit, the reception of which is not an act of faith, but a deed which flings away the Bible and common sense for an impious dogma which the Scriptures never taught, and a soul exercising its intelligence could not believe.

Continued in XII. The Confessional

All chapters of The Papal System by William Cathcart

. . . or The History of Baptist Churches From the Time of Christ, Their Founder, to the Present Day

THIS LITTLE BOOK is sent forth for the purpose of making known the little-known history of those FAITHFUL WITNESSES of the Lord Jesus, who, as members of the CHURCH JESUS BUILT, “Overcame Satan by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of their testimony: and they loved not their lives unto death,” Rev. 12:11.

Copyright 1931, Ashland Avenue Baptist Church, Lexington, Kentucky

Dr. J. M. Carroll, the author of this book, was born in the state of Arkansas, January 8, 1858, and died in Texas, January 10, 1931. His father, a Baptist preacher, moved to Texas when Brother Carroll was six years old. There he was converted, baptized, and ordained to the Gospel ministry. Dr. Carroll not only became a leader among Texas Baptist, but an outstanding figure of Southern Baptists, and of the world.

Years ago he came to our church and brought the messages found in this book. It was then I became greatly interested in Brother Carroll’s studies. I, too, had made a special research in Church History, as to which is the oldest Church and most like the churches of the New Testament.

Dr. J. W. Porter attended the lectures. He was so impressed he told Brother Carroll if he would write the messages he would publish them in a book. Dr. Carroll wrote the lectures and gave Dr. Porter the right to publish them along with the chart which illustrates the history so vividly.

However, Dr. Carroll died before the book came off the press, but Dr. Porter placed them before the public and the whole edition was soon sold. Now, by the grace of God, we are able to present this 66th edition of 20,000. I want to ask all who read and study these pages to join me in prayer and work that an ever-increasing number shall go forth.

“To make all men see what is the fellowship of the mystery which from the beginning of the world hath been hid in God, who created all things by Christ Jesus; to the intent that now unto the principalities and powers in Heavenly places might be known by the Church, the manifold wisdom of God … unto Him be glory in the Church by Christ Jesus throughout all ages, world without end, Amen.” (Eph. 3:9-10, 21)

It was wonderful to hear Dr. Carroll tell how he became interested in the history of the different denominations—ESPECIALLY THEIR ORIGIN. He wrote the book after he was 70 years old, but he said, “I was converted unto God when I was just a boy. I saw the many denominations and wondered which was the church the Lord Jesus founded.”

Even in his youth he felt that in the study of the Scriptures and history, he could find the church which was the oldest and most like the churches described in the New Testament.

This research for the truth led him into many places and enabled him to gather one of the greatest libraries on church history. This library was given at his death to the Southwestern Baptist Seminary, Ft. Worth, Texas.

He found much church history–most of it seemed to be about the Catholics and Protestants. The history of Baptists, he discovered, was written in blood. They were the hated people of the Dark Ages. Their preachers and people were put into prison and untold numbers were put to death. The world has never seen anything to compare with the suffering, the persecutions, heaped upon Baptists by the Catholic Hierarchy during the Dark Ages. The Pope was the world’s dictator. This is why the Ana-Baptists, before the Reformation, called the Pope The Anti-Christ.

Their history is written in the legal documents and papers of those ages. It is through these records that the “TRAIL OF BLOOD” winds its way as you find such statements-

“At Zurich, after many disputations between Zuinglius and the Ana-Baptists, the Senate made an Act, that if any presume to rebaptize those who were baptized before (i.e. as infants) they should be drowned. At Vienna many Ana-Baptists were tied together in chains that one drew the other after him into the river, wherein they were all suffocated (drowned).” (Vida Supra, p.61)

“In the year of our Lord 1539 two Ana-Baptists were burned beyond Southwark, and a little before them 5 Dutch Ana-Baptists were burned in Smithfield,” (Fuller, Church History.)

“In 1160 a company of Paulicians (Baptists) entered Oxford. Henry II ordered them to be branded on the forehead with hot irons, publicly whipped them through the streets of the city, to have their garments cut short at the girdles, and be turned into the open country. The villages were not to afford them any shelter or food and they perished a lingering death from cold and hunger.” (Moore, Earlier and Later Nonconformity in Oxford, p. 12.)

The old Chronicler Stowe, A.D. 1533, relates:

“The 25th of May–in St. Paul’s Church, London–examined 19 men and 6 women. Fourteen of them were condemned; a man and a woman were burned at Smithfield, the other twelve of them were sent to towns there to be burned.”

Froude, the English historian, says of these Ana-Baptist martyrs-

“The details are all gone, their names are gone. Scarcely the facts seem worth mentioning. For them no Europe was agitated, no court was ordered in mourning, no papal hearts trembled with indignation. At their death the world looked on complacent, indifferent or exulting. Yet here, out of 25 poor men and women were found 14, who by no terror of stake or torture could be tempted to say they believed what they did not believe. History has for them no word of praise, yet they, too, were not giving their blood in vain. Their lives might have been as useless as the lives of most of us. In their death they assisted to pay the purchase of English freedom.”

Likewise, in writings of their enemies as well as friends, Dr. Carroll found, their history and that their trail through the ages was indeed bloody:

Cardinal Hosius (Catholic, 1524), President of the Council of Trent:

“Were it not that the baptists have been grievously tormented and cut off with the knife during the past twelve hundred years, they would swarm in greater number than all the Reformers.” (Hosius, Letters, Apud Opera, pp. 112, 113.)

The “twelve hundred years” were the years preceding the Reformation in which Rome persecuted Baptists with the most cruel persecution thinkable.

Sir Isaac Newton:

“The Baptists are the only body of known Christians that have never symbolized with Rome.”

Mosheim (Lutheran):

“Before the rise of Luther and Calvin, there lay secreted in almost all the countries of Europe persons who adhered tenaciously to the principles of modern Dutch Baptists.”

Edinburg Cyclopedia (Presbyterian):

“It must have already occurred to our readers that the Baptists are the same sect of Christians that were formerly described as Ana-Baptists. Indeed this seems to have been their leading principle from the time of Tertullian to the present time.”

Tertullian was born just fifty years after the death of the Apostle John.

Baptists do not believe in Apostolic Succession. The Apostolic office ceased with the death of the Apostles. It is to His churches that He promised a continual existence from the time He organized the first one during His earthly ministry until He comes again. He promised-

“I will build my church and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.” (Matt. 16:18)

Then, when He gave the great Commission, which tells what His churches are to do, He promised-

“I will be with you alway, even unto the end of the age.” (Matt. 28:20)

This Commission–this work–was not given to the Apostles as individuals, but to them and the others present in their church capacity. The Apostles and the others who heard Him give this Commission were soon dead–BUT, His Church has lived on through the ages, making disciples (getting folks saved), baptizing them, and teaching the truth–the doctrines–He committed to the Jerusalem Church. These faithful churches have been blessed with His presence as they have traveled the TRAIL OF BLOOD.This history shows how the Lord’s promise to His churches has been fulfilled. Dr. Carroll shows that churches have been found in every age which have taught the doctrines He committed unto them. Dr. Carroll calls these doctrines the “marks” of New Testament Churches

“MARKS OF THE NEW TESTAMENT CHURCH”

1. Its Head and Founder–CHRIST. He is the law-giver; the Church is only the executive. (Matt. 16:18; Col. 1:18)
2. Its only rule of faith and practice–THE BIBLE. (II Tim. 3:15-17)
3. Its name–“CHURCH,” “CHURCHES.” (Matt. 16:18; Rev. 22:16)
4. Its polity–CONGREGATIONAL–all members equal. (Matt. 20:24-28; Matt. 23:5-12)
5. Its members–only saved people. (Eph. 2:21; I Peter 2:5)
6. Its ordinances–BELIEVERS’ BAPTISM, FOLLOWED BY THE LORD’S SUPPER. (Matt. 28:19-20)
7. Its officers–PASTORS AND DEACONS. (I Tim. 3:1-16)
8. Its work–getting folks saved, baptizing them (with a baptism that meets all the requirements of God’s Word), teaching them
(“to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you”). (Matt. 28:16-20)
9. Its financial plan–“Even so (TITHES and OFFERINGS) hath the Lord ordained that they which preach the gospel should
live of the gospel,” (I Cor. 9:14)
10. Its weapons of warfare–spiritual, not carnal. (II Cor. 10:4; Eph. 6:10-20)
11. Its independence–separation of Church and State. (Matt. 22:21)

In any town there are many different churches–all claiming to be the true church. Dr. Carroll did as you can do now–take the
marks, or teachings, of the different churches and find the ones which have these marks, or doctrines. The ones which have
these marks, or doctrines, taught in God’s Word, are the true churches.

This, Dr. Carroll has done, to the churches of all ages. He found many had departed from “these marks, or doctrines.” Other
churches, however, he found had been true to these marks” in every day and age since Jesus said,
“I will build my church and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.” (Matt. 16:18)
“I will be with you alway, even unto the end of the age.” (Matt. 28:21)

Or to express it differently, but still expressively–“A history of the Doctrines as taught by Christ, and His Apostles and those who have been loyal to them.”

First lecture

“Remember the days of old. Consider the years of many generations; Ask thy father and he will show thee. Thy elders and they will tell thee.” (Deut. 32:7)

1. What we know today as “Christianity” or the Christian Religion, began with Christ, A.D. 25-30 in the days and within the bounds of the Roman Empire. One of the greatest empires the world has ever known in all its history.

2. This Empire at that period embraced nearly all of the then known inhabited world. Tiberius Caesar was its Emperor.

3. In its religion, the Roman Empire, at that time, was pagan. A religion of many gods. Some material and some imaginary. There were many devout believers and worshipers. It was a religion not simply of the people, but of the empire. It was an established religion. Established by law and supported by the government. (Mosheim, Vol. 1, Chap. 1.)

4. The Jewish people, at that period, no longer a separate nation, were scattered throughout the Roman Empire. They yet had their temple in Jerusalem, and the Jews yet went there to worship, and they were yet jealous of their religion. But it, like the pagan, had long since drifted into formalism and had lost its power. (Mosheim, Vol. 1, Chap. 2.)

5. The religion of Christ being a religion not of this world, its founder gave it no earthly head and no temporal power. It sought no establishment, no state or governmental support. It sought no dethronement of Caesar. Said its author, “Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and to God the things that are God’s.” (Matt, 22:19-22; Mark 12:17; Luke 20:20). Being a spiritual religion it was a rival of no earthly government. Its adherents, however, were taught to respect all civil law and government. (Rom. 13:1-7; Titus 3:1; 1 Pet. 2:13-16)

6. I want now to call your attention to some of the landmarks, or ear-marks of this religion–the Christian Religion. If you and I are to trace it down through 20 long centuries, and especially down through 1,200 years of midnight darkness, darkened by rivers and seas of martyr blood, then we will need to know well these marks. They will be many times terribly disfigured. But there will always be some indelible mark. But let us carefully and prayerfully beware. We will encounter many shams and make-believes. If possible, the very elect will be betrayed and deceived. We want, if possible, to trace it down through credible history, but more especially through the unerring, infallible, words and marks of Divine truth.

If in going down through the centuries we run upon a group or groups of people bearing not these distinguishing marks and teaching other things for fundamental doctrines, let us beware.

1. Christ, the author of this religion, organized His followers or disciples into a Church. And the disciples were to organize other churches as this religion spread and other disciples were “made.” (Ray, Bapt, Succession, Revised Edition, 1st Chap.)

2. This organization or church, according to the Scriptures and according to the practice of the Apostles and early churches, was given two kinds of officers and only two–pastors and deacons. The pastor was called “Bishop.” Both pastor and deacons to be selected by the church and to be servants of the church.

3. The churches in their government and discipline to be entirely separate and independent of each other, Jerusalem to have no authority over Antioch–nor Antioch over Ephesus; nor Ephesus over Corinth, and so forth. And their government to be congregational, democratic. A government of the people, by the people, and for the people.

4. To the church were given two ordinances and only two, Baptism and the Lord’s Supper. These to be perpetual and memorial.

5. Only the “saved” were to be received as members of the church (Acts 2:47). These saved ones to be saved by grace alone without any works of the law (Eph, 2:5, 8, 9). These saved ones and they only, to be immersed in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit (Matt. 28:19). And only those thus received and baptized, to partake of the Lord’s Supper, and the supper to be celebrated only by the church, in church capacity.

6. The inspired scriptures, and they only, in fact, the New Testament and that only, to be the rule and guide of faith and life, not only for the church as an organization, but for each individual member of that organization.

7. Christ Jesus, the founder of this organization and the savior of its members, to be their only priest and king, their only Lord and Lawgiver, and the only head of the churches. The churches to be executive only in carrying out their Lord’s will and completed laws, never legislative, to amend or abrogate old laws or to make new ones.

8. This religion of Christ to be individual, personal, and purely voluntary or through persuasion. No physical or governmental compulsion. A matter of distinct individual and personal choice. “Choose you” is the scriptural injunction. It could be neither accepted nor rejected nor lived by proxy nor under compulsion.

9. Mark well! That neither Christ nor His apostles, ever gave to His followers, what is know today as a denominational name, such as “Catholic,” “Lutheran,” “Presbyterian,” “Episcopal,” and so forth–unless the name given by Christ to John was intended for such, “The Baptist,” “John the Baptist” (Matt. 11:11 and 10 or 12 other times.) Christ called the individual follower “disciple.” Two or more were called “disciples.” The organization of disciples, whether at Jerusalem or Antioch or elsewhere, was called Church. If more than one of these separate organizations were referred to, they were called Churches. The word church in the singular was never used when referring to more than one of these organizations. Nor even when referring to them all.

10. I venture to give one more distinguishing mark. We will call it–Complete separation of Church and State. No combination, no mixture of this spiritual religion with a temporal power. “Religious Liberty,” for everybody And now, before proceeding with the history itself, let me call your attention to-

I believe, if you will study carefully this chart, you will better understand the history, and it will greatly aid your memory in retaining what you hear and see.

Remember this chart is supposed to cover a period of two thousand years of religious history.

Notice at both top and bottom of the chart some figures, the same figures at both top and bottom – 100, 200, 300, and so on to 2,000.

They represent the twenty centuries of time–the vertical lines separating the different centuries.

Now notice on the chart, near the bottom; other straight lines, this line running left to right, the long way of the chart.

The lines are about the same distance apart as the vertical lines. But you can’t see them all the way. They are covered by a very dark spot, representing in history what is known as the “dark ages.” It will be explained later. Between the two lowest lines are the names of countries . . . Italy, Wales, England, Spain, France, and so forth, ending with America. These are names of countries in which much history is made during the period covered by the names themselves. Of course not all the history, some history is made in some of the countries in every period. But some special history is made in these special countries, at these special periods.

Now notice again, near the bottom of the chart, other lines a little higher. They, too, covered in part by the “dark ages,” they also are full of names, but not names of countries. They are all “nick-names.” Names given to those people by their enemies. “Christians”–that is the first: “The disciples were called Christians first at Antioch” (Acts 11:26). This occurred about A.D. 43. Either the pagans or Jews gave them that name in derision. All the other names in that column were given in the same manner–Montanists, Novationists, Donatists, Paulicians, Albigenses, Waldenses, etc., and Ana-Baptists. All of these will again and again be referred to as the lectures progress.

But look again at the chart. See the red circles. They are scattered nearly all over the chart. They represent churches. Single individual churches in Asia, in Africa, in Europe, in mountains and valleys, and so forth. Their being blood red indicates martyr blood. Christ their founder died on the Cross. All the Apostles save two, John and Judas, suffered martyr deaths. Judas betrayed his Lord and died in a suicide. The Apostle John, according to history, was boiled in a great cauldron of oil.

You will note some circles that are solidly black. They represent churches also. But erring churches. Churches that had gone wrong in life or doctrine. There were numbers of these even before the death of Peter, Paul and John.

Having now about concluded with a general introduction and some very necessary and even vital preliminaries, I come to the regular history-

1. Under the strange but wonderful impulse and leadership of John the Baptist, the eloquent man from the wilderness, and under the loving touch and miracle-working power of the Christ Himself, and the marvelous preaching of the 12 Apostles and their immediate successors, the Christian religion spread mightily during the first 500-year period. However, it left a terribly bloody trail behind it. Judaism and Paganism bitterly contested every forward movement. John the Baptist was the first of the great leaders to give up his life. His head was taken off. Soon after him went the Savior Himself, the founder of this Christian religion. He died on the Cross, the cruel death of the Cross.

2. Following their Savior in rapid succession fell many other martyred heroes: Stephen was stoned, Matthew was slain in Ethiopia, Mark dragged through the streets until dead, Luke hanged, Peter and Simeon were crucified, Andrew tied to a cross, James beheaded, Philip crucified and stoned, Bartholomew flayed alive, Thomas pierced with lances, James, the less, thrown from the temple and beaten to death, Jude shot to death with arrows, Matthias stoned to death and Paul beheaded.

3. More than one hundred years had gone by before all this had happened. This hard persecution by Judaism and Paganism continued for two more centuries. And yet mightily spread the Christian religion. It went into all the Roman Empire, Europe, Asia, Africa, England, Wales, and about everywhere else, where there was any civilization. The churches greatly multiplied and the disciples increased continuously. But some of the churches continued to go into error.

4. The first of these changes from New Testament teachings embraced both policy and doctrine. In the first two centuries the individual churches rapidly multiplied and some of the earlier ones, such as Jerusalem, Antioch, Ephesus, Corinth, etc., grew to be very large; Jerusalem, for instance, had many thousand members (Acts 2:41; 4:4, 5:14), possibly 25,000 or even 50,000 or more. A close student of the book of Acts and Epistles will see that Paul had a mighty task even in his day in keeping some of the churches straight. See Peter’s and Paul’s prophecies concerning the future (II Pet. 2:12; Acts 20:29-31. See also Rev., second and third chapters).

These great churches necessarily had many preachers or elders (Acts 20:17). Some of the bishops or pastors began to assume authority not given them in the New Testament. They began to claim authority over other and smaller churches. They, with their many elders, began to lord it over God’s heritage (III John 9). Here was the beginning of an error which has grown and multiplied into many other seriously hurtful errors. Here was the beginning of different orders in the ministry running up finally to what is practiced now by others as well as Catholics. Here began what resulted in an entire change from the original democratic policy and government of the early churches. This irregularity began in a small way, even before the close of the second century. This was possibly the first serious departure from the New Testament church order.

5. Another vital change which seems from history to have had its beginning before the close of the second century was on the great doctrine of Salvation itself. The Jews as well as the Pagans, had for many generations, been trained to lay great stress on Ceremonials. They had come to look upon types as anti-types, shadows as real substances, and ceremonials as real saving agencies. How easy to come thus to look upon baptism. They reasoned thus: The Bible has much to say concerning baptism. Much stress is laid upon the ordinance and one’s duty concerning it. Surely it must have something to do with one’s salvation. So that it was in this period that the idea of “Baptismal Regeneration” began to get a fixed hold in some of the churches. (Shackelford, page 57; Camp p. 47; Benedict, p. 286; Mosheim, vol. 1, p. 134; Christian, p. 28.)

6. The next serious error to begin creeping in, and which seems from some historians (not all) to have begun in this same century and which may be said to have been an inevitable consequence of the “baptismal regeneration” idea, was a change in the subjects of baptism. Since baptism has been declared to be an agency or means to salvation by some erring churches, then the sooner baptism takes place the better. Hence arose “infant baptism.” Prior to this “believers” and “believers” only, were regarded as proper subjects for baptism. “Sprinkling” and “pouring” are not now referred to. These came in much later. For several centuries, infants, like others, were immersed. The Greek Catholics (a very large branch of the Catholic church) up to this day, have never changed the original form of baptism. They practice infant baptism but have never done otherwise than immerse the children. (Note–Some of the church historians put the beginning of infant baptism within this century, but I shall quote a short paragraph from Robinson’s Ecclesiastical Researches.)

“During the first three centuries, congregations all over the East subsisted in separate independent bodies, unsupported by government and consequently without any secular power over one another. All this time they were baptized churches, and though all the fathers of the first four ages, down to Jerome (A.D. 370), were of Greece, Syria and Africa, and though they give great numbers of histories of the baptism of adults, yet there is not one of the baptism of a child till the year 370.” (Compendium of Baptist History, Shackelford, p. 43; Vedder, p. 50; Christian, p, 31; Orchard, p. 50, etc.)

7. Let it be remembered that changes like these here mentioned were not made in a day, nor even within a year. They came about slowly and never within all the churches. Some of the churches vigorously repudiated them. So much so that in A.D. 251, the loyal churches declared non-fellowship for those churches which accepted and practiced these errors. And thus came about the first real official separation among the churches.

8. Thus it will be noted that during the first three centuries three important and vital changes from the teachings of Christ and His Apostles had their beginnings. And one significant event took place, Note this summary and recapitulation:
(1) The change from the New Testament idea of bishop and church government. This change grew rapidly, more pronounced, and complete and hurtful.
(2) The change from the New Testament teachings as to Regeneration to “baptismal regeneration.”
(3) The change from “believers’ baptism” to “infant baptism.” (This last, however, did not become general nor even very frequent for more than another century.)

9. “Baptismal regeneration” and “infant baptism.” These two errors have, according to the testimony of well-established history, caused the shedding of more Christian blood, as the centuries have gone by, than all other errors combined, or than possibly have all wars, not connected with persecution, if you will leave out the recent “World War.” Over 50,000,000 Christians died martyr deaths, mainly because of their rejection of these two errors during the period of the “dark ages” alone–about twelve or thirteen centuries.

10. Three significant facts, for a large majority of the many churches, are clearly shown by history during these first three centuries.

(1) The separateness and independence of the Churches.
(2) The subordinate character of bishops or pastors.
(3) The baptism of believers only.

I quote now from Mosheim–the greatest of all Lutheran church historians. Vol., 1, pages 71 and 72: “But whoever supposes that the bishops of this golden age of the church correspond with the bishops of the following centuries must blend and confound characters that are very different, for in this century and the next, a bishop had charge of a single church, which might ordinarily be contained in a private house; nor was he its Lord, but was in reality its minister or servant. . . All the churches in those primitive times were independent bodies, or none of them subject to the jurisdiction of any other. For though the churches

Second lecture-600 A.D.-1300 A.D.

1. We closed the first Lecture with the close of the fifth century. And yet a number of things had their beginnings back in those early centuries, which were not even mentioned in the first Lecture. We had just entered the awful period known in the world’s history as “The Dark Ages.” Dark and bloody and awful in the extreme they were. The persecutions by the established Roman Catholic Church are hard, cruel and perpetual. The war of intended extermination follows persistently and relentlessly into many lands, the fleeing Christians. A “Trail of Blood” is very nearly all that is left anywhere. Especially throughout England, Wales, Africa, Armenia, and Bulgaria. And anywhere else Christians could be found who were trying earnestly to remain strictly loyal to New Testament teaching.

2. We now call attention to these Councils called “Ecumenical,” or Empire wide. It is well to remember that all these Councils were professedly based upon, or patterned after the Council held by the Apostles and others at Jerusalem (see Acts 15:1), but probably nothing bearing the same name could have been more unlike. We here and now call attention to only eight, and these were all called by different Emperors, none of them by the Popes. And all these held among the Eastern or Greek churches. Attended, however, somewhat by representatives from the Western Branch or Roman Churches.

3. The first of these Councils was held at Nice or Nicea, in A.D. 325. It was called by Constantine the Great, and was attended by 318 bishops. The second met at Constantinople, A.D. 381, and was called by Theodosius the Great. There were present 150 bishops. (In the early centuries, bishops simply meant pastors of the individual churches.)

The third was called by Theodosius II, and by Valentian III. This had 250 bishops present. It met at Ephesus, A.D. 431.

The fourth met at Calcedon, A.D. 451, and was called by Emperor Marian; 500 or 600 bishops or Metropolitans (Metropolitans were City pastors or First Church pastors) were present. During this Council the doctrine of what is now known as Mariolatry was promulgated. This means the worship of Mary, the mother of Christ. This new doctrine at first created quite a stir, many seriously objecting. But it finally won out as a permanent doctrine of the Catholic Church.

The fifth of these eight councils was held at Constantinople (which was the second to be held there). This was called by Justinian, A.D. 553, and was attended by 165 bishops. This, seemingly, was called mainly to condemn certain writings.

In the year A.D. 680 the Sixth Council was called. This was also held at Constantinople and was called by Constantine Pegonator, to condemn heresy. During this meeting Pope Honorius by name was deposed and excommunicated. However, at this time infallibility had not yet been declared.

The Seventh Council was called to meet at Nicea A.D. 787. This was the second held at this place. The Empress Irene called this one. Here in this meeting seems to have been the definite starting place, of both “Image Worship” and “Saints Worship.” You can thus see that these people were getting more markedly paganized than Christianized.

The last of what were called the “Eastern Councils,” those, called by the Emperors, was held in Constantinople, in A.D. 869. This was called by Basilius Maredo. The Catholic Church had gotten into serious trouble. There had arisen a controversy of a very serious nature between the heads of the two branches of Catholicism–the Eastern and Western, Greek and Roman–Pontius the Greek at Constantinople and Nicholas the 1st at Rome. So serious was their trouble, that they had gone so far as to excommunicate each other. So for a short time Catholicism was entirely without a head. The council was called mainly to settle, if possible, this difficulty. This break in the ranks of Catholicism has never, even to this day, been satisfactorily settled. Since that far away day, all attempts at healing that breach have failed. The Lateran-power since then has been in the ascendancy. Not the Emperors, but the Roman Pontiffs calling all Councils. The later Councils will be referred to later in these lectures.

4. There is one new doctrine to which we have failed to call attention. There are doubtless others but one especially–and that “Infant Communion.” Infants were not only baptized, but received into the church, and being church members, they were supposed to be entitled to the Lord’s Supper. How to administer it to them was a problem, but it was solved by soaking the bread in the wine. Thus it was practiced for years. And after awhile another new doctrine was added to this–it was taught that this was another means of Salvation. As still another new doctrine was later added to these, we will again refer to this a little later in the lectures.

5. During the 5th Century, at the fourth Ecumenical Council, held at Chalcedon, 451, another entirely new doctrine was added to the rapidly growing list–the doctrine called “Mariolatry,” or the worship of Mary, the Mother of Jesus. A new mediator seems to have been felt to be needed. The distance from God to man was too great for just one mediator, even though that was Christ, God’s Son, the real God-Man. Mary was thought to be needed as another mediator, and prayers were to be made to Mary. She was to make them to Christ.

6. Two other new doctrines were added to the Catholic faith in the 8th Century. These were promulgated at the Second Council held at Nicea (Nice), the Second Council held there (787). The first of these was called “Image Worship, a direct violation of one of the commands of God. “Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image,” (Ex. 20:3, 4, 5). Another addition from Paganism. Then followed the “worship of Saints.” This doctrine has no encouragement in the Bible. Only one instance of Saint worship is given in the Bible and that is given to show its utter folly–the dead rich man praying to Abraham, (Luke 16:24-3l). These are some, not all of the many revolutionary changes from New Testament teachings, that came about during this period of Church history.

7. During the period that we are now passing through the persecuted were called by many and varied names. Among them were Donatists, Paterines, Cathari, Paulicians, and Ana Baptists; and a little later, Petro-Brussians, Arnoldists, Henricians, Albigenses, and Waldenses. Sometimes one group of these was the most prominent and sometimes another. But some of them were almost always prominent because of the persistency and terribleness of their persecution.

8. Let it not be thought that all these persecuted ones were always loyal in all respects to New Testament teachings. In the main they were. And some of them, considering their surroundings, were marvelously so. Remember that many of them at that far away, time, had only parts of the New Testament or the Old Testament as to that. The book was not printed. It was written in manuscript on parchment or skins or something of that kind, and was necessarily large and bulky. Few, if any, families or even simple churches had complete copies of the whole Bible. Before the formal close of the Canon (end of fourth century) there were probably very few simple manuscripts of the entire New Testament. Of the one thousand known manuscripts only about 30 copies included all the books.

9. Furthermore, during all the period of the “Dark Ages,” and the period of the persecution, strenuous efforts were made to destroy even what Scripture manuscripts the persecuted did possess. Hence in many instances these people had only small parts of the Bible.

10. It is well to note also that in order to prevent the spread of any view of any sort, contrary to those of the Catholics very extreme plans and measures were adopted. First, all writings of any sort, other than those of the Catholics, were gathered and burned. Especially was this true of books. For several centuries these plans and measures were strictly and persistently followed. That is, according to history, the main reason why it is so difficult to secure accurate history. About all persistent writers and preachers also died martyr deaths. This was a desperately bloody period. All of the groups of persistent heretics (So-called) by whatever name distinguished, and wherever they had lived, were cruelly persecuted. The Donatists and Paulicians, were prominent among the earlier groups. The Catholics, strange as it may seem, accused all who refused to depart from the faith with them, believe with them–accused them of being heretics, and then condemned them as being heretics. Those called Catholics became more thoroughly paganized and Judaized than they were Christianized, and were swayed far more by civil power, than they were by religious power. They made far more new laws, than they observed old ones.

11. The following are a few of the many new variations that came about in New Testament teachings during these centuries. They are probably not always given in the order of their promulgation. In fact it would sometimes be next to impossible to get the exact date of the origin of some of these changes. They have been somewhat like the whole Catholic system. They are growths of development. In the earlier years especially, their doctrines or teachings were subject to constant change–by addition or subtraction, or substitution or abrogation. The Catholic Church was now no longer, even if it had ever been, a real New Testament Church. It no longer was a purely executive body, to carry out the already made laws of God, but had become actively legislative, making new ones, changing or abrogating old ones at will.

12. One of their new doctrines or declarations about this time was “There is no salvation outside of the Church”–the Catholic Church, of course, as they declared there was no other–be a Catholic or be lost. There was no other alternative.

13. The doctrine of Indulgences and the Sale of Indulgences was another absolutely new and serious departure from New Testament teachings. But in order to make that new teaching really effective, still another new teaching was imperatively necessary: A very large Credit Account must somehow be established–a credit account in heaven, but accessible to earth. So the merit of “good works” as a means of Salvation must be taught, and as a means of filling up, putting something in the credit account, from which something could be drawn. The first large sum to go into the account in heaven was of course the work of the Lord Jesus. As He did no evil, none of His good works were needed for Himself, so all His good works could and would of course, go into the credit account. And then in addition to that, all the surplus good works (in addition to what each might need for himself) by the Apostles, and by all good people living thereafter, would be added to that credit account, making it enormously large. And then all this immense sum placed to the credit of the church–the only church(?)! and permission given to the church to use as needed for some poor sinning mortal, and charging for that credit as much as might be thought wise, for each one needed the heavenly credit. Hence came the Sale of Indulgences. Persons could buy for themselves or their friends, or even dead friends. The prices varied in proportion to the offense committed–or to be committed. This was sometimes carried to a desperate extreme, as admitted by Catholics themselves. Some histories or Encyclopedias give a list of prices charged on different sins for which Indulgences were sold.

14. Yet another new doctrine was necessary, yea imperative, to make thoroughly effective the last two. That new doctrine is called Purgatory, a place of intermediate state between heaven and hell, at which all must stop to be cleansed from all sins less than damning sins. Even the “Saints” must go through purgatory and must remain there until cleansed by fire–unless they can get help through that credit account, and that they can get only through the prayers or the paying for Indulgences, by those living. Hence the Sale of Indulgences. One departure from New Testament teachings lead inevitably to others.

15. It may be well just here to take time to show the differences between the Roman and Greek Catholics:
(1) In the Nationalities: The Greeks mainly are Slavs, embracing Greece, Russia, Bulgaria, Serbia, etc., speaking Greek. The Romans are mainly Latins, embracing Italy, France, Spain, South and Central America, Mexico etc.
(2) The Greek Catholics reject sprinkling or pouring for baptism. The Romans use sprinkling entirely, claiming the right to change from the original Bible plan of immersion.
(3) The Greek Catholics continue the practice of Infant Communion. The Romans have abandoned it though once taught it as another means of Salvation.
(4) The Greeks in administering the Lord’s Supper give the wine as well as the bread to the laity. The Romans give the bread only to the laity–the priests drink the wine.
(5) The Greeks have their priests to marry. The Roman priests are forbidden to marry.
(6) The Greeks reject the doctrine of Papal “Infallibility,” the Romans accept and insist upon that doctrine. The above are at least the main points on which they differ, otherwise the Greek and Roman Catholic churches, it seems, would stand together.

16. In our lectures we have just about gotten through with the ninth century. We begin now with the tenth. Please note the chart. Just here where the separation has taken place between the Roman and Greek Catholics. You will soon see as the centuries advance, other new laws and doctrines–and other desperately bitter persecution. (Schaff, Herzogg, En., Vol. 11, page 901.)

17. I again call your attention to those upon whom the hard hand of persecution fell. If fifty million died of persecution during the 1,200 years of what are called the “Dark Ages,” as history seems positively to teach–then they died faster than an average of four million every one hundred years. That seems almost beyond the limit of, human conception. As before mentioned, this iron hand, dripping with martyr blood, fell upon Paulicians, Arnoldists, Henricians, Petro Brussians, Albigenses, Waldenses and Ana-Baptists–of course much harder upon some than others. But this horrid part of our story we will pass over hurriedly.

18. There came now another rather long period of Ecumenical Councils, of course not continuously or consecutively. There were all through the years many councils that were not Ecumenical, not “Empire Wide.” These Councils were largely legislative bodies for the enactment or amendment of some civil or religious (?) laws, all of which, both the legislation and the laws, were directly contrary to the New Testament. Remember these were the acts of an established church–a church married to a Pagan government. And this church has become far more nearly paganized than the government has become Christianized.

19. When any people discard the New Testament as embracing all necessary laws for a Christian life, whether for the individual Christian or the whole church, that people has launched upon a limitless ocean. Any erroneous law, (and any law added to the Bible is erroneous) will inevitably and soon demand another, and others will demand yet others, without ever an end. That is why Christ gave His churches and to preachers no legislative powers. And again, and more particularly, that is why the New Testament closes with these significant words,

“For I certify unto every man that heareth the words of this book, if any man shall add unto these things, God shall add unto him the plagues that are written in this book. And if any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part out of the book of life, and out of the Holy City, and from the things which are written in the book.” Rev. 22:18, 19.

NOTE: We insert here this parenthetical clause, as a warning. Let Baptist Churches beware of even disciplinary and other varieties of resolutions, which they sometimes pass in their conferences, which resolutions might be construed as laws or rules of Church government, The New Testament has all necessary laws and rules.

20. The extreme limit of this little book precludes the possibility of saying much concerning these councils or law-making assemblies, but it is necessary to say some things.

21. The first of these Lateran or Western Councils, those called by the popes, was called by Calixtus II, A.D. 1123. There were present about 300 bishops. At this meeting it was decreed that Roman priests were never to marry. This was called the Celibacy of the priests. We of course do not attempt to give all things done at these meetings.

22. Years later, 1139 A.D., Pope Innocent II, called another of these Councils especially to condemn two groups of very devout Christians, known as Petro-Brussians and Arnoldists.

23. Alexander III called yet another, A.D. 1179, just forty years after the last. In that was condemned what they called the “Errors and Impieties” of the Waldenses and Albigenses.

24. Just 36 years after this last one, another was called by Pope Innocent III. This was held A.D. 1215, and seems to have been the most largely attended of possibly any of these great councils. According to the historical account of this meeting, “there were present 412 bishops, 800 Abbots and priors, Ambassadors from the Byzantine court, and a great number of Princes and Nobles.” From the very make-up of this assembly you may know that spiritual matters were at least not alone to be considered. At that time was promulgated the new doctrine of “Transubstantiation,” the intended turning of the bread and wine of the Lord’s

Third lecture–1400 A.D.-1600 A.D.

1. These three centuries, fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth, are among the most eventful in all the world’s history, and especially is this true in Christian history. There was almost a continual revolution inside the Catholic Church–both Roman and Greek–seeking a Reformation. This awakening of long dormant Conscience and the desire for a genuine reformation really began in the thirteenth century or possibly even a little earlier than that. History certainly seems to indicate it.

2. Let’s go back just a little. The Catholic Church by its many departures from New Testament teachings, its many strange and cruel laws, and its desperately low state of morals, and its hands and clothes reeking with the blood of millions of martyrs, has become obnoxious and plainly repulsive to many of its adherents, who are far better than their own system and laws and doctrines and practices. Several of its bravest and best and most spiritual priests and other leaders, one by one, sought most earnestly to reform many of its most objectionable laws and doctrines and get back, at least nearer, to the plain teachings of the New Testament. We give some striking examples. Note, not only how far apart and where the reformatory fires began, but note also the leaders in the reformation. The leaders were, or had been, all Catholic priests or officials of some kind. There was, even yet, a little of good in the much evil. However, at this time there was probably not one solitary unmarred doctrine of the New Testament retained in its original purity–but now note some of the reformers and where they labored. 3. It is well to note, however, that for many centuries prior to this great reformation period, there were a number of noted characters, who rebelled against the awful extremes of the Catholic–and earnestly sought to remain loyal to the Bible–but their bloody trail was about all that was left of them. We come now to study for awhile this most noted period–the “Reformation.”

4. From 1320 to 1384 there lived a man in England who attracted world-wide attention. His name was John Wycliff. He was the first of the brave fellows who had the courage to attempt a real reformation inside the Catholic Church. He is many times referred to in history as “The Morning Star of the Reformation.” He lived an earnest and effective life. It would really require several volumes to contain anything like an adequate history of John Wycliff. He was hated, fearfully hated, by the leaders of the Catholic hierarchy. His life was persistently sought. He finally died of paralysis. But years later, so great was Catholic hatred, his bones were dug and burned, and his ashes scattered upon the waters.

5. Following tolerably close on the heels of Wycliff came John Huss, 1373-1415, a distinguished son from far away Bohemia. His soul had felt and responded to the brilliant light of England’s “Morning Star.” His was a brave and eventful life, but painfully and sadly short. Instead of awakening a responsive chord among his Catholic people in favor of a real reformation, he aroused a fear and hatred and opposition which resulted in his being burned at the stake–a martyr among his own people. And yet he was seeking their own good. He loved his Lord and he loved his people. However, he was only one of many millions who had thus to die.

6. Next to John Huss of Bohemia, came a wonderful son of Italy, the marvelously eloquent Savonarola, 1452-1498. Huss was burned in 1415, Savonarola was born 37 years later. He, like Huss, though a devout Catholic, found the leaders of his people–the people of Italy–like those of Bohemia, against all reformation. But he, by his mighty eloquence, succeeded in awakening some conscience and securing a considerable following. But a real reformation in the Hierarchy meant absolute ruin to the higher-ups in that organization. So Savonarola, as well as Huss, must die. HE TOO WAS BURNED AT THE STAKE.

Of all the eloquent men of that great period, Savonarola possibly stood head and shoulders above all others. But he was contending against a mighty organization and their existence demanded that they fight the reformation, so Savonarola must die.

7. Of course, in giving the names of the reformers of this period, many names are necessarily to be left out. Only those most frequently referred to in history are mentioned here. Following Italy’s golden tongued orator came a man from Switzerland. Zwingle was born before Savonarola died. He lived from 1484 to 1531. The spirit of reformation was beginning now to fill the whole land. Its fires are now breaking out faster and spreading more rapidly and becoming most difficult to control. This one kindled by Zwingle was not yet more than partially smothered before another, more serious than all the rest, had broken out in Germany. Zwingle died in battle.

8. Martin Luther, probably the most noted of all the fifteenth and sixteenth century reformers, lived 1483 to 1546, and as can be seen by the dates, was very nearly an exact contemporary of Zwingle. He was born one year earlier and lived fifteen years later. Far more, probably, than history definitely states, his great predecessors have in great measure made easier his hard way before him. Furthermore, he learned from their hard experience, and then later, and most thoroughly from his own, that a genuine reformation inside the Catholic Church would be an utter impossibility. Too many reform measures would be needed. One would demand another and others demand yet others, and so on and on.

9. So Martin Luther, after many hard fought battles with the leaders of Catholicism, and aided by Melancthon and other prominent Germans, became the founder in 1530, or, about then, of an entirely new Christian organization, now known as the Lutheran Church, which very soon became the Church of Germany. This was the first of the new organizations to come directly out of Rome and renounce all allegiance to the Catholic Mother Church (as she is called) and to continue to live thereafter.

10. Skipping now for a little while, the Church of England, which comes next to the Lutheran in its beginnings, we will follow for a little while the Reformation on the Continent. From 1509 to 1564, there lived another of the greatest of the reformers. This was John Calvin, a Frenchman, but seeming at the time to be living in Switzerland. He was really a mighty man. He was a contemporary of Martin Luther for 30 years, and was 22 years old when Zwingle died. Calvin is the accredited founder of the Presbyterian church. Some of the historians, however, give that credit to Zwingle, but the strongest evidence seems to favor Calvin. Unquestionably the work of Zwingle, as well as that of Luther, made much easier the work of Calvin. So in 1541, just eleven years (that seems to be the year), after the founding by Luther of the Lutheran Church, the Presbyterian Church came into existence. It too, as in the case of the Lutherans, was led by a reformed Catholic priest or at least official. These six–Wycliff, Huss, Savonarola, Zwingle, Luther and Calvin, great leaders in their great battles for reformation, struck Catholicism a staggering blow.

11. In 1560, nineteen years after Calvin’s first organization in Geneva, Switzerland, John Knox, a disciple of Calvin, established the first Presbyterian Church in Scotland, and just thirty-two years later, 1592, the Presbyterian became the State Church of Scotland.

12. During all these hard struggles for Reformation, continuous and valuable aid was given to the reformers, by many Ana-Baptists, or whatever other name they bore. Hoping for some relief from their own bitter lot, they came out of their hiding places and fought bravely with the reformers, but they were doomed to fearful disappointment. They were from now on to have two additional persecuting enemies. Both the Lutheran and Presbyterian Churches brought out of their Catholic Mother many of her evils, among them her idea of a State Church. They both soon became Established Churches. Both were soon in the persecuting business, falling little, if any, short of their Catholic Mother.

Sad and awful was the fate of these long-suffering Ana-Baptists. The world now offered no sure place for hiding. Four hard persecutors were now hot on their trail. Surely theirs was a “Trail of Blood.”

13. During the same period, really earlier by several years than the Presbyterians, arose yet another new denomination, not on the continent, but in England. However, this came about not so much by way of reformation (though that evidently made it easier) as by way of a real split or division in the Catholic ranks. More like the division in 869, when Eastern Catholics separated from the Western, and became from that time on, known in history as the Greek and Roman Catholic Churches. This new division came about somewhat in this wise:

England’s king, Henry VIII, had married Catherine of Spain, but unfortunately, after some time his somewhat troublesome heart had fallen in love with Anne Boleyn. So he wanted to divorce Catherine and marry Annie. Getting a divorce back then was no easy matter. Only the Pope could grant it, and he in this case, for special reasons, declined to grant it. Henry was in great distress. Being king, he felt he ought to be entitled to follow his own will in the matter. His Prime Minister (at that time Thomas Cromwell) rather made sport of the King. Why do you submit to papal authority on such matters? Henry followed his suggestion, threw off papal authority and made himself head of the Church of England. Thus began the new Church of England. This was consummated in 1534 or 1535. At that time there was no change in doctrine, simply a renunciation of the authority of the Pope. Henry at heart really never became a Protestant. He died in the Catholic faith.

14. But this split did ultimately result in some very considerable change, or reformation, While a reformation within the Catholic Church and under papal authority, as in the case of Luther and others, was impossible, it became possible after the division. Cranmer, Latimer, Ridley and others led in some marked changes. However, they and many others paid a bloody price for the changes when a few years later, Mary, “Bloody Mary,” a daughter of the divorced Catherine, came to the English throne, and carried the new Church back under the papal power. This fearful and terrific reaction ended with the strenuous and bloody five-year reign of Mary. While the heads were going under the bloody axe of Mary, hers went with them. The people had gotten, however, a partial taste of freedom so when Elizabeth, the daughter of Anne Boleyn (for whom Catherine was divorced), became Queen, the Church of England again overthrew papal power and was again re-established.

15. Thus, before the close of the Sixteenth Century, there were five established Churches–churches backed up by civil governments–the Roman and Greek Catholics counted as two; then the Church of England; then the Lutheran, or Church of Germany; then the Church of Scotland, now known as the Presbyterian. All of them were bitter in their hatred and persecution of the people called Ana-Baptists, Waldenses and all other non-established churches, churches which never in any way had been connected with the Catholics. Their great help in the struggle for reformation had been forgotten, or was now wholly ignored. Many more thousands, including both women and children were constantly perishing every day in the yet unending persecutions. The great hope awakened and inspired by the reformation had proven to be a bloody delusion. Remnants now find an uncertain refuge in the friendly Alps and other hiding places over the world. 16. These three new organizations, separating from, or coming out of the Catholics, retained many of their most hurtful errors, some of which are as follows:

(1) Preacher-church government (differing in form).
(2) Church Establishment (Church and State combination).
(3) Infant BAPTISM
(4) Sprinkling or Pouring for Baptism.
(5) Baptismal Regeneration (some at least, and others, if many of their historians are to be accredited).
(6) Persecuting others (at least for centuries).

17. In the beginning all these established Churches persecuted one another as well as every one else, but at a council held at Augsburg in 1555, a treaty of peace, known as the “Peace of Augsburg” was signed between the “Catholics” on the one hand, and the “Lutherans” on the other, agreeing not to persecute each other. You let us alone, and we will let you alone. For Catholics to fight Lutherans meant war with Germany, and for Lutherans to fight or persecute Catholics meant war with all the countries where Catholicism predominated.

18. But persecutions did not then cease. The hated Ana-Baptists (called Baptists today), in spite of all prior persecutions, and in spite of the awful fact that fifty million had already died martyr deaths, still existed in great numbers. It was during this period that along one single European highway, thirty miles distance, stakes were set up every few feet along this highway, the tops of the stakes sharpened, and on the top of each stake was placed a gory head of a martyred Ana-Baptist. Human imagination can hardly picture a scene so awful! And yet a thing perpetrated, according to reliable history, by a people calling themselves devout followers of the meek and lowly Jesus Christ.

19. Let it be remembered that the Catholics do not regard the Bible as the sole rule and guide of faith and life. The claim that it is indeed unerring, but that there are two other things just as much so, the “Writings of the Fathers” and the decrees of the Church (Catholic Church) or the declarations of the Infallible Pope. Hence, there could never be a satisfactory debate between Catholic and Protestant or between Catholic and Baptist, as there could never possibly be a basis of final agreement. The Bible alone can never settle anything so far as the Catholics are concerned.

20. Take as an example the question of “Baptism” and the final authority for the act and for the mode. They claim that the Bible unquestionably teaches Baptism and that it teaches immersion as the only mode. But they claim at the same time that their unerring Church had the perfect right to change the mode from immersion to sprinkling but that no others have the right or authority, none but the infallible papal authority.

21. You will note of course, and possibly be surprised at it, that I am doing in these lectures very little quoting. I am earnestly trying to do a very hard thing, give to the people the main substance of two thousand years of religious history in six hours of time.

22. It is well just here to call attention to facts concerning the Bible during these awful centuries. Remember the Bible was not then in print and there was no paper upon which to have printed even if printing had been invented. Neither was there any paper upon which to write it. Parchment, dressed goat of sheep skins, or papyrus (some kind of wood pulp), this was the stuff used upon which to write. So a book as big as the Bible, all written by hand and with a stylus of some sort, not a pen like we use today, was an enormous thing, probably larger than one man could carry. There were never more than about thirty complete Bibles in all the world. Many parts or books of the Bible like Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, or Acts, or some one of the Epistles, or Revelation or some one book of the Old Testament. One of the most outstanding miracles in the whole world’s history–according to my way of thinking–is the nearness with which God’s people have thought and believed together on the main and vital points of Christianity. Of course God is the only solution. It is now a most glorious fact that we can all and each, now have a full copy of the whole Bible and each in our own native tongue.

23. It is well also for us all to do some serious and special thinking on another vital fact concerning the Bible. It has already been briefly mentioned in the lecture preceding this, but is so very vital that it will probably be wise to refer to it again. It was the action taken by the Catholics at the Council of Toulouse, held in 1229 A. D., when they decided to withhold the Bible, the Word of God from the vast majority of all their own people, the “Laymen.” I am simply stating here just what they stated in their great Council. But lately in private a Catholic said to me, “Our purpose in that is to prevent their private interpretation of it.” Isn’t it marvelous that God should write a book for the people and then should be unwilling for the people to read it. And yet according to that book the people are to stand or fall in the day of judgment on the teachings of that book. No wonder the declaration in the book–“Search the Scriptures (the book) for in them ye think ye have eternal life. And they are they which testify of me.” Fearful the responsibility assumed by the Catholics!

Fourth lecture–17th, 18th, 19th Centuries

1. This lecture begins with the beginning of the Seventeenth Century (A.D. 1601). We have passed very hurriedly over much important Christian history, but necessity his compelled this.

2. This three-century period begins with the rise of an entirely new denomination. It is right to state that some historians give the date of the beginning of the Congregational Church (at first called “Independents”) as 1602. However, Schaff-Herzogg, in their Encyclopedia, place its beginning far back in the sixteenth century, making it coeval with the Lutheran and Presbyterian. In the great reformation wave many who went out of the Catholic Church were not satisfied with the extent of the reformation led by Luther and Calvin. They decided to repudiate also the preacher rule and government idea of the churches and return to the New Testament democratic idea as had been held through the fifteen preceding centuries by those who had refused to enter Constantine’s hierarchy.

3. The determined contention of this new organization for this particular reform brought down upon its head bitter persecution from Catholic, Lutheran, Presbyterian and Church of England adherents–all the established churches. However, it retained many other of the Catholic made errors, such for instance as infant baptism, pouring or sprinkling for baptism, and later adopted and practiced to an extreme degree the church and state idea. And, after refugeeing to America, themselves, became very bitter persecutors.

4. The name “Independents” or as now called “Congregationalists,” is derived from their mode of church government. Some of the distinguishing principles of the English Congregationalists as given in Schaff-Herzogg Encyclopedia are as follows:

(1) That Jesus Christ is the only head of the church and that the Word of God is its only statue book.
(2) That visible churches are distinct assemblies of Godly men gathered out of the world for purely religious purposes, and not to be confounded with the world.
(3) That these separate churches have full power to choose their own officers and to maintain discipline.
(4) That in respect to their internal management they are each independent of all other churches and equally independent of state control.

5. How markedly different these principles are from Catholicism, or even Lutheranism, or Presbyterianism or the Episcopacy of the Church of England. How markedly similar to the Baptists of today, and of all past ages, and to the original teachings of Christ and His apostles.

6. In 1611, the King James English Version of the Bible appeared. Never was the Bible extensively given to the people before. From the beginning of the general dissemination of the Word of God began the rapid decline of the Papal power, and the first beginnings for at least many centuries, of the idea of “religious liberty.”

7. In 1648 came the “Peace of Westphalia.” Among other things which resulted from that peace pact was the triple agreement between the great denominations–Catholic, Lutheran and Presbyterian, no longer to persecute one another. Persecutions among these denominations meant war with governments backing them. However, all other Christians, especially the Ana-Baptists, were to continue to receive from them the same former harsh treatment, persistent persecution.

8. During all the seventeenth century, persecutions for Waldenses, Ana-Baptists, and Baptists (in some places the “Ana” was now being left off) continued to be desperately severe; in England by the Church of England, as John Bunyan and many others could testify; in Germany by the Lutherans; in Scotland by the Church of Scotland (Presbyterian); in Italy, in France, and in every other place where the papacy was in power, by the Catholics. There is now no peace anywhere for those who are not in agreement with the state churches, or some one of them.

9. It is a significant fact well established in credible history that even as far back as the fourth century those refusing to go into the Hierarchy, and refusing to accept the baptism or those baptized in infancy, and refusing to accept the doctrine of “Baptismal Regeneration” and demanding rebaptism for all those who came to them from the Hierarchy, were called “Ana-Baptists.” No matter what other names they then bore, they were always referred to as “Ana-Baptists.” Near the beginning of the sixteenth century, the “Ana” was dropped, and the name shortened to simply “Baptist,” and gradually all other names were dropped. Evidently, if Bunyan had lived in an earlier period his followers would have been called “Bunyanites” or “Ana-Baptists.” Probably they would have been called by both names as were others preceding him.

10. The name “Baptist” is a “nickname,” and was given to them by their enemies (unless the name can be rightfully attributed to them as having been given to them by the Savior Himself, when He referred to John as “The Baptist”). To this day, the name has never been officially adopted by any group of Baptists. The name, however, has become fixed and is willingly accepted and proudly borne. It snugly fits. It was the distinguishing name of the forerunner of Christ, the first to teach the doctrine to which the Baptists now hold.

11. I quote a very significant statement from the Schaff- Herzogg Encyclopedia, under “History of Baptists in Europe,” Vol. 1, page 210, “The Baptists appeared first in Switzerland about 1523, where they were persecuted by Zwingle and the Romanists. They are found in the following years, 1525-1530, with large churches fully organized, in Southern Germany, Tyrol and in middle Germany. In all these places persecutions made their lives bitter.” (Note–that all this is prior to the founding of the Protestant churches–Lutheran, Episcopal, or Presbyterian.)

We continue the quotation-

“Moravia promised a home of greater freedom, and thither many Baptists migrated, only to find their hopes deceived. After 1534 they were numerous in Northern Germany, Holland, Belgium, and the Walloon provinces. They increased even during Alva’s rule, in the low countries, and developed a wonderful missionary zeal.” (Note–“Missionary Zeal.” And yet some folks say that the “Hardshells” are primitive Baptists.)

Where did these Baptists come from? They did not come out of the Catholics during the Reformation. They had large churches prior to the Reformation.

12. As a matter of considerable interest, note the religious changes in England as the centuries have gone by: The Gospel was carried to England by the Apostles and it remained Apostolic in its religion until after the organization of the Hierarchy in the beginning of the fourth century, and really for more than another century after that. It then came under the power of the Hierarchy which was rapidly developing into the Catholic Church. It then remained Catholic–that was the state religion, until the split in 1534-1535, during the reign of Henry VIII. It was then called the Church of England. Eighteen years later, 1553-1558, during the reign of Queen Mary (“Bloody Mary”) England was carried back to the Catholics, and a bloody five-years period was this. Then Elizabeth, a half-sister of Mary, the daughter of Anna Boleyn, came to the throne, 1558. The Catholics were again overthrown, and again the Church of England came into power. And thus things remained for almost another century, when the Presbyterian Church came for a short while into the ascendancy, and seemed for a while as if it might become the State Church of England as well as that of Scotland. However, following the time of Oliver Cromwell, the Church of England came back to her own and has remained the established church of England ever since.

13. Note the gradual softening down of religious matters in England from the hard and bitter persecutions of the established church for more than a century.
(1) The first toleration act came in 1688, one hundred and fifty-four years after the beginning of this church. This act permitted the worship of all denominations in England except two–the Catholics and the Unitarians. (2) The second toleration act came in 1778, eighty-nine years still later. This act included in the toleration the Catholics, but still excluded the Unitarians.
(3) The third toleration act came in 1813, thirty-five years later. This included the Unitarians.
(4) In 1828-1829 came what is known as the “Test Act” which gave the “dissenters” (the religionists not in accord with the “Church of England”) access to public office and even to Parliament.
(5) In 1836-37 and 1844 came the “Registration” and “Marriage” acts. These two acts made legal baptisms and marriages performed by “dissenters.”
(6) The “Reform Bill” came in 1854. This bill opened the doors of Oxford and Cambridge Universities to dissenting students. Up to this time no child of a “dissenter” could enter one of these great institutions.

14. Thus has been the march of progress in England toward “Religious Liberty.” But it is probably correct to state that real religious liberty can never come into any country where there is and is to remain an established church. At best, it can only be toleration, which is certainly a long way from real religious liberty. As long as one denomination among several in any country is supported by the government to the exclusion of all others this favoritism and support of one, precludes the possibility of absolute religious liberty and equality.

15. Very near the beginning of the eighteenth century there were born in England three boys who were destined to leave upon the world a deep and unfading impression. These boys were John and Charles Wesley, and George Whitfield. John and Charles Wesley were born at Epworth (and here comes a suggestion for the name Epworth League), the former June 28, 1703, and the latter March 29, 1708. George Whitfield was born in Gloucester, December 27, 1714. The story of the lives of these boys cannot be told here, but they are well worth being told, and then retold. These three boys became the fathers and founders of Methodism. They were all three members of the Church of England, and all studying for the ministry; and yet at that time, not one of them converted (which at that time was not unusual among the English clergy. Remember, however, that in those days, the parent frequently, if not usually, decided on the profession or line of the life to be followed by the boy). But these boys were afterwards converted, and genuinely and wonderfully converted.

16. These men seemed to have no desire to be the founders of a new denomination. But they did seem to greatly desire and earnestly strive for a revival of pure religion and a genuine spiritual reformation in the Church of England. This they tried in both England and America. The doors of their own churches were soon closed against them. Their services were frequently held out in the open, or in some private house, or, as especially in the case of Whitfield, in the meeting houses of other denominations. Whitfield’s great eloquence attracted markedly great attention everywhere he went.

17. The definite date of the founding of the Methodist Church is hard to be determined. Unquestionably Methodism is older than the Methodist Church. The three young men were called Methodists before they left college. Their first organizations were called “Societies.” Their first annual conference in England was held in 1744. The Methodist Episcopal Church was officially and definitely organized in America, in Baltimore in 1784. Their growth has really been marvelous. But, when they came out of the Church of England, or the Episcopal Church, they brought with them a number of the errors of the mother and grandmother churches. For instance, as the Episcopacy, or preacher-church government. On this point they have had many internal wars and divisions, and seem destined to have yet others. Infant Baptism and sprinkling for baptism, etc., but there is one great thing which they have, which they did not bring out with them, a genuine case of spiritual religion.

18. September 12, 1788, there was born in Antrium, Ireland, a child, who was destined in the years to come, to create quite a religious stir in some parts of the world, and to become the founder of a new religious denomination. That child was Alexander Campbell. His father was a Presbyterian minister. The father, Thomas Campbell, came to America in 1807. Alexander, his son, who was then in college, came later. Because of changed views, they left the Presbyterians and organized an independent body, which they called “The Christian Association,” known as “The Brush Run Church.” In 1811, they adopted immersion as baptism and succeeded in persuading a Baptist preacher to baptize them, but with the distinct understanding that they were not to unite with the Baptist Church. The father, mother, and Alexander were all baptized. In 1813 their independent church united with the Red Stone Baptist Association. Ten years later, because of controversy, they left that association and joined another.

Fifth lecture –religion in the United States

1. Through the Spanish and others of the Latin races, the Catholics as religionists, came to be the first representatives of the Christian religion in South and Central America. But in North America, except Mexico, they have never strongly predominated. In the territory of what is now the United States except in those sections which were once parts of Mexico they have never been strong enough, even during the Colonial period to have their religious views established by law.

2. Beginning with the Colonial period, in the early part of the seventeenth century, the first settlements were established in Virginia, and a little later in that territory now known as the New England States. Religious, or more properly speaking–irreligious persecutions, in England, and on the continent, were, at least, among the prime causes which led to the first settlement of the first United States Colonies. In some of the groups of immigrants which first came, not including the Jamestown group (1607) and those known as the “Pilgrims” (1620), were two groups, one, at least, called “Puritans”–these were “Congregationalists.” Governor Endicott was in control of their colony. The other group were Presbyterians. Among these

two groups, however, were a number of Christians with other views than theirs, also seeking relief from persecution

3. These refugeeing Congregationalists and Presbyterians established different Colonies and immediately within their respective territories established by law their own peculiar religious views. In other words, “Congregationalism” and “Presbyterianism” were made the legal religious views of their colonies. This to the absolute exclusion of all other religious views. Themselves fleeing the mother country, with the bloody marks of persecution still upon them and seeking a home of freedom and liberty for themselves, immediately upon being established in their own colonies, in the new land and having the authority, they deny religious liberty to others, and practice upon them the same cruel methods of persecution. Especially did they, so treat the Baptists.

4. The Southern colonies in Virginia, North and South Carolina were settled mainly by the adherents of the Church of England. The peculiar views of the Church were made the established religion of these colonies. Thus in the new land of America, where many other Congregationalists, Presbyterians and Episcopalians have come seeking the privilege of worshipping God according to the dictates of their own consciences, there were soon set up three established churches. No religious liberty for any except for those who held governmental authority. The Children of Rome are following in the bloody footsteps of their mother. Their own reformation is yet far from complete.

5. With the immigrants to America came many scattering Baptists (by some still called “Ana-Baptists”). There were probably some in every American-bound vessel. They came, however, in comparatively small groups, never in large colonies. They would not have been permitted to come in that way. But they kept coming. Before the colonies are thoroughly established the Baptists are numerous and almost everywhere. But they soon began to feel the heavy hands of the three State churches. For the terrible offenses of “preaching the Gospel” and “refusing to have their children baptized,” “opposing infant baptism,” and other like conscientious acts on their part, they were arrested, imprisoned, fined, whipped, banished, and their property confiscated, etc. All that here in America. From many sources, I give but a few illustrations.

6. Before the Massachusetts Bay Colony is twenty years old, with the Congregational as the State Church, they passed laws against the Baptists and others. The following is a sample of the laws: “It is ordered and agreed, that if any person or persons, within this jurisdiction, shall either openly condemn or oppose the baptizing of infants, or go about secretly to seduce others from the approbation or use thereof, or shall purposely depart the congregation at the ministration of the ordinance . . . after due time and means of conviction–every such person or persons shall be sentenced to banishment.” This law was enacted especially against the Baptists.

7. By the Authorities in this colony, Roger Williams and others were banished. Banishment in America in those days was something desperately serious. It meant to go and live among the Indians. In this case Williams was received kindly and for quite a while lived among the Indians, and in after days proved a great blessing to the colony which had banished him. He saved the colony from destruction by this same tribe of Indians, by his earnest entreaties in their behalf. In this way he returned good for evil.

8. Roger Williams, later, together with others, some of whom, at least, had also been banished from that and other of the colonies among whom was John Clarke, a Baptist preacher, decided to organize a colony of their own. As yet they had no legal authority from England to do such a thing, but they thought this step wiser under existing conditions than to attempt to live in existing colonies with the awful religious restrictions then upon them. So finding a small section of land as yet unclaimed by any existing colony they proceeded to establish themselves on that section of land now known as Rhode Island. That was in the year 1638, ten years later than the Massachusetts Bay Colony, but it was about 25 years later (1663) before they were able to secure a legal charter.

9. In the year 1651 (?) Roger Williams and John Clarke were sent by. the colony to England to secure, if possible legal permission to establish their colony. When they reached England, Oliver Cromwell was in charge of the government, but for some reason he failed to grant their request. Roger Williams returned home to America. John Clarke remained in England to continue to press his plea. Year after year went by. Clarke continued to remain. Finally Cromwell lost his position and Charles II sat upon the throne of England. While Charles is regarded in history as one of the bitterest of persecutors of Christians, he finally, in 1663, granted that charter. So Clarke, after 12 long years of waiting returned home with that charter. So in 1663, the Rhode Island colony became a real legal institution, and the Baptists could write their own constitution.

10. That Constitution was written. It attracted the attention of the whole wide world. In that Constitution was the world’s first declaration of “Religious Liberty.” The battle for absolute religious liberty even in America alone is a great history within itself. For a long time the Baptists seem to have fought that battle entirely alone, but they did not fight it for themselves alone, but for all peoples of every religious faith. Rhode Island, the first Baptist colony, established by a small group of Baptists after 12 years of earnest pleading for permission was the first spot on earth where religious liberty was made the law of the land. The settlement was made in 1638; the colony legally established in 1663.

11. In this colony two Baptist churches were organized even prior to the legal establishment of the colony. As to the exact date of the organization of at least one of these two churches, even the Baptists, according to history, are at disagreement. All seem to be agreed as to the date of the organization of the one at Providence, by Roger Williams, in 1639. As to the date of the one organized at Newport by John Clarke, all the later testimony seems to give the date at 1638. All the earlier seems to give it later, some years later. The one organized by Roger Williams at Providence seems to have lived but a few months. The other by John Clarke at Newport, is still living. My own opinion as to the date of organization of Newport church, based on all available data, is that 1638 is the correct date. Personally, I am sure this date is correct.

12. As to the persecutions in some of the American colonies, we give a few samples. It is recorded that on one occasion one of John Clarke’s members was sick. The family lived just across the Massachusetts Bay Colony line and just inside that colony. John Clarke, himself, and a visiting preacher by the name of Crandall and a layman by the name of Obediah Holmes–all three went to visit that sick family. While they were holding some kind of a prayer service with that sick family, some officer or officers of the colony came upon them and arrested them and later carried them before the court for trial. It is also stated, that in order to get a more definite charge against them, they were carried into a religious meeting of their church (Congregationalist), their hands being tied (so the record states). The charge against them was “for not taking off their hats in a religious service.” They were all tried and convicted. Gov. Endicott was present. In a rage he said to Clarke, while the trial was going on, “You have denied infants baptism” (this was not the charge against them). “You deserve death. I will not have such trash brought into my jurisdiction.” The penalty for all was a fine, or be well-whipped. Crandall’s fine (a visitor) was five pounds ($25.00), Clarke’s fine (the pastor) was twenty pounds ($100.00). Holmes’ fine (the records say he had been a Congregationalist and had joined the Baptists) so his fine was thirty pounds ($150.00). Clark’s and Crandall’s fines were paid by friends. Holmes refused to allow his fine paid, saying he had done no wrong, so was well whipped. The record states that he was “stripped to the waist” and then whipped (with some kind of a special whip) until the blood ran down his body and then his legs until his shoes overflowed. The record goes on to state that his body was so badly gashed and cut that for two weeks he could not lie down, so his body could touch the bed. His sleeping had to be done on his hands or elbows and knees. Of this whipping and other things connected with it I read all records, even Holmes’ statement. A thing could hardly have been more brutal. And here in America!

13. Painter, another man, “refused to have his child baptized,” and gave as his opinion “that infant baptism was an anti-Christian ordinance.” For these offenses he was tied up and whipped. Governor Winthrop tells us that Painter was whipped “for reproaching the Lord’s ordinance.”

14. In the colony where Presbyterianism was the established religion, dissenters (Baptist and others) seemed to fare no better than in the Massachusetts Bay Colony where Congregationalism was the established religion. In this colony was a settlement of Baptists. In the whole settlement were only five other families. The Baptists recognized the laws they were under and were, according to the records, obedient to them. This incident occurred:

It was decided by authorities of the colony to build a Presbyterian meeting house in that Baptist settlement. The only way to do it seemed by taxation. The Baptists recognized the authority of the Presbyterians to levy this new and extra tax, but they made this plea against the tax at this time–“We have just started our settlement. Our little cabins have just been built, and little gardens and patches just been opened. Our fields not cleared. We have just been taxed to the limit to build a fort for protection against the Indians. We cannot possibly pay another tax now.” This is only the substance of their plea. The tax was levied. It could not possibly be paid at that time. An auction was called. Sales were made. Their cabins and gardens and patches, and even their graveyards, were sold–not their unopened fields. Property valued at 363 pounds and 5 shillings sold for 35 pounds and 10 shillings. Some of it, at least, was said to have been bought by the preacher who was to preach there. The settlement was said to have been left ruined.

A large book could be filled with oppressive laws. Terrifically burdensome acts of taxation, hard dealing of many sorts, directed mainly against the Baptists. But these lectures cannot enter into these details.

15. In the southern colonies, throughout the Carolinas and especially Virginia, where the Church of England held sway, persecution of Baptists was serious and continuous. Many times their preachers were fined and imprisoned. From the beginning of the colonial period to the opening of the Revolutionary War, more than 100 years, these persecutions of Baptists were persisted in.

Some after words

1. During every period of the “Dark Ages” there were in existence many Christians and many separate and independent Churches, some of them dating back to the times of the Apostles, which were never in any way connected with the Catholic Church. They always wholly rejected and repudiated the Catholics and their doctrines. This is a fact clearly demonstrated by credible history.

2. These Christians were the perpetual objects of bitter and relentless persecution. History shows that during the period of the “Dark Ages,” about twelve centuries, beginning with A.D. 426, there were about fifty millions of these Christians who died martyr deaths. Very many thousands of others, both preceding and succeeding the “Dark Ages,” died under the same hard hand of persecution.

3. These Christians, during these dark days of many centuries, were called by many different names, all given to them by their enemies. These names were sometimes given because of some specially prominent and heroic leader and sometimes from other causes; and sometimes, yea, many times, the same people, holding the same views, were called by different names in different localities. But amid all the many changes of names, there was one special name or rather designation, which clung to at least some of these Christians, throughout all the “Dark Ages,” that designation being “Ana-Baptist.” This compound word applied as a designation of some certain Christians was first found in history during the third century; and a suggestive fact soon after the origin of Infant Baptism, and a more suggestive fact even prior to the use of the name Catholic. Thus the name “Ana-Baptists” is the oldest denominational name in history.

4. A striking peculiarity of these Christians was and continued to be in succeeding centuries: They rejected the man-made doctrine of “Infant Baptism” and demanded rebaptism, even though done by immersion for all those who came to them, having been baptized in infancy. For this peculiarity they were called “Ana-Baptists.” 5. This, special designation was applied to many of these Christians who bore other nicknames; especially is this true of the Donatists, Paulicians, Albigenses and Ancient Waldenses and others. In later centuries this designation came to be a regular name, applied to a distinct group. These were simply called “Ana- Baptists” and gradually all other names were dropped. Very early in the sixteenth century, even prior to the origin of the Lutheran Church, the first of all the Protestant Churches, the word “ana” was beginning to be left off, and they were simply called “Baptists.”

6. Into the “dark ages” went a group of many churches which were never in any way identified with the Catholics. Out of the “dark ages” came a group of many churches, which had never been in any way identified with the Catholics. The following are some of the fundamental doctrines to which they held when they went in: And the same are, the fundamental doctrines to which they held when they came out: And the same are the fundamental doctrines to which they now hold.

1. A spiritual Church, Christ its founder, its only head and law giver.
2. Its ordinances, only two, Baptism and the Lord’s Supper. They are typical and memorial, not saving.
3. Its officers, only two, bishops or pastors and deacons; they are servants of the church.
4. Its Government, a pure Democracy, and that executive only, never legislative.
5. Its laws and doctrines: The New Testament and that only.
6. Its members. Believers only, they saved by grace, not works, through the regenerating power of the Holy Spirit.
7. Its requirements. Believers on entering the church to be baptized, that by immersion, then obedience and loyalty to all
New Testament laws.
8. The various churches–separate and independent in their execution of laws and discipline and in their responsibilities to
God–but cooperative in work.
9. Complete separation of Church and State.
10. Absolute Religious liberty for all.

History of Baptists in Virginia, Semple
Baptist Succession, Ray
Baptists in Alabama, HolcombHistory of the Huguenots, Martin
Fifty Years Among the Baptists, Benedict
Fox’s Book of Martyrs
My Church, Moody
The World’s Debt to Baptists, Porter
Church Manual, Pendleton
Evils of Infant Baptism, Howell
Reminiscences, Sketches and Addresses, Hutchinson
Short History of the Baptists, Vedder
The Struggle Religious Liberty in Virginia, James
The Genesis of American Anti-Missionism, Carroll
The True Baptist, A. Newton
A Guide to the Study of Church History, McGlothlin
Baptist Principles Reset, Jeter
Virginia Presbyterianism and Religious Liberty in Colonial and Revolutionary Times, Johnson
Presbyterianism 300 Years Ago, Breed
History of the Presbyterian Church of the World, Reed
Catholic Belief, Bruno
Campbellism Examined, Jeter
History of the Baptists in New England, Burrage
History of Redemption, Edwards
Principles and Practices of Baptist Churches, Wayland
History of the Liberty Baptist Association of North Carolina, Sheets
On Baptism, Carson
History and Literature of the Early Churches, Orr
History of Kentucky Baptists, Spencer
Baptist History, Orchard
Baptist Church Perpetuity, Jarrell
Disestablishment, Harwood
Progress of Baptist Principles, Curtis
Story of the Baptists, Cook
Romanism in Its Home, Eager
Americanism Against Catholicism, Grant
The Faith of Our Fathers, Cardinal Gibbons
The Faith of Our Fathers Examined, Stearns
The Story of Baptist Missions, Hervey
Baptism, Conant
Christian “Baptism,” Judson
Separation of Church and State in Virginia, Eckenrode
The Progress of Religious Liberty, Schaff
Doctrines and Principles of the M. E. Church
The Churches of the Piedmont, Allix
The History of the Waldenses, Muston
The History of Baptists, Backus
The Ancient Waldenses and Albigenses, FaberThe History of the Waldenses of Italy, Combs
History of the Baptists, Benedict
Baptist Biography, Graham
Early English Baptists, Evans
History of the Welsh Baptists, Davis
Baptist History, Cramp
History of the Baptists, Christian
Short History of the Baptists, Vedder
The Plea for the Cumberland Presbyterian Church, Jones
Religions of the World, Many writers
History of the Reformation in Germany, Ranke
Church History, Kurtz
Constitution of the Presbyterian Church in the USA
Doctrines and Discipline, African M. E. Church, Emory
Church History, Jones
History of the Christian Religion and Church, Neader
Ecclesiastical History, Mosheim
History of the Christian Church, Gregory
History of the Church, Waddington
Handbook of Church History, Green
Manual of Church History, Newman
History of Anti-Pedobaptists, Newman
Catholic Encyclopedia (16 vols.)
The Baptist Encyclopedia, Cathcart
Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge, Brown
Encyclopedia Britannica
Origin of Disciples, Whittsitt
Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge, Schaff-Herzogg
Book of Martyrs, Foxe
Baptist History, Schackleford

Available as a printed booklet from:
Ashland Avenue Baptist Church
163 N. Ashland Avenue
Lexington, KY 40502
606-266-4341

Continued from The Papal System – IX. Baptism.

This sacrament had no existence, in any form, until the end of the second or the beginning of the third century; and then it appears simply as a part of baptism, as the completion of that solemn rite.

Tertullian says: “From thence, having gone forth from the bath (of baptism), we are anointed with a blessed unction according to the primitive regulation.” And, again: “Thus the unction comes carnally upon us, but it profits spiritually, as the act of baptism itself is carnal, because we are immersed in water; the effect is spiritual, because we are freed from sin; after this, there is imposition of hands, invoking the Holy Spirit by the benediction.”

Here the imposition of hands and the unction were but ceremonies belonging to baptism. In the life of St. Basil, it is recorded that: “Maximus, the bishop, baptized him and Eubulus, and clothed them with the white garments, and, anointing them with the holy chrism, gave them the communion.” Here, the baptism and confirmation are parts of a whole. And even children were confirmed with the chrism and imposition of hands, as soon as they were baptized, as Gennadius clearly asserts: “If they be little children that are baptized, let those who bring them answer for them according to the custom of baptizing; and then, confirmed by the imposition of hands and chrism, let them be admitted to the mysteries of the eucharist.” Here, again, confirmation immediately follows baptism.

This is the Custom of the Greek Church today.

Says Dean Stanley: “The imposition of hands is still continued at the baptism of children, as of adults. Confirmation with them is simultaneous with the act of the baptismal immersion.” Nor is its administration limited to bishops. Every priest can confirm those whom he baptizes in the Greek Church. This is the way confirmation was practiced when first introduced into the Church, and for many hundreds of years after. The separation of confirmation from baptism is supposed by Riddle to have commenced in the Western Church, in the beginning of the seventh century, but not to have been permanently completed till the thirteenth. The ceremonies of ancient confirmation were the anointing, the sign of the cross, imposition of hands, and prayer.

Modern Romish Confirmation.

Says the Council of Trent: “If any one shall affirm that the confirmation of the baptized is a useless ceremony, and not rather a true and proper sacrament . . . . let him be accursed.”

Statements of the Catechism of Trent about Confirmation.

Pars ii., caput iii., quest. 2… . “The person baptized, when anointed with the sacred chrism by the bishop, the unction being accompanied with these solemn words: I sign thee with the sign of the cross, and confirm thee with the chrism of salvation, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, begins to be settled in firmness by the strength of a new virtue, and thus to become a perfect soldier of Christ (novae virtutis robore firmior, atque adeo perfectus Christi miles esse incipit).”

Quest. 7. “This is called chrism, a word borrowed from the Greek language, which is appropriated by common usage among ecclesiastical writers to signify that ointment only, which is composed of oil and balsam, with the solemn consecration of the bishop.” …..

Quest. 14. “Sponsors are also added, as we have already shown to be the case, in baptism; for if they who enter the fencing lists have need of some one through whose skill and advice they may be taught by what thrusts and passes they may destroy an enemy, while they remain unhurt, how much more will the faithful require a leader and monitor, when, covered and fortified by the strongest armor, through the sacrament of confirmation, they descend into a spiritual contest, in which eternal salvation is the proposed reward.” …..

Ques. 17. “It is most proper to delay this sacrament at least to seven years.” …..

Quest. 19. “For those who have been made Christians by baptism, as if new-born infants, have a certain tenderness and softness; and afterward, by the sacrament of chrism, they become stronger against all the assaults of the flesh, the world, and the devil, and their minds are altogether confirmed in the faith, for confessing and glorifying the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, from which strength the name itself originated, as no one will doubt.”

Quest. 23. “They, therefore, who are confirmed by the Holy chrism are anointed on the forehead; for, by this sacrament, the Holy Spirit pours himself upon the minds of the faithful, and increases strength and fortitude in them, that they may be able to fight manfully in the spiritual contest, and resist their most implacable foes.” …..

From the title of the question in the Catechism, we are taught that chrism is applied to the forehead in the form of a cross.

Quest. 25. “Then the person who is anointed and confirmed receives a gentle slap on the cheek from the bishop, that he may remember that he ought to be prepared, as a brave wrestler, to bear, with invincible courage, all adverse things for the name of Christ. Lastly, moreover, the peace is given to him, that he may know that he has attained the fullness of heavenly grace, and the peace which surpasses all understanding.”

This would be a wonderful unction, and an astonishing imposition of hands, if from both we received the Holy Spirit and the peace of God that passes all understanding. It is, however, not by works-of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy he saves us; being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.

Supposed Scripture Authority.

The Catholic Church quotes Acts viii. 14-18, as proof that by laying on of hands the Holy Spirit was bestowed; and, truly, so he was, but it was his miracle-working powers which were conferred. At the 18th verse, it is said: “When Simon saw that through laying on of the apostles’ hands the Holy Ghost was given, he offered them money, saying, Give me also this power, that on whomsoever I lay hands he may receive the Holy Ghost.” Now, Simon saw nothing of the peace, faith, praying power, and spiritual enjoyments and privileges of these men; he cared nothing about such matters; he wrought pretended miracles himself; he saw that the Holy Spirit enabled these persons to perform wonders, and he wanted to buy this astonishing agency. The imposition of hands here simply gave the power of working miracles, and not the blessings of any sacrament. Chrism and the imposition of hands were employed in the times of the apostles, but never as parts of the sacrament of confirmation. The papal sacrament of that name had no existence for many centuries after Christ; it is A HUMAN INVENTION.

Continued in XI. The Lord’s Supper, The Eucharist, The Mass

All chapters of The Papal System by William Cathcart

After serving for five years on the faculty of the University of Kansas, in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Nino Lo Bello returned to his original profession of journalism and went overseas as a foreign correspondent. Stationed in Rome, he served for three years as a correspondent for Business Week Magazine and McGraw-Hill World News. He later joined the New York Journal of Commerce, operating as its Rome bureau chief for three years. For some eight years he did assignments for the New York Herald Tribune, specializing in economic affairs. Mr. Lo Bello has also been a frequent contributor to magazines and a reporter for United Features Syndicate.

An extensive traveler and energetic writer, he is currently living in Vienna with his wife Irene and two children.

A great deal has been written about the Roman Catholic Church as a religious, charitable, and educational institution. But, until now, there has been very little information on the Church as a business organization. Here, for the first time, is a comprehensive and authoritative report that reveals the Vatican as a nerve center of high finance.

The extent of papal wealth has been traditionally cloaked in secrecy. Even within the Vatican’s own walls there is no one individual who has an overall view of its infinitely ramified financial operations. Church officials have consistently derided all speculations on the magnitude of its resources but have resolutely declined to release real figures. It has remained for Nino Lo Bello—former Rome correspondent for Business Week and now a writer for the Herald Tribune’s Paris Economic Review— to fit the pieces of the puzzle together. The picture that emerges is one of awesome fiscal power.

Mr. Lo Bello describes in fascinating detail Vatican investment in real estate—one-third of Rome is owned by the Holy See— electronics, plastics, airlines, and chemical and engineering firms. He also gives evidence that the Vatican is heavily involved in Italian banking and that it has huge deposits in foreign banks. Some of these accounts are in America, many are in Switzerland. The Vatican financiers prefer numbered Swiss accounts because they allow them to maintain anonymity when gaining control of foreign corporations.

In addition, the author establishes that the Vatican is one of the world’s largest shareholders, with a portfolio that can conservatively be estimated in billions.

Although written in the objective, non-sensational style of the newsman, this is a book that finally demonstrates the depth of the Vatican’s commitment to the world of big business.

Some Preliminary Words I

IN 1956, SHORTLY after moving to Rome with my wife and children to take up my duties as a business news correspondent, I was faced with a household crisis—we were without water in our apartment for twenty-eight days. Calls to Acqua Marcia, the company that supplied the water in our Piazza Bologna neighborhood, were all but futile. A few times a weary technician from Acqua Marcia came around to putter with the water governor on our balcony just off the kitchen. Each time, he left us with a tiny trickle, which stopped within hours after his departure.

As with many houses in Rome served by the Acqua Marcia water works (or to give it its full name, La Societa dell’Acqua Pia Antica Marcia), the problem was in the main trunk ducts below the ground. They were too narrow. Installed nearly two thousand years earlier, the pipes once formed part of ancient Rome’s aqueduct system, and were still being used to provide much of modern Rome with its water. Like other apartment buildings, ours had a series of covered receptacles on the roof, each of which corresponded to one of the apartments on the floors below. The tank for our apartment held sixty gallons of water, and it filled during the night at a speed that was determined by the water governor, which was kept under lock by Acqua Marcia. By dawn, with no one having used the faucets, the tank would usually be replenished, and for that day we would have water—provided we didn’t use all sixty gallons too soon. This meant not flushing the toilet after every visit. It also meant not taking a bath in more than two inches of water.

I didn’t know during those first arduous weeks that the Acqua Marcia company belonged to the Vatican.

Compounding our woes during this period was the fact that my wife’s cooking activities were severely restricted. The flow of gas in our stove was so limited that only two burners functioned at the same time, and for a reasonably steady flame she had to resort to one burner. Grumbles to the gas company were of little use. We had a poor flow of gas because the pressure was low.

I didn’t know then that our gas company also belonged to the Vatican.

In lodging my various complaints and pleas for help, I had to use the phone a great deal. Unhappily, my telephone suffered from a variety of speech defects. More often than not, it was impossible to understand the crackly sounds that came out of the faulty earpiece. And frequently the undulating voice at the other end of the line simply disappeared in the middle of a sentence. Nor does this take into account the many times I would suddenly be cut off by a mechanical click or an electronic tic.

I didn’t know then that our telephone company was also largely controlled by the Vatican. Later I was to discover that the building in which I lived belonged to a front company operating for the Vatican and that the same company owned the entire block of houses on both sides of the street.

Like millions of other Roman Catholics, I had never given any thought to the Vatican and its commercial affairs. But perhaps I should have realized earlier that the Church was indeed a financial institution. I can remember now, quite vividly, the eighteen months my Uncle Angelo, an ordained priest, spent as a special visitor to the United States, serving as an adjunct assistant pastor with a church in Brooklyn. After officiating at masses on Sundays he would return to our house, where he was staying, and place his week’s pay—a sackful of coins—under his bed for safekeeping. By the time he was ready to return to Italy, the floor under the bed was completely covered with bulging sacks. What he did with the money I don’t know, but I do recall that my brother and I used to play with the coins, making believe the dimes, nickels, and pennies were pieces of gold. I should have realized then the importance of money to the clergy, but at that time I was too young— and by the time I was old enough, I had forgotten about Zio Padre’s money bags.

So, until the aforementioned incidents in Rome, I had never given thought to the Vatican as a landlord, to the Vatican as a moneyed institution, to the Vatican as a nerve center for finance, to the Vatican as an organization concerned with profits and losses, assets and liabilities, receipts and expenses. The idea that the Vatican was the headquarters for big business just never occurred to me. Nor had I ever entertained the notion that the Pope might be wealthy or the notion that his church, my church, was not only a religious, charitable, and educational institution but also a tremendous financial empire.

The Vatican is not only in the business of selling God. Its total enterprise goes beyond God.

Secrecy surrounds the financial phases of the Vatican’s operation. The only sovereign state that never publishes a budget, the Vatican is the one organized church that keeps its money affairs strictly to itself. And so ramified and complicated are those affairs that it is doubtful whether any single person, including the Pope, has a complete picture of them.

Although I had never previously questioned the Church’s finances, I began, soon after the Piazza Bologna ordeals, to wonder, How rich is the Pope? Or, put another way, How much money does the Roman Catholic Church, the oldest and largest corporation in the world, possess? To be frank, I do not have an answer to this question. Nor can I state with precision how much the Vatican earns each year. Neither will I make a calculated guess as to how wealthy the pontifical empire is. On the question, How rich is the Pope?, suffice it to say that it has become increasingly clear he doesn’t even know himself.

At best, this report on Vatican finances, which I have arduously pieced together during the past ten years, will reveal this venerable organization as one of the greatest fiscal powers in the world.

On the face of it, the Vatican today is vastly different from what it was a century ago. Yet it still keeps its financial operations carefully hidden behind a veil of obscurity. The fact that the Vatican has been able to maintain this secrecy in an age when business and economics are of prime interest is indeed remarkable. But at last, tiny tears in the veil are beginning to appear, and the two-thousandyear- old structure, hitherto known solely for its sacerdotal functions, is being exposed as a locus of financial power.

As employed here, the term “Vatican wealth” should not be confused with the so-called Church patrimony, which consists of churches, ancient buildings, and art treasures. The Church’s art treasures, many of which are in the Vatican Museum, include literally thousands of masterpieces—paintings, sculpture, tapestries, and maps — to which no dollar amount can be assigned. Priceless indeed are such works of art as Michelangelo’s Pieta in St. Peter’s, the frescoes in the Sistine Chapel, and the paintings by Raphael in the Apostolic Palace. One could also mention the Church’s invaluable collections of antiquities —gold and silver crosses, Byzantine jewelry, altar pieces, furniture, chalices and other vessels. The five hundred thousand aged volumes and sixty thousand old manuscripts in the Vatican Library are also part of the Church patrimony. Because none of the treasures will ever be put on the market, it is folly even to hazard a guess as to the cumulative worth of these items. But, conceivably, they could bring a billion dollars under an auctioneer’s gavel.

In terms of the frame of reference used here, “Vatican wealth” is the money that the world headquarters of the Catholic Church is in business to make—the profits that the Vatican has assembled all its heavy artillery to pursue and protect. It is not the task of this book to expose the Church as an economic dinosaur or a hand-rubbing collection of moneylenders. Still less is the book intended to be an attack on either the papacy or the Church itself in the traditional and predictable manner of the anti-clericalists. Rather, my purpose here is to explore the Vatican’s relationship with the sign of the dollar, a symbol as powerful in today’s world as that of the Cross. Mind you, this is not intended as criticism of the Vatican, for the Vatican has every right to engage in activities from which revenue can accrue.

I shall never forget the first time I stood in a Vatican City bank and watched the tellers at work, dealing with nuns, Jesuits, missionaries, and bishops. During a quiet moment I said to one of the tellers, “I guess some of your clients, being of the religious calling, don’t know very much about money.”

The young man had the correct answer for this display of naivete. “Sir,” he said with adding-machine accuracy, “it is my experience that everybody knows a lot about money.”

Laymen like myself have a tendency not to equate their religion, or the dedicated people who administer it, with practical, down-to-earth matters like money or economics. Yet the popes of the last hundred years have never been able to divorce themselves from these matters. Perhaps the most prophetic words ever written by a pope, as far as the Vatican’s present-day position of economic strength is concerned, are those of Pius XI in a now-famous encyclical, Non Abbiamo Bisogno (We Don’t Have Need). Published in France, the encyclical had to be smuggled out of the Vatican because it denounced the Fascist regime. It reads:

Immense power and despotic economic domination are concentrated in the hands of a few, who for the most part arenot the owners, but only the trustees and directors of invested funds, which they administer at their own good pleasure. This domination is most powerfully exercised by those who, because they hold and control money, also govern credit and determine its allotment, for that reason supplying, so to speak, the life blood to the entire economic body and grasping intheir hands, as it were, the very soul of production, so that no one dare breathe against their will. This accumulation of power is the characteristic note of the modern economic order. Pius XI was speaking of another world, in another period, yet his words have meaning when applied to the Vatican empire as it exists today. Thanks to his successors (Pius XII, John XXIII, and Paul VI) and their financial guardians, who subscribe to the theory that what’s good for General Motors is also good for the Vatican, the Church is now big business.

In writing this book, I have left the well-trodden paths of theology and entered the hallways of modern economics, Vatican style. To the Vatican men who normally walk these halls, a story on the price of tin in Malaya has as much significance as the story of the moneychangers being chased out of the Temple. In gathering material for the book, it was necessary to infiltrate, like a spy, into the Vatican’s deepest recesses. Contacting people within the Vatican is an experience like no other, and I can only hope that some of the excitement will rub off on the reader.

When it comes to acknowledgments for help received, I am a hopeless bankrupt, for I cannot enumerate the names of the Vatican citizens who helped me. The seal of silence will keep their identities sine nomine perpetuus. I feel, however, I must mention my debt to Bela von Block, Paul Gitlin, Gene Winick, Cynthia White, Joseph Wechsberg, Walter Lucas, Barrett McGurn, Bob Neville, Irving R. Levine, Bill Pepper, Corrado Pallenberg, Walter Matthew Schmidt, Ernesto Rossi, Stellina Orssola, Lidia Bianchi, Milo Farneti, William McIlroy, Avro Manhattan, and Father John Smith (not his real name), who read portions or all of the manuscript or who other wise provided assistance. I must also express my deep gratitude to my wife, Lefty. With her able and conscientious examination of the manuscripts, she has added much to improve the book and has provided more specific services than can be enumerated here. The shortcomings of the following attempt and the judgments as to matters of fact set forth remain, of course, the responsibility of the writer.

The Pope’s Shop II

“Offer me no money, I pray you; that kills my heart.” (Shakespeare, THE WINTER’S TALE)

“THE POPE’S SHOP”—perhaps one of the most uncomplimentary expressions heard in Rome—is used by Catholics and non-Catholics alike. But unlike some other derogatory terminology employed to describe the Roman Catholic Church, the phrase la Bottega del Papa or la Santa Bottega (the Pope’s Shop) was originated by the Catholics themselves. It seems to have been in use for at least five centuries.

The long-standing idea that the Vatican is in one aspect of its total personality a business concern could not exist unless it had some foundation in fact. When anticlerical Italians discuss the Vatican they are likely to shrug their shoulders and remind you that l’oro non fa odore (gold has no smell). The “gold” alludes not only to the gilded interiors of Italy’s churches and shrines but also to the riches of the Vatican.

Devoted as most Italians are to the papacy, they have no illusions about the Vatican, its position of power in the corporation family of Italy, its affluence, or its influence. However rich the Vatican may be, and indeed there is a tendency among some Italians to lose all reason on this subject, the fact stands that Italy’s citizenry regard the Pope as one of the richest men in the world—not personally, but by virtue of his office, his position, his status, his power.

Devout Italians are probably the world’s biggest backbiters when it comes to the Vatican’s concern with fiscal matters, with cash receipts, and with dollar-sign riches. Hence they, like anticlerical Italians, speak cynically of the Pope’s Shop.

The ostensible wealth of the 108.7-acre enclave inside the sturdy Leonine Walls—the magnificent church buildings, the land, the many thousands of art treasures and precious manuscripts—serves only as the visible tip of the financial iceberg. The largest chunk of the Vatican’s empire lies below the surface. There it continues to grow, in spite of changing currents. Once, after World War I, the Vatican nearly went bankrupt. At every other time in its history, the Church has had a golden touch and has protected its investments wisely in almost every field of economic endeavor—not only in Italy but also in several other countries, including the United States and Canada.

One cardinal’s aide quipped to me not long ago, “The Vatican should truly be judged by the companies it keeps.”

In a weak moment, another elderly churchman, himself a millionaire, sighed and admitted, “Ours is a dilemma indeed: if we give the image of being too rich, people won’t lend us their support; if we appear too poor, we lose their respect.”

This is the same individual who related an anecdote that made the rounds behind the Vatican walls several years ago. The joke concerned the late Francis Cardinal Spellman and his business know-how. According to the story, St. Peter was giving a stately dinner. Though all of the distinguished guests had been assigned to tables, Cardinal Spellman could not locate his place. So he asked St. Peter. But St. Peter couldn’t find it either. He looked among the seats reserved for cardinals. Then he remembered.

“Oh, excuse me, Your Eminence!” he apologized. “In the seating plan I had you placed with the businessmen.”

It is said in Vatican circles that when Cardinal Spell- man first heard the story he was greatly amused because he took the joke as a tribute to his financial acumen. Respected by Holy See officials for his business and Wall Street contacts, Cardinal Spellman did remarkably well as the official U.S. representative for an offshoot of the Vatican’s financial operation which, up till the end of 1967, dealt with pontifical funds abroad. This was the office known as the Special Administration, one of four concerned with Vatican finances. Its headquarters were in a tiny room on the same floor as the Pope’s private apartment. Thirteen persons, four of whom were accountants, were on its staff.

During the summer of 1967, Pope Paul began clearing away some of the centuries-old cobwebs surrounding the Curia, the central government of the Roman Catholic Church, and created, among other things, a new “ministry of finance.” Designed to streamline the Church’s bureaucracy, the sweeping Curia reforms gave rise, effective January 1, 1968, to the new finance office called the Prefecture of Economic Affairs of the Holy See. Combining functions previously undertaken independently by other bodies, the Prefecture now draws up an annual budget for the Pope’s approval, provides balance sheets for all Curia departments, and supervises all of the Vatican’s economic operations. In essence, the Prefecture serves as the Vatican equivalent of a finance ministry by overseeing and coordinating activities of the various offices which handle Vatican funds.

Functioning under the Prefecture is a new office that the Pope created in the spring of 1968—called the Administration for the Patrimony of the Holy See, which combines two older financial offices, the Administration for the Goods of the Holy See (which administered the normal revenues coming into the Vatican) and the Special Administration of the Holy See (which Pope Pius XI established in 1929 to oversee the investment and use of indemnities paid to the Holy See by Italy for lands and properties seized by Italy with the fall of the Papal States in 1870).

The creation of the Prefecture eliminated, in name if not in fact, two other departments concerned with Vatican finances—the Institute for Religious Works and the Administration of the Vatican City State. But it did not abolish the so-called Administration of the Holy See Property. This organization, established in August 1878, is responsible not only for property on Vatican grounds but also for extraterritorial palaces spread all over Rome and landholdings in other parts of the world. Most of this property was left to the Holy See after the Papal States were annexed to the Kingdom of Italy during the nineteenth century.

The Administration of the Vatican City State, now defunct, handled the payroll of Holy See employees, including the Vatican’s police and armed forces, and dealt with Vatican City’s sanitation, medical care, public utilities, and newspaper; it also supervised the Vatican’s radio station and the Vatican’s astronomical observatory, the Vatican Museum, and the Vatican Library.

The Institute for Religious Works, the other Vatican fiscal appendage that was eliminated, in name if not in fact, was set up in 1942 by Pope Pius XII. It is nothing more than a bank—for taking “into custody and administering capital destined to religious work.” It is situated in the Holy Office courtyard, has windows worked by tellers in priestly garb, accepts deposits, opens current accounts, cashes checks, transfers money, and carries out all other bank operations. It differs from other banks in that its depositors belong to a select group. They are the residents of the ecclesiastical state, members of the clergy who run schools and hospitals, diplomats accredited to the Holy See, and some Italian citizens who have given notable service to the Church.

The organization that through 1967 was the backbone of papal business interests and served as a kind of finance ministry was the one known as the Special Administration (now absorbed under the new setup). Established in 1929, after Fascist Italy and the Holy See had signed the Lateran Treaty [see Chapter V for a discussion of this treaty], the Special Administration took the sum of nearly $90 million granted to the Holy See by dictator Benito Mussolini as an indemnity for the loss of the Papal States and, by careful investing, increased it to about $550 million. This unconfirmed figure, at best a conservative calculation, is the one usually offered by Rome’s banking fraternity and represents what is believed to have been the value of the liquid assets of the Special Administration during the closing months of 1967.

Unique because of its freedom of action, which must have been the envy of every businessman and finance minister in the world, the Special Administration answered to no one. No elected congress or government cabinet kept tabs on it. It was not required to present reports to stockholders’ meetings. Because it operated in secrecy (as does the new “ministry of finance”), no newspapers could play watchdog. In Italy and most other countries it paid no taxes. Since it worried very little about the availability of capital, it could undertake long- term programs and risks. With diplomatic privileges, its operations were often made easier, and with diplomatic contacts, which kept the “home office” regularly informed on all matters likely to have a bearing on economic trends, it had a certain edge over competitors.

The man who ran the Special Administration from the end of 1958 until its dissolution was Alberto Cardinal di Jorio, who was appointed in 1939 as an assistant in the office. In 1942, he was assigned to the Institute for Religious Works (the Vatican’s bank), and, in 1944, he became its president—while he still served in the office of the Special Administration. Later, he became the secretary of the commission of three cardinals administrating this latter body. Di Jorio, who was appointed a cardinal in 1958, conducted the organization’s operations with masterly prudence and surrounded himself with a brain trust of competent financiers, among whom were Luigi Mennini, an Italian layman, and the Marquis Henri de Maillardoz, a former director of the Credit Suisse of Geneva, where the Vatican maintains at least two numbered bank accounts.

Although some funds are kept in the Credit Suisse of Geneva, the Vatican maintains deposits in numerous public banks as well.

The late Domenico Cardinal Tardini, the Pope’s Secretary of State, once maintained in a press interview that whispers about the Vatican’s great wealth were exaggerated, that the image had been distorted. Yet a serious reporter who puts two and two together does not get four, or even twenty-two—but a sum that adds up to hundreds of millions of dollars.

As far as its public image is concerned, the Vatican prefers to encourage the impression that it is an organization with a modest income and huge expenditures. Vatican City does, for example, issue new stamps and special series of stamps several times a year. In this way, it is not unlike other small countries that produce and sell stamps in order to add foreign exchange to their bank accounts. Vatican stamps, however, are very much sought after, and the sales bring in close to $400,000 each year. The Vatican Museum, which charges admission, also brings in some income—but most of this is used to pay the many guards and for the maintenance of the museum itself.

Perhaps the most lucrative of the Vatican’s direct sources of income is “Peter’s Pence,” which provides roughly $1.5 million each year, derived from contributions made in all parts of the world, wherever there are Roman Catholic churches or dioceses. A custom that developed in Britain over a thousand years ago, when a yearly tax was imposed on householders in favor of the Pope, Peter’s Pence is now strictly voluntary. The English tax fell into disuse after the Reformation, but the voluntary donation was revived in the middle of the nineteenth century, when a committee formed in Paris to honor St. Peter with an annual gift. The idea was picked up in Turin, Italy, and, before long, in the United States.

Eventually it spread through Europe, then to South America, and finally all over the globe. June 29 is usually the day on which the money—donated in the name of St. Peter and St. Paul—is collected in Catholic churches everywhere. The accumulated money, Peter’s Pence, then accompanies the bishops on their personal visit to the Pope. The bishops’ payments are made by check, usually for U.S. dollars.

Another form of direct revenue for the Vatican comes from private contributions and legacies left by devout Catholics. This is considered by some insiders to be among the Vatican’s largest sources of direct income. The amount runs into millions of dollars each year, but precise figures are impossible to obtain. More often than not, some of the money willed within a given parish or diocese remains there, and never filters through to the Vatican itself.

When money is left to a Roman Catholic parish, it becomes a matter for the Congregation for the Clergy, a Vatican-based organization that concerns itself with the day-by-day affairs of each diocese. Although it is not a part of the central financial organization of the Vatican, the Congregation is charged with numerous financial responsibilities. Primarily, it proffers advice to laymen on the adjustment of wills in favor of religious works, the acquisition of legacies and trusts, and the mortgaging of private estates, and it gives help and instruction to priests and pastors on the use and administration of Church- owned properties. In addition, the Congregation establishes the fees that are to be collected for various Church functions, like baptismal ceremonies and weddings.

When the present Pope was a young cleric known as Monsignor Montini, he served as private secretary to Pope Pius XII and also as extraordinary secretary in charge of internal Vatican affairs. One of his jobs involved dealing with, among other financial matters, bequests. As a result of this assignment, Pope Paul knows more about the fiscal machinery of the Vatican than did any pope before him.

On the delicate subject of Vatican finances, there is a decided information gap, for persons on the inside as well as for those on the outside. The Vatican has wanted it that way. It has not wanted to organize its affairs so that any single individual could, during the course of his workday, piece together the total picture of its infinitely ramified financial operations. Apparently, only one person has been privileged to see this picture. His name was Bernardino Nogara.

Much of the credit for the Vatican’s success in business after 1929 belongs to this one-time student of architecture. Bernardino Nogara demonstrated his financial genius after being entrusted by Pope Pius XI with the responsibility of administering the $90-million indemnification granted to the Holy See by Mussolini. Nogara, former vice president of the Banca Commerciale Italiana, had come to the attention of Vatican officialdom through Pope Benedict XV, who had made personal investments in Turkish Empire securities with the help and advice of Nogara, who then headed the Istanbul branch of the Banca Commerciale. Placed in charge of the newly created Special Administration, the devout Nogara had a free hand, and although he ran much of the Vatican’s business out of his fedora, revealed himself as a remarkable manager of money. By undertaking a world-wide investment policy, he increased the initial capital many times over.

In pursuit of profit, Nogara abided by a self-imposed rule that the Vatican’s investment program should not be hampered by religious considerations. During the early fifties, therefore, he used papal funds to speculate in government bonds of Protestant Britain, which he viewed as a better risk than the stocks of Catholic Spain, then in an economic slump. When he died late in 1958, at the age of eighty-eight, he left a “methodology” that was followed religiously by his successors, who continued to realize fantastic gains.

The mysterious Bernardino Nogara was born in Bellano, near Lake Como, in 1870—the same year that the Kingdom of Italy confiscated the last of the Papal States, the $90-million indemnification for which Nogara was later to administer. As a young man, Nogara laid aside his architectural training and worked in England, Bulgaria, Greece, and Turkey directing mine operations. During the peace negotiations with Austria, Hungary, Bulgaria, and Turkey at the end of World War I, he served as an Italian delegate on the economic and finance committee. From 1924 to 1929, he was in Berlin as an administrator on the Inter-Allied Reparations Commission, which had been entrusted with finding a solution for the problem of collecting German reparations.

A taciturn, elusive figure, Nogara was given his Vatican assignment by a pope who had little training in finance. Nogara had no obligations to show any immediate profits from his investments and was free to invest the funds anywhere in the world (with little worry about taxes). He made full use of these privileges.

He guided his actions by the reliable reports of the Vatican’s world-wide network of ambassadorial representatives. Bishops and informed Catholic laymen provided intelligence—often via the Vatican’s own “hot line” —that an ordinary banker could not hope to acquire at any price.

In the course of his career, Nogara had become a specialist in gold. Thus for a considerable period after he took over the Special Administration, he engaged in the trading of gold bullion for gold coins and gold coins for gold bullion in deals that, without precise details, defy understanding of anything but the fact that most of them were profitable. His confidence in the precious metal virtually unshakable, the canny Nogara spent $26.8 million to buy gold from the United States at the official rate of $35 per fine troy ounce, plus 0.25 percent for handling charges. In later years, rumors cropped up that the Vatican had obtained this gold at a special price of $34 an ounce, but when the rumors were printed in—and given some credence by—a United Nations publication, the .S. Treasury Department dismissed the matter once and for all in April 1953, by stating that the Vatican had made the purchase at the same price as anybody else. In fact, $5 million of the Vatican-acquired gold was sold back to the United States, leaving a net sale of $21.8 million. The Vatican gold, which is in the shape of ingots, is on deposit with the U.S. Federal Reserve Bank. A favorite Nogara ploy involved a most intricate financial maneuver, by which he manipulated the flexibility of the Vatican’s Swiss bank accounts. The explanation is a bit complicated and may necessitate a second reading. Nevertheless, here it is:

Nogara would ask his Swiss bank to deposit Vatican money in New York under the Swiss bank’s name. He then got the Swiss bank to order the American bank to lend dollars to an Italian firm that was owned by the Vatican. The Italian firm, to which the money belonged in the first place, charged the interest it was paying in America to itself in the Swiss account. In this way Nogara could safely (and secretly) invest the Pope’s money without any interference from the Italian authorities during those periods when currency restrictions were being imposed by the state.

Without exaggeration, it can be said that Nogara, apparently driven by deep religious motivations, used his financial wizardry to become the Vatican’s “secret weapon.” As a dictator of the Vatican’s funds, he answered to no one—not even to the committee of three cardinals which, theoretically, supervised the functions of the Special Administration. Nor did Pius XI have any clear idea of what Nogara was doing. But the Pope had faith in Nogara, and the evidence is there that that faith was rewarded.

When Eugenio Cardinal Pacelli mounted the pontifical throne in 1939 as Pius XII, it was known that he entertained certain suspicions about Nogara—and this led to a number of rumors about the Special Administration. For one thing, it was whispered that there was virtually nothing left of the large sum of Lateran money. In one of his initial administrative acts, the new pope established a private investigating committee of cardinals who were knowledgeable in the complexities of banking and international finance. A thorough check was made.

Contrary to what many had preferred to suspect, Nogara had invested the Vatican funds wisely and shrewdly. In fact, the initial capital had increased so many times over that the Vatican was richer before the opening days of World War II than it had ever been before. After the report was in, Nogara was completely untouchable.

Few anecdotes can be told about this financial fox, for Nogara successfully managed to keep almost everything he did a secret—even from his superiors, who trusted him implicitly. A ranking Vatican official once said, “Nogara is a man who never speaks to anybody; nor does he tell the Pope much, and I would guess, even very little to God—yet he is a man worth listening to.”

One Nogara incident can be reported, however. It involved a run-in with the British government. In 1948, the Catholic Relief Organization in Germany had been presented with several shiploads of wheat, purchased by the Vatican from Argentina. Nogara, attempting to pay for the wheat with British pounds he had deposited in England, ran afoul of Whitehall, for at that time England was undergoing an austerity period, with the usual currency restrictions. Annoyed, London negotiated with the Holy See, and Nogara, bending, agreed instead to invest the money he had in England in government bonds. But for the man with the golden touch, the defeat, such as it was, ended in victory. Over the long run the investment in British bonds turned out very favorably. Still, the transaction goes down on the books as one of the few in which Nogara’s hand was ever forced.

After retiring in 1956 for reasons of health, Nogara continued to serve the Vatican by advising his successors in a private capacity. That he had proved himself scrupulous in the execution of his assignment, there is not the slightest doubt. That he bequeathed not only his know- how but a well-oiled, smoothly functioning piece of financial machinery, there is also not the slightest doubt. Because of the secret nature of his operations, he was given very little space in the public prints when he died in November of 1958. Yet no other single individual, pope or cardinal, ever gave as much impetus and muscle to Vatican finances as did Bernardino Nogara, the invisible man who started out to be an architect and succeeded in building a financial empire.

Perhaps the man is best summed up in a document he left for his successors. In it he enumerated his strategies. A copy of this eight-part “Nogara Credo” came into my hands and is offered herewith in translation:

1. Increase the size of your company because it will be easier to obtain funds from the capital markets.
2. Increase the size of your company because high-capacity installations allow the reduction of industrial costs and the subdivision of overall expenses.
3. Increase the size of your company because it is possible to economize on transportation.
4. Increase the size of your company because it will allow capital to be invested in scientific research that can bring tangible money results.
5. Increase the size of your company because the personnel can be organized and used in a more rational manner.
6. Increase the size of your company because fiscal controls on the part of government become advantageously difficult.
7. Increase the size of your company because it is necessary to offer the customers the best technical product.
8. Increase the size of your company because this will engender more increases. However sanctified the name of Bernardino Nogara, not all of the Vatican’s trusted employees avoided besmirching themselves. At about the time Nogara was involved with the Argentine wheat difficulty, another Vatican figure became the center of a scandal that brought severe repercussions. The financial body involved was the Administration of the Holy See Property, which had been founded in 1878 to supervise the management of Vatican- owned property.

Monsignor E. P. Cippico, a youthful prelate employed by the Vatican Archives, got entangled in a series of financial deals that eventually brought him to ruin. The war over, many countries, including Italy, were suffering under currency restrictions. Eager to shift money to Switzerland and other countries, either for investment or for the purchase of goods for import, some Italian businessmen discovered that they could transfer funds through the Administration of the Holy See Property, for the Vatican was exempt from Italy’s currency regulations. Monsignor Cippico, an extrovert who enjoyed moving in high-society circles, and who had some personal contacts in the Administration, served as a go-between for those persons who wanted to get their money out of the country. Needless to say, he was a very popular man.

All went well until Cippico ventured out on his own and agreed to underwrite the production costs of a movie on the life of St. Francis of Assisi. To cover up the outflow of money, a lot of money, Cippico enlarged his questionable operations. But the film never got past the first reel. Meanwhile, as more and more people who had entrusted him with large sums to transfer out of Italy saw nothing come of their money, the roof started to cave in on Cippico. He was arrested by the Pope’s Gendarmery, made to stand a Vatican inquiry, found guilty, defrocked, and put into detention. Later he stood trial in an Italian court and was convicted of swindling; still later he was set free by a court of appeals. The persons who had entrusted money to him placed legal claims against the Vatican, and in time everyone was reimbursed.

Having learned some hard lessons in the world of business, the Vatican is now exceedingly prudent about whom it will entrust with either money or responsibility. The man appointed by Pope Paul (in January 1968) to handle the newly created Prefecture of Economic Affairs is Egidio Cardinal Vagnozzi, who had served as the Pope’s top diplomat in Washington. Formerly the Apostolic Delegate to the United States for nine years, Cardinal Vagnozzi (now in his early sixties) replaced Angelo Cardinal dell’Acqua, who had been named four months earlier to the job of “finance minister.”

Cardinal Vagnozzi’s two septuagenarian associates in the new “ministry of finance,” which will prepare the Vatican’s annual budget, its first, are Joseph Cardinal Beran, Archbishop of Prague, who served sixteen years of Communist detention, and Cesare Cardinal Zerba of Italy, a theologian who served for twenty-six years as Under-Secretary and then Secretary of the Congregation of Sacraments.

Already ordained a priest at age twenty-three—thanks to a special dispensation in 1928 from the pope—Vagnozzi has spent most of his career in service abroad. Four years after his ordination, he was sent to the United States to work in the Washington office of the Apostolic Delegate. It is said that his boat trip from Italy to America may have had a significant meaning in his career, for he was accompanied across the Atlantic Ocean by the then- Monsignor Francis Spellman who had been assigned to duty in Boston. The bond of friendship and respect between the two men was to remain firm until Spellman’s death recently.

Vagnozzi stayed in the United States for ten years before a transferral to Portugal, once again in the capacity as a junior counselor in the office of the Apostolic Delegate. From Lisbon he went to Paris, there to become a confidant of the then-Apostolic Delegate Angelo Roncalli (later Pope John XXIII). In 1948, Vagnozzi received an assignment to lay the groundwork in India for the exchange of ambassadors between the Delhi Government and the Holy See, and a year later he was dispatched to the Philippines as the Apostolic Delegate.

Succeeding in establishing diplomatic relations with the Republic of the Philippines in 1951, Vagnozzi became the Vatican’s first ambassador (Nuncio) there and stayed in the post until 1958, at which time Pope John thought it best to send him back to the United States to fill the job of Apostolic Delegate left open by Amleto Cardinal Cicognani who had become Vatican Secretary of State. Unlike most of the previous Roman Catholic representatives in Washington, Vagnozzi—by now an avid student of Yankee culture and an admirer of the “American way of doing things”—did considerable traveling all over the fifty states, climaxing his nine-year tour of duty with a visit to Alaska to bring blessings, money and material help from Pope Paul to flood victims in Anchorage, Ko-diak, and Seward in 1964.

Although he took his formal training in philosophy and theology, Cardinal Vagnozzi is a keen student of the American economy. With the help of Cardinal Spellman, Vagnozzi kept abreast of events in the business and financial world of the United States. Not without reason, therefore, is it believed that no single person inside the Vatican has the solid background and incisive knowledge of American business practice as has the Pope’s new “finance minister.”

Apart from the three cardinals who supervise the Vatican’s wealth, the Church must also depend on its uomini di fiducia (men of trust), who handle the Vatican’s financial interests as nonclerics. The circle of laymen who enjoy the proxy of the pope is necessarily tight because it is these few chosen trustees who most often represent the Vatican in the outside business world. Who are some of these men, and where do they fit in the scheme of things?

A clue as to whether Vatican penetration has taken place within a given company is usually provided by the names of the members of the board of directors. Industrial corporations and holding companies often expose Church interest by listing, in one capacity or another, the names of known Vatican agents. “Agents” is perhaps not the happiest word to describe the members of the Vatican’s inner lay circle, but it best indicates the purpose they serve. Whenever a “Vatican name” appears on the board of directors of a utility, for example, investigation will almost invariably bring out the fact that the Vatican holds a minor, or even a major, interest in that organization. Often the prestige of the “agent’s” name gives a reporter his first indication of the extent of the Vatican’s interest.

For instance, up until his resignation in the spring of 1968 from his post as special delegate of the Pontifical Commission for the State of Vatican City, the name of Count Enrico Galeazzi (who also resigned his offices as Director General of Technical Services and Director General of the Economic Services of Vatican City) appeared on many lists of directors. Wherever it did, it indicated to observers that he was serving within that company as a watchdog of Vatican interests. Count Galeazzi, however, continues his service within Vatican City by holding the office of architect of the Sacred Apostolic Palaces and regular architect of St. Peter’s and as a member of the Commission for the Preservation of Historical and Artistic Monuments of the Holy See. In March 1968, Galeazzi became Director General of the Societa Generate Immobiliare, the Vatican-owned construction company [which is discussed at length in Chapter VII], after having been its vice president since 1952. At this writing Count Galeazzi’s name still appears on the boards of a few other companies in Italy.

Galeazzi, who was a close friend of Cardinal Spellman, owes most of his enviable Vatican career to the late New York Archbishop whom he met while the latter was stationed in Rome. It was through Cardinal Spellman, who selected him as the representative of the Knights of Columbus in Rome, that Galeazzi met Pope Pius when he was still Cardinal Pacelli and Secretary of State. By profession an engineer, Galeazzi became a trusted friend of Cardinal Pacelli, and the two went on various Vatican missions together—Buenos Aires in 1934, Lourdes in 1935, Paris and Budapest several years later, and New York and Washington shortly before Pacelli assumed the papal chair.

Under Pope Pius, Galeazzi became the acting governor of Vatican City, an office he retained until early 1968. Pope Pius also awarded him the jobs of Director General of Economic Services and of Keeper of the Sacred Fabric of St. Peter, which office made him responsible for the maintenance of Church property. Because of his fluent English, Galeazzi was often asked by Spellman to entertain his American businessmen friends in Rome; among the men Galeazzi entertained was Joseph Kennedy of Boston, father of the late President of the United States. Since Galeazzi was very close to the Pope, he could and often did help Spellman to get papal appointments. In view of the fact that Spellman made about three trips a year to Vatican City and always had a personal audience with the Pope (several times he was invited to tea, an exceedingly rare honor), the Galeazzi-Spellman friendship had no small effect on Vatican history in the postwar period. Some Romans who admire Count Enrico Galeazzi for his thoroughly dignified manner irreverently refer to him as “the Vatican’s only lay Pope in history.” That his name, therefore, is linked with Vatican business interests in Italy is not surprising.

Nor is it surprising that Pacelli is another “Vatican name.” Should any one of the three Pacelli princes, all related to Pope Pius XII, appear in the corporate line-up of a company, it would be safe to assume the Vatican holds more than a minimum interest. Starting with the Societa Generale Immobiliare, of which Count Galeazzi is now a general director and a member of the executive committee, Prince Carlo Pacelli’s name appears on almost as many corporation listings as Galeazzi’s. Prince Giulio Pacelli is on the board of Italgas, a company that has the concession to supply gas for thirty-six Italian cities, while Prince Marcantonio Pacelli is not only a member of the board of the Societa Generale Immobiliare but is also prominently listed with the boards of many other companies.

Other Vatican names, powers to a lesser or greater degree in papal business affairs, are those of Luigi Gedda (a former president of Catholic Action), Count Paolo Blumensthil (a Secret Chamberlain of the Sword and Cloak), Carlo Pesenti (Director General of the Italcementi cement company and head of the Vatican’s newly formed bank group called the Istituto Bancario Italiano), Antonio Rinaldi (vice secretary of the Apostolic Chamber and president of a private finance company called Istituto Centrale Finanziaro), Luigi Mennini (holder of six important Vatican posts), and Massimo Spada (a lawyer and former administrative secretary of the now abolished Institute for Religious Works).

Not long ago, a formal study of the Vatican’s business efficiency was undertaken by American Management Audit, an organization that has investigated the management of many businesses throughout the world. The Vatican scored exceedingly well, receiving what amounted to “straight-A” grades: 650 points out of a maximum of 700 for operating efficiency, 2,000 out of a possible 2,100 for effectiveness of leadership, and 700 out of a possible 800 for fiscal policy. Compared with those of other businesses examined, these were impressive ratings indeed. Management Audit indicated that the Vatican could teach other businesses quite a few lessons—not the least of which was that of avoiding the error of displaying “too much obvious zeal once a position of influence has been attained.”

Indeed, the Vatican’s efficient way of handling its business could serve as a model. Perhaps this is because of the influence of Nogara, whose shadow, a decade after his death, still looms over the financial brain trust of the present-day successor to Peter.

In a press interview shortly before his death, Cardinal Tardini dismissed reports on the extent of the Vatican’s holdings. He said (as we noted earlier in this chapter) that rumors about the Vatican’s wealth were exaggerated. Cardinal Tardini, who was well known to the Roman citizenry as “the priest with no fur on his tongue,” then told the assembled newspapermen that in his opinion Nogara’s decision to invest most of the Vatican’s indemnity from the Lateran Treaty in Italy instead of in other countries was regrettable.

“We thought we were helping Italy,” His Eminence declared. “But instead we have been forever accused of trying to take over the Italian business world.”

Behind the Walls III

THE MIGHTIEST EGYPTIAN obelisk in the world stands in St. Peter’s Square. Until a few short years ago, a riddle surrounded the great needle. This riddle has now been solved by admirable scholarly deduction.

The Emperor Caligula, whose reign ended in A.D. 41, had had the obelisk placed in the center of an arena where gladiators fought and charioteers raced, and at the base of the obelisk he had had engraved in Latin a dedication to his mother, Agrippina. In the sixteenth century Pope Sixtus V had the obelisk, which weighs 320 tons, lugged from the site of the ancient arena to its present position in St. Peter’s Square. But where was the obelisk before it was in the arena? Where did it originally come from?

Since the elongated monument bears no Egyptian hieroglyphics, nobody was able to figure out its early history— until Professor Filippo Magi, an archeologist, deciphered an inscription that wasn’t there and unlocked a mystery which was centuries old.

One morning, while gazing at the Latin inscription, Professor Magi began to wonder why it had been carved on an indented rectangle and not directly on the surface of the obelisk. In the slanting rays of the morning sun, he noticed that scattered among the Latin words were innumerable little holes, each about a quarter of an inch deep. Examining the tiny holes more closely, the professor had a hunch. Could these holes be really only “bottoms” of holes that were once deeper? Could they be what remained of holes originally drilled an inch into the granite—holes in which the teeth of bronze letters of a previous inscription had been imbedded and fixed with hot lead? Perhaps, Professor Magi theorized, when Caligula received the giant stone from Egypt, he had ordered the letters removed to make room for his own inscription.

The problem now facing the archeologist was whether he could reconstruct the original bronze letters by calculating from the positions of the holes. Because many of the letters seemed to have been attached by three teeth instead of two, Professor Magi felt he stood a good chance of identifying their shape. He could then, he decided, use guess work—and the principles of cryptography—to find out what the other letters were.

Professor Magi had scores of fake plastic letters made to size. He juggled them around, and around. Then, finally, they fell into order, and the obelisk’s original inscription could be read. It revealed that the obelisk had been put up in Heliopolis by Caius Cornelius Gallus, a Roman prefect to Egypt who erected many such monuments to his own glory before he fell into disfavor and died by his own hand in 27 B.C.

The story of Professor Magi’s archeological detective work is one incident in the history of the obelisk. Another took place in 1586, when the obelisk was being installed in St. Peter’s Square. Thousands of workers and hundreds of horses were struggling with beams, ropes, and scaffolding to lift the unwieldy seventy-five-foot monument skyward. So the engineers would not be distracted, the death penalty was ordered for any spectator who even so much as uttered a word. But friction was beginning to burn the ropes, and it appeared the monolith would fall to the ground. A sailor who was watching knew what to do. Should he risk his life by disobeying the order of silence?

“Throw water on the ropes!” he yelled at last.

The suggestion was followed, and the workers completed the job without mishap. Instead of being executed, the sailor earned a papal reward, the right to supply St. Peter’s Church with palms on Palm Sunday. His heirs still have the concession today.

The giant obelisk, which is one of Rome’s landmarks, is not really in Rome, or in Italy. It stands just over the Italian border, about ten yards away from Rome, which entirely surrounds the State of Vatican City. Very little is known by the outside world about this tiny country, which, although it is an artificial state, is still a sovereign one.

The State of Vatican City, the most singular community in the world, doesn’t even have as many citizens as the United States Congress has members. Nor is there much prospect that Vatican City will substantially increase its population, because most of its citizens (who are clergy) do not marry. This partially explains why the death rate is forty times higher than the birth rate. There are fewer than 530 citizens within Vatican City, and altogether about nine hundred people five within its diamond-shaped seventeensquare- mile confines.

Unlike other nations, the State of Vatican City has no significant industry, no agriculture, and no natural resources, yet it ranks among the richest countries of the world. Millions of people cross its borders every year without a visa or any red tape, but Vatican City is the best guarded and most effectively sheltered country anywhere. The tourists who visit it never find overnight lodging, for the country doesn’t have a hotel. Neither does it have a single restaurant, movie house, or legitimate theater.

Getting around this minuscule territory is difficult, especially for a stranger, because all but one of the thirty streets and squares are without street signs. There are no traffic lights, but there hasn’t been an auto accident in over forty-five years. Vatican City has no streetcars or buses. Not only does the country lack hotels, restaurants, theaters, street signs, traffic lights, and public transportation, it also has no barber shop, no laundry, no dry cleaner, and not a single newsstand. Nor does it have any kind of hospital, a garbage collection crew, or a school for children.

The absence of these features is amazing, but Vatican City has other unique qualities, which may seem even more amazing.

Vatican City, a country that is managed by men of Italian origin, has a national anthem that was written by a Frenchman (Charles Gounod). The country’s official language is Latin, usually considered dead. The head of state is not only the country’s chief executive, he is also its legislature and judiciary, all in one, but he is neither a dictator nor a despot. The Lilliputian country has its own postage stamps and issues its own coins, yet it uses Italian money as its legal tender and depends on Italy to transport its air mail. (Local mail delivery is not made easier by the absence of any street addresses in Vatican City, but this doesn’t faze the postman, who knows where everybody lives.) Vatican coins, which are the same size as the equivalent Italian coins, have the Pope’s head engraved on them and usually bear a motto. “This is the root of all evil” is the translation of one such motto; “It is better to give than to receive,” the translation of another.

The Vatican flag, which consists of two equal vertical stripes of yellow and white with the papal tiara above two crossed keys on the white stripe, would be recognized by few people if they saw it. Vatican license plates bear the letters S.C.V. (for Stato Citta Vaticano) in either red or black on a white background; the numbers run from 1 to 142. The Pope has ten private cars, and these are parked in the Apostolic Stable, which was once used for papal horses. All told, there are a half dozen gasoline pumps in the Vatican, all of them carrying the same brand of gas—Esso. So far as is known, the Vatican does not plan to let Madison Avenue exploit the fact that the Pope has a tiger in his tank.

Although the country has its own railroad, there is no regular train schedule. The double-track spur enters the country through a metal gate in the Vatican wall; freight trains with supplies for the country come in fairly often, but not regularly. Mussolini put up the stone terminal building as a gift, and when the railroad was inaugurated, one of the engineers in charge of the works, offering an apology to Pius XI because the tracks had not yet been properly connected with the Italian network, assured him that that would be done shortly.

“It seems,” remarked the pontiff, smiling, “that you are in a hurry to get rid of me.”

In actuality passenger trains rarely depart from the station. The last one left the Vatican in October 1962, carrying Pope John and some members of his staff to Loreto and Assisi to offer prayers for the Ecumenical Council.

Many of the citizens of Vatican City, none of whom is subject to Italian income taxes (citizens do pay the Vatican an annual tax, but it’s only 300 lire—48 cents), live in Italy rather than on Vatican ground. This is their preference. Vatican gates close at 11:30 P.M. A resident who wants to go, say, to the opera, must get special permission and must then arrange to get back inside the country after the gates close. An alien who accepts a dinner invitation to a Vatican home must leave the country before the frontier shuts down.

Since there is no privately owned real estate in Vatican City, the people who live there, not all of whom are citizens, have their quarters assigned to them. Citizens are not charged for electricity or telephone service, and rents are very low, usually about 4 percent of an individual’s income. Thus a monsignor with a salary of $300 a month will usually pay about $12 a month for his assigned apartment.

Economic pressures and other problems of an industrialized society do not exist in Vatican City, even though incomes are low. Some cardinals receive as much as $800 a month; the commanding officer of the Swiss Guards gets about $340; and the editor of the unofficial Vatican daily paper also gets about $340.

A visitor once asked Pope John, “Holy Father, how many people actually work in the Vatican?”

“Oh, about half of them!” the Pope jestingly replied.

That would be about fifteen hundred people, for, altogether, about three thousand have jobs inside the Vatican.

Although most prices within the Vatican walls on items of food are concomitant with those of the neighboring country, and geared to Rome’s accelerated cost of living, general expenses are much lower. Vatican housekeepers, at least half of whom are males, do most of their grocery shopping on the grounds—but it’s necessary to go into Rome for such things as clothing, electrical appliances, and other durable goods. Sources in Rome supply the Vatican with its water and its electric power, while the Vatican’s so-called sanitation system empties into the Roman sewers. Without the help and good will of Italy, and especially of Rome, the non-self-sufficient Vatican would be unable to function efficiently.

The State of Vatican City doesn’t have a residential sector, as such. The Pope and members of his official family live in the Apostolic Palace, a conglomeration of buildings built, for the most part, during the Renaissance. With some 990 flights of stairs and more than 1,400 rooms (overlooking twenty courtyards), the palace of the Vatican is perhaps the world’s largest, surpassed or matched only by the palace of the Dalai Lama in Tibet.

The Pope’s nineteen-room apartment on the top floor faces St. Peter’s Square. His private office, with three great recessed windows overlooking the square, is commodious and impressive. Draped in gold damask, the windows are seldom covered by curtains, for, whenever the sunlight beats in, the white slats on the inside shutters are closed. The papal work chamber measures sixty by forty feet. The floor is carpeted, and the walls are panelled in blond wood. There are tables and satin-covered chairs spaced around the room, and books fill every inch of space in the two six-foot-high, glass-enclosed cabinets.

About five feet away from the door is the Pope’s desk, a table with a single center drawer. On the right side of the desk, the Pope keeps an ornate desk clock, a high-necked desk lamp with carved statuettes at the base, a roll- blotter, and several reference books, among which are the current Pontifical Annual and an indexed Bible. Facing the papal desk are two high-backed chairs that match the chair on which the Pope sits. Pope Paul has an electric typewriter, which he uses with consummate skill. He likes to do his own typing at night, when things are quiet. When he wants to make an appearance from his office, usually on Sundays for a noonday blessing, he invariably goes to the middle window.

On the lower floors are the apartments of the Cardinal Secretary of State and the Master of Pontifical Ceremonies. The palace also houses, in one of its extensions, the Vatican Museum, which contains what many experts believe to be the world’s finest collection of ancient and classical art. The museum has the most important single art spectacle anywhere—the Sistine Chapel, in which the enormous “Last Judgment” of Michelangelo covers the entire wall behind the altar and flows onto the ceilings and upper walls, done in fresco.

Alongside the Apostolic Palace, members of the Swiss Guards have their own barracks and apartments. Vatican City has three comparatively new apartment buildings, erected to partially correct a housing shortage, which still exists. There are three cemeteries in the Vatican, but these are rarely used today, for Vatican City also has a shortage of burial places (except in the vaults of St. Peter, which are now reserved for popes).

A walk through the fenced-in Vatican Gardens, which are manicured the year around by a staff of twenty, is an unforgettable experience. There are fruit trees, cauliflower patches, plants rooted in oversized ceramic jars, and fountains of all shapes. To ensure an adequate water supply, Pius XI had 9,300 irrigators installed. Fifty-five miles of pipe lines were laid, and two reservoirs built. Each reservoir holds 1.5 million gallons of water, which comes directly from Lake Bracciano, outside Rome.

At the Pope’s request, the irrigation system was equipped with some rather special devices—trick devices squirted great jets of water at the unwary visitor. When in a playful mood the Pope loved to drench new cardinals whom he inveigled to walk with him through the gardens. The jets are no longer working, but they can be seen if you know where to look.

The Vatican Gardens were one of Pius’ pet projects, and he frequently let the children of Vatican employees play in them. One day, noticing a school of flashy red fish swimming in one of the small ponds, he said to the youngsters who were standing nearby, “So many cardinals— and no pope!”

The next day two boys and a girl, giggling, went to the pond and emptied the contents of a small pail into it. Later, when Pius went out for his stroll in the garden, he saw one extra fish in the pond. The fish was all white, like a pope.

Not far from the gardens is the so-called business district of Vatican City. Located to the right of St. Peter’s Square, it can be reached by entering through the Santa Anna Gate, which is supervised by the Swiss Guards. Each visitor to the business district must state the nature of his business to the guardsman on duty before he is allowed to proceed. The roadway from the Santa Anna Gate leads past the tiny parish church to the grocery store, the post office, the car pool and garage, the press office, and the offices of L’Osservatore Romano, the Vatican’s daily newspaper.

As an independent state, Vatican City has certain prerogatives with respect to Italy. For instance, in time of war Vatican citizens and personnel are given access across Italian territory. The Vatican is exempt from customs regulations, a privilege that has sometimes been abused. After the end of World War II, visitors to Vatican City began picking up cartons of American cigarettes there, taking them into Italy, where American cigarettes were hard to find, and selling them for double what they paid. As much as this rankled officials of the Italian government (which has a state monopoly on the sale of tobacco), nothing could be done. Or can be done, for the practice continues even to this day—in spite of the fact that the Vatican now rations tobacco and other items, like liquor, which sell at higher prices in Rome.

Maintaining law and order is no problem for the Vatican, which has almost no crime. No instance of a holdup on Vatican ground has ever been recorded. Some years ago, however, there was one case of housebreaking. Only two murder attempts have ever been recorded. In one case a Swiss Guardsman, in a moment of temper, wounded his commanding officer, not too seriously; in the other a demented woman shot down a priest in St. Peter’s.

The Vatican prison was closed not long ago because of lack of use; it stood vacant for a while; then it was converted into a warehouse. Few inmates served any time at all in the prison. One was a clergyman, Monsignor E. P. Cippico, who had been involved and convicted of the illegal money traffic described in Chapter II. Another inmate, a man caught stealing in St. Peter’s (the crime occurred more than twenty years ago), was sentenced to six months, primarily to spare him what would have been a heavier sentence from the Italian courts. He served his full term and, according to Vatican sources, enjoyed it considerably because he was very well treated, and also, “because the window to his cell overlooked the beautiful scenery of the Vatican Gardens and allowed him to breathe the gardens’ balmy air.”

Most of the policemen who work in the Vatican are laymen, as are the firemen, lawyers, stenographers, sales personnel, carpenters, bakers, gardeners, bricklayers, painters, mechanics, and other employees who keep the Vatican machinery functioning. To supplement this lay staff, a number of small religious societies provide services of various types. For instance, the Vatican telephone system and local mail deliveries are handled by the friars of the Little Work of Divine Providence. A group of nuns, affectionately known as the Sisters of Tapestry, specializes in the mending and restoration of the thousands of precious tapestries that adorn the walls of the Apostolic Palace. The Do Good Brothers operate the Vatican pharmacy, and on a nearby island in the Tiber, administer a hospital, where during the Nazi occupation of Rome they earned a reputation for hiding American and British pilots shot down in combat, refugee Jews, and other enemies of Hitler.

Another religious group, the Sons of St. John Bosco, provides the Vatican with typesetters and linotype operators. Charged with printing secret and confidential Vatican documents, the members of this group also run the Vatican Polyglot Printing Plant, which, as its name implies, issues publications in a variety of languages. A large variety, for the Polyglot Printing Plant works with 120 different alphabets and publishes documents in hieroglyphics, Chinese ideographs, Braille, Glagolitic, Hebrew, Arabic, and Coptic.

Perhaps the most unusual job in the Vatican—a job that very few people ever hear of—is performed in a high- ceilinged room in the Apostolic Palace. The room is lined with shelves and drawers containing ashes, slivers of bones, and other remains of early saints and martyrs. Under an electric lamp in one corner of this strange chamber, the world’s most macabre library, sits a Vatican officer surrounded with tiny boxes and envelopes addressed to all parts of the globe. These are for the purpose of conveying saintly relics. According to canon law, a relic must be enclosed in every altar of every church. Because churches are inaugurated each week, and an authentic relic is required for each new altar, the librarian is constantly busy filling envelopes with pinches of dust. The envelopes are sent out as registered letters.

The visitor to the Vatican is not likely to see the relic mailer at work, but no matter where he goes inside the narrow plot of land, he is likely to come across someone busily doing an unexpectedly ordinary job. The Pope’s shoemaker, for example. Since 1939, the task of making papal shoes has belonged to Telesforo Carboni, who habitually refers to Paul VI as “an eight and a half narrow” and the late Pope John as “a wide ten.”

Like many other shoemakers, Carboni is quite a raconteur, particularly on the matter of footwear. Once Carboni said to me, “I remember the time Pope John, who had a big foot, which could take even a ten and a half, came to me and said, ‘Signor Carboni, you must make me a pair of shoes that are nice and big and don’t cramp my feet.’

“A man with cramped feet, you know, will usually have cramped ideas in his head, and so His Holiness wanted a pair of shoes that wouldn’t cramp him in his work. Do you follow?

“The Pope didn’t have corns on his feet, but he did have a high instep, and the top of a shoe, if it was a bad fit, could cut his foot when he walked. He showed me the most comfortable pair of shoes he ever had, made by his nephew, a shoemaker in Bergamo, and they were dyed purple. I was horrified at the color. Who ever heard of a pope wearing purple shoes?

“‘Holy Father,’ I said, ‘you can’t wear purple shoes. It’s not the pope’s color.’

“Pope John thought for a bit, then he said, ‘But, Signor Carboni, I don’t want to hurt my nephew’s feelings. When I write him, I must tell him I am wearing the shoes he made for me.’

” ‘Ci penso io,’ I said. ‘We will color the shoes red.’

” ‘Benissimo!’ exclaimed His Holiness. ‘You have solved my problem. You are a saint. You have made the first miracle of my reign!’ ”

How the Vatican Succeeded in Business Without Really Trying IV

IF THERE IS one common quality of popes it is that they are, necessarily, lonely men. Several popes have commented on their loneliness. In a rare moment of candor, Pope Paul VI made this loneliness clear to some guests during a private audience. “Some people think,” he said, “that a pope lives in an atmosphere of superior serenity, where everything is beautiful, everything is easy. . . . But it is also true that the pope has cares, coming from his human littleness, which he faces every moment. This sometimes conflicts with his duties, his problems, his responsibilities. This is a distress which sometimes tastes of agony.”

Pope Pius IX, one of the loneliest and least fortunate popes in all Vatican history, must indeed have tasted agony when he had to face, all but alone, the loss of more than two thirds of the Vatican’s landholdings and when, after Rome was taken, he went into voluntary “exile” behind the Leonine Walls. Let us trace those dusty events, for they bear heavily on the theme of this book.

After 1815, when the Congress of Vienna restored the papal lands, which for years had been part of Napoleon’s empire, the Vatican found itself with a Brobdingnagian parcel of land that sheared completely through the middle of the peninsula and separated the six Italian states. These states, or duchies, were a political reality that had for centuries made Italy nothing more than a “geographical expression.” The so-called Papal States, some of which came into the Vatican’s possession through donation (mostly before the ninth century) and some through the sixteenth-century conquests of Cesare Borgia (son of Pope Alexander VI), and which, several times in their history, were curtailed and abolished, consisted of some 16,000 square miles that included a population of a little over three million inhabitants in the regions of Latium, Umbria, the Marches, and Emilia-Romagna—a territory sprawling across the peninsula from the Tyrrhenian Sea to the Adriatic, bounded on the northwest by the Kingdom of Lombardo-Venetia, southeast by the Kingdom of Naples, and west by the Grand Duchy of Tuscany and the Duchy of Modena.

Papal rule over this territory was inefficient. The people who lived in it were Roman Catholics, but they did not like the idea of being governed by priests. Although taxes were light, almost nonexistent, industry and commerce were entirely undeveloped; most of the people lived by begging. On more than one occasion foreign soldiers had to be called in to bring order to sectors where disturbances had broken out. When Pope Pius IX assumed office in 1846, he made a strong effort to introduce reforms—but the Pope was not a man of the world, nor did he have political gifts and economic know-how. During the first twenty-four months of his reign, Pius IX made concessions that upset many of his cardinals.

Tariffs were lowered, and commercial treaties were signed with other nations; railways were constructed; the law courts were reorganized, and local councils were set up.

But the Pope was destined to fail as a temporal sovereign. With the coming of the Risorgimento (Italy’s unification movement), Pope Pius could not continue to hold the Papal States, which are now comprised within the provinces of Bologna, Ferrara, Forli, Ravenna, Pesaro and Urbino, Ancona, Macerata, Ascoli-Piceno, Perugia, Rome, and Benevento. But for the intervention of French armies, this land would have been lost much earlier. When the Kingdom of Italy was formed in 1860, the Papal States were reduced to 4,891 square miles (with a population of about 692,000) to include the Comarca of Rome, the legation of Velletri, and the three delegations of Viterbo, Civitavecchia, and Frosinone. In September 1870, however, when the Franco-Prussian War forced France to withdraw its garrisons from papal soil, Italian troops marched into Rome and terminated the temporal power of the Pope.

Refusing to recognize the fait accompli, Pius voluntarily made himself the “prisoner” of the Vatican. For the next fifty-nine years the popes who followed Pius IX —Leo XIII (1878-1903), Pius X (1903-1914), Benedict XV (1914-1922), and Pius XI (1922-1939)— also enclosed themselves in voluntary captivity in the Vatican. This self-imprisonment kept the so-called Roman Question alive for over half a century; not until the signing of the Lateran Treaty in 1929 did the Vatican accept compensation for its territorial loss. Only then did the long exile behind Vatican walls come to an end.

Not much can be said about the Vatican’s financial situation from 1815 to 1929, for very little is known about this era. However, it appears that in 1848 the Papal States had, by good sense and economy, brought about a balance between receipts and expenditures. But, according to an obscure statement published by a Father Cha-mard in the Annales Ecclesiastiques, this equilibrium was apparently upset in 1859.

“Without doubt,” wrote Father Chamard, “from a financial point of view, the intervention of France in the settlement of the pontifical debts has diminished the annual charges, but it should not be forgotten that even after the settlement, the papal treasury still has to pay out in interest $4,267,542. If to this sum is added the ensemble of expenses calculated for 1869 at $7,848,485, the total sum arrived at passes $12,000,000. But the ordinary resources of the Sovereign Pontiff cannot support more than half this sum. Therefore $6,000,000 is the amount the faithful must supply.”

To help the Vatican meet its expenses, the voluntary contribution known as Peter’s Pence was revived in the United States in 1868, when the second Plenary Council of Baltimore decreed that a collection be taken up for the pope once a year in all American churches. Announcing the restoration of the tax, Herbert Cardinal Vaughan made some frank disclosures about the Vatican’s financial position:

The financial condition of the Holy See from the date of the return of the Pope from Gaeta to the year 1859 has become each year more satisfactory. . . . But in the month of September 1859, Pius IX was despoiled of two thirds of his states. The Romagna, or fifteen provinces, were invaded and annexed to Piedmont. By this act the revenue of the Holy See, which had been 54,000,000 francs (or £2,100,000, or$10,800,000), was reduced to 28,000,000 francs. This might still have sufficed both for the administration of the five remaining provinces and for the government, but for the debt.

The debt amounted to 24,000,000 francs a year. It hadbeen contracted on behalf of all the provinces making up thePapal States. To the fifteen provinces annexed by Piedmontbelonged 18,000,000 to 19,000,000 of the interest to be paid, as their fair proportion. The robber, however, refused to takeover the burdens with the stolen provinces. . . .

Within six weeks of the occupation of the Romagna by thePiedmontese a cry for Peter’s Pence had arisen in England . . . exactly three centuries after it had fallen away under Elizabeth. . . .

The sum total in Peter’s Pence paid into the apostolic chamber from the end of 1859 to the end of 1865 was 45,600,000 francs. Nearly the whole of this sum was, we know from the note of M. de Corcelle, the French ambassador in Rome, employed in payment of the debt and in meeting the deficit created in the papal treasury by the Piedmontese invasion. Considerable sums continued to be collected and laid at the feet of Pius IX up to the last year of his reign. . . . On theaccession of our Holy Father, Pope Leo XIII, fabulous reports were circulated as to the wealth accumulated in Peter’sPence. This was done by enemies of the Church to deceive the people and dry up the stream of their loving gifts. But thefact is that the small sum which had been invested has again and again been diminished during the last two years in order to meet the absolute necessities of the Holy See.

But, you may perhaps inquire, What are the actual necessities of the Holy See?

The actual necessities of the Holy See are the actual requirements of Christendom. It is therefore for Christendom to meet them. . . . The actual income of the Holy See, derivable from permanent and settled sources, is said to have been reduced by spoliation to £60,000. . . . Finally, as to the personal expenses of the Holy Father, they form a sum soinsignificant as to be absolutely inappreciable in the generalexpenditure. Personally sparing and truly mortified, his habitsare those of a tertiary of the poor and humble St. Francis.

Coming now to the income actually required, it has been estimated that the smallest sum that will suffice for the Holy See and the central government of the Church is about£350,000. It is said that all told about five thousand persons, including old impiegati [employees], are dependent upon the Holy See. The sum we have mentioned, if divided equally, would not afford to each of these the wages of a commonEnglish mechanic, while leaving nothing for the Pope’s privy purse, for household expenses, for diplomatic expenses, for fabrics, for libraries, for offices, for printing and stationery, and for other inevitable incidental charges.

Whether the sum finally collected from the Peter’s Pence of 1868 sufficed was never made known. But in July of 1870, the Vatican floated a loan of $200,000 from the House of Rothschild. Estimates at the turn of the century indicated that the Vatican needed $4 million a year to make ends meet.

During this period, the Vatican had its then-usual sources of income. There were monies from direct taxa- tion—that is to say, from fees attached to various functions like marriages, baptisms, and funerals. The sale of official stamped paper for documents always brought in some revenue. Also there were legacies (which in some instances reached astonishing sums). There were also gifts that came from pilgrims in Rome; some pilgrimages brought groups of a thousand or more men and women, each of whom by tradition would leave a gift of money, never less than a dollar from American visitors. These small gifts added up. Another important contribution to the Vatican treasury in those days came from the domains of Assisi, Loreto, and Padua, from which land taxes were exacted. A percentage of the offerings received at the Shrine of Lourdes also helped fill the Pope’s coffers. Masses were sold (to mitigate the purgatorial sufferings of the dead), as were relics (articles of saints’ clothing, eating utensils saints had used, etc.), as were images of the Madonna, as were candles and rosaries—and pieces of straw from the straw bed of the self-imprisoned Pope Pius IX. Coupons—repayable in heaven—were sold. And last but not least, there was the sale of annulments.

But this income wasn’t enough, apparently. Several times before the signing of the Lateran Treaty, the Vatican had to dispose of some of its properties in Rome in order to meet expenses and deficits. In 1880, to give Pope Leo XIII a helping hand, a group of noblemen whose families had been closely allied to the Church for centuries founded a bank, the Banco di Roma, on behalf of the Vatican. With capital supplied by the friendly aristocracy, the Banco di Roma mostly concerned itself with the acquisition of real estate. In 1882, the bank bought the controlling interest in an English company that supplied water to Rome, and the company changed its name to La Societa dell’Acqua Pia Antica Marcia. The Vatican eventually took over the company, and ran it until 1962, when most of its aqueducts, mains, tubes, pipes, and equipment were sold to a private syndicate. In 1885, the Banco di Roma bought control of Rome’s trolley and bus system, too. But, by 1898, the bank had twice been forced to reduce its capitalization and was close to failing. It barely managed to survive until Bernardino Nogara intervened and put it back on its feet.

The lack of business know-how exemplified in the operation of the Banco di Roma kept the Vatican just about barely even for the half century before World War I. But, despite financial slumps with which none of the popes seemed able to cope, the Vatican chose not to make public its financial position.

Somehow, the Vatican managed to keep afloat during World War I, but after the war the Vatican was still trying to learn how to swim in the swirling currents of twentieth-century economics. In 1919, the Pope sent a representative to the United States to negotiate a loan believed to be in the vicinity of $1 million. But the Vatican apparently went about it in the wrong way, and the loan never materialized. The Vatican was rescued, however— by the Knights of Columbus, which that year had planned a pilgrimage to Rome. The visiting delegates brought with them a gift to the Pope of approximately $250,000. As far as the public record is concerned, the only other time in history that the Pope engaged in money- raising negotiations was in 1928, when a Vatican loan of $1.5 million was floated through George Cardinal Mundelein; the loan was backed by Church property in Chicago worth several million dollars.

Financially, the Vatican was in trouble after World War I. But very few people knew about it. By 1922, when Pope Benedict XV died, the papacy was well-nigh bankrupt. Like all of his predecessors, Benedict had been generous. But, unlike his predecessors, Benedict had no idea how much money he was giving out to charity. When he assumed the pontifical chair in 1914, he made no attempt to find out how much was in the apostolic sugar bowl. Benedict gave out money faster than the Vatican machinery could bring it in. In his desk drawer the Pope kept huge sums, and he would hand money freely to any priest who came to him with a tale of woe. The overgenerous pontiff also made personal contributions for the creation of schools, convents, missionary settlements, and the like. Never did he give a thought to where the money was coming from.

A seemingly authentic story is told about Benedict’s meeting with a bishop who was then engaged in building a convent in Palestine. The bishop, visiting Benedict on other matters, had been warned by papal advisors not to mention the project to His Holiness because there was no more “loose change” in the pontifical desk drawer. Thus the bishop talked to the Pope on general subjects—the number of conversions achieved in Palestine, the position of the Catholic religion in the Middle East, and so on. When at last it came time for the bishop to leave, Benedict said to him, “And what of your convent?”

The bishop stammered and managed to say that the building was coming along slowly, but just fine.

“In that case,” said Benedict, “we shall contribute.” He opened up the center drawer, where he usually kept his pin money and after foraging around found nothing, smiled, pulled open a bottom drawer on the side of the desk, and dumped out the contents. “Here,” he said, “take this!” and handed the bishop $6,250.

If Pope Benedict was a flop as a manager of money, his successor, Pius XI, was possibly even more of a flop. The day after Pius XI took office, he presented the sum of $26,000 to the German cardinals to help countrymen who had suffered when the value of the mark declined. A few months later, still having made no accounting of how much money was in the Vatican treasury, Pius handed out $62,500 for a sanatorium at Thorenc, France. In the same year he also contributed $156,250 to help Russia, then opened up his purse once again and presented the poor people of Rome with $9,375. He also gave $50,000 to the victims of the Smyrna fire, $12,500 to the Catholic Institute at Cologne, and $3,125 to the Perretti Institute. The next year, 1923, Pius XI contributed $81,250 for hungry Germans, $21,875 to the Viennese, and $20,000 for Japanese earthquake victims.

Such prodigality had to lead to a day of reckoning. And it came when Monsignor Dominique Mariani, a secretary of the cardinals’ committee for the management of the Holy See’s property, made an inventory and discovered that the Vatican was virtually broke. Given the title Monsignor Elemosiniere Segreto, Mariani instituted some reforms, always with the Pope’s blessing, and every Thursday would sit down with His Holiness and go over the expenses of the past week, down to the tiniest detail. For the first time in Vatican history, a common-sense bookkeeping system was instituted.

Through the efforts of Mariani, the Vatican began to face the problem of its deficits. The first audit in Church history, made in 1928, showed that the Vatican’s expenses in a given day often came to $5,000. Fortunately, they were covered by income. To all intents and purposes, the Vatican was down to its bottom dollar that year, but the audit did turn up a “lost” $55,000, which saved the day.

The 1928 Pontifical Annual made the following brief report on the new measures being taken to reorganize the Vatican’s household economy:

His Holiness Pius XI . . . has reformed the administration of Vatican finances. The entire administration of the Apostolic Palace is placed under the control of a commission of cardinals. The gifts of the faithful brought to Rome by the bishops are a sum kept apart, administered by the personal control of the Pope, paid by a person of confidence who keepsa book in which are marked all receipts and expenses, andwhich is balanced at the end of each week. Expenses figure annually about $1,052,631. The bookkeeping is carried out according to the most modern principles and is severely controlled.

The Vatican was beginning to take control of its financial affairs, but another problem loomed during the late nineteen-twenties to cause the Pope distress. Relations between the papacy and the Mussolini regime had deteriorated to a state of reciprocal distrust and outright hostility. There were so many conflicts between the Red Velvets of Pius and the Black Shirts of Il Duce that a volume would be necessary to detail them all. In one speech Mussolini wryly reminded everyone, “It must be understood that between the Italian State and the Vatican City there is a distance which can be measured in thousands of miles, even if it requires only five minutes to go and see it and ten minutes to walk around its confines.”

Yet Mussolini, who had been called a devil by the Pope, was to do more for the Vatican than any man, any cleric, any pope, in all history. Perhaps Mussolini himself wrote the best footnote on this subject. In an article written for the French newspaper Figaro, he stated, “The history of Western civilization from the time of the Roman Empire to our day shows that every time the state clashes with religion, it is always the state which ends defeated.”

These words were written after 1929, the year in which Italy signed the Lateran Treaty, and helped create for the Vatican the best of all possible worlds.

The Lateran Treaty V

“Mussolini was the man sent by Providence.”

(Pope Pius XI)

AN EXTREMELY SUPERSTITIOUS man, and quite unashamed of it, Benito Mussolini, who ruled Italy with an iron hand from 1922 until 1943, often during public appearances unabashedly put his hand into his pocket to tap his private parts for good luck. He believed the gesture would protect him in case someone in his presence had the “evil eye.” Mussolini had some other questionable beliefs. He gave credence to the ill effects of the cold light of the moon upon the face of a sleeping man and to the prognostications of fortune-tellers and palm readers. Swayed though he was by the occult sciences, Mussolini never believed in God, nor, except for political convenience, did he ever call himself a Catholic.

Yet no man did more for the Vatican than did the Italian dictator. When he signed the Lateran Treaty with the Pope on February 11, 1929, he gave the Church a “shot in the arm” that proved to be critical in its economic history. Generally speaking, many people know of the Lateran Treaty, but very few know about it—why it came about, what its provisions were, and how it provided the Church with the springboard it needed to jump into Italy’s economy. If politics alone can be said to make strange bedfellows, then politics mixed with religion produces associations that defy characterization. Such was that of Il Duce and the Pope at the end of the nineteen- twenties.

Why did these two previously incompatible individuals, with their incompatible ideas, undergo a wedding of sorts? And what of the offspring produced by this “marriage of convenience”?

Before and after he assumed power in 1922, Mussolini had frequently boasted of being a nonbeliever; in fact, no one who knew him had ever known him to attend mass. Realizing, however, that Church support was indispensable to his plans, he sought to cater to the clergy. Among other things, he brought the crucifix back into the classrooms of Italy, abolished Freemasonry, and granted churches substantial amounts of money to repair the buildings damaged during World War I. Il Duce even went so far as to go through a belated religious marriage to his wife and to have his growing children baptized in the Catholic rites. In time, the man who had once written a pamphlet entitled God Does Not Exist, and who had freely blasphemed and frequently attacked the Church, sometimes, through propaganda, attempted to palm himself off as a practicing Catholic and a professed believer. Very few people ever questioned him about his change of heart. Members of the clergy were particularly silent on the subject, for the clergy more than welcomed his stentorian support.

Because he needed help in entrenching himself as a political power, and wanted to improve his public image both in Italy and abroad, Mussolini paved the way for the settlement of the Vatican’s long-standing grievance against the Italian state. The so-called Papal States lost during the Risorgimento had covered an area of some seventeen thousand square miles, including all of the city of Rome and a large hunk of territory north of the Eternal City and south of the River Po. The papal lands extended from the Tyrrhenian Sea to the Adriatic and included more than three million people. Although the popes had been hostile to the Risorgimento, by 1929 the Vatican was willing to accept a settlement for the loss of its temporal powers. When the Duce offered to make a deal, Pope Pius XI acceded.

It was raining heavily when Pietro Cardinal Gasparri drove into the Piazza Laterana on February 11, 1929, the day the agreement was to be signed. The noontime bells of the churches rang out, and Mussolini and his aides entered the Lateran Palace, to be greeted by Pope Pius’ representatives. The signing was to take place in the same room in which Charlemagne had been the guest of Leo III over a thousand years earlier. Atop the long table—a gift of the Philippine Islands—were the inkwells, the blotters, the papers.

Nodding to the Duce as he entered the room, Cardinal Gasparri said, “I am happy to welcome you to our parochial house, and I rejoice that the treaties are being signed on the feast day of Notre Dame de Lourdes.”

Mussolini registered no sign of recognition at this remark; the Cardinal then added, “And on the seventh anniversary of the coronation of His Holiness.”

“Oh yes!” Mussolini said suddenly. “That particular coincidence has not escaped me!” In silence the dictator went to the table and sat down alongside the Cardinal. Pius had sent a gold pen, blessed by him, and after the Duce had affixed his signature and all the documents had been exchanged, Gasparri presented him the pen as a gift from the Pope. The two men shook hands and left the room. The whole affair had lasted less than thirty minutes.

When the news of the Church-State treaty was finally announced, the local citizenry—as well as the rest of the world—was startled. The Italian public, clearly pleased, accorded Benito Mussolini an overflow of support, which he himself had not perhaps anticipated. He became an idol to Catholic Italy. In thousands of homes, people cut pictures of the Duce from magazines and newspapers and pasted them on kitchen and living room walls. Youths splashed pro-Duce slogans in white paint on any flat surface available. Shovels he had used to inaugurate public projects were prized as relics. Wine glasses from which he had sipped were lovingly placed on shelves by restaurant owners. Young women by the thousands offered their favors to his virility—and let it be said that many of them, in fact, were ushered into the Duce’s chambers.

But if the Lateran Treaty was a major coup for Mussolini, it was to be an even bigger victory for the Vatican. Mussolini, like all his bloodstained predecessors, has gone the way of all flesh, but the Vatican remains. And today the Vatican is solidly entrenched in the Italian economy.

The 1929 treaty was actually a unity of three separate agreements: the Lateran Pact, which provided for the creation of the new State of Vatican City; the Financial Convention, which granted payments to the Church for the loss of its temporal powers; and the Concordat, which gave the Vatican powers and privileges to administer its own special affairs.

According to the articles of the Lateran Pact, the State of Vatican City was set up as a sovereign entity. Three basilicas—San Giovanni Laterano, Santa Maria Mag-giore, and San Paolo—and their accompanying buildings were classified as extraterritorial and were given immunity from Italian property taxes and real estate laws; the same status and immunity were given to the pontifical villa at Castel Gandolfo, where popes have traditionally spent their summer months, and also to a number of Church-owned office buildings in various parts of Rome. The Vatican agreed to recognize the existence of Italy and Italy’s occupation of Rome as a permanent thing. And Italy agreed to accept the Church’s canon law, which meant that divorces could not be granted by the state and that marriage ceremonies performed in church would fulfill civil requirements.

Under the terms of the Financial Convention, Italy consented to make a large money settlement for the loss of Vatican properties. A sum of $40 million was paid in one lump; in addition, 5 percent government bonds worth about $50 million were transferred to the Holy See. Italy also agreed to pay the salaries of parish priests stationed on its soil. (During the summer of 1959, the Italian parliament passed a law revising the pay scale provided for by this original agreement. Priests now receive $529 a year from the Italian government; higher-ranking clerics get about $600. Over thirty thousand priests are currently on the Italian payroll, a fact not generally known, even to the Italian people.)

The third document of the Lateran Treaty, the Concordat, carried a number of economic clauses that were of special interest to the Vatican. Members of the Roman Catholic clergy and citizens of the State of Vatican City were exempted from paying Italian taxes. The Church was given control of the various organizations, lay and clerical, functioning in the name of Catholicism throughout Italy. This meant that the Vatican would supervise the financial affairs of these organizations, which were referred to and defined as “ecclesiastical corporations.” It also meant that the Italian government would have no legal right to intervene in activities of these organizations and could not block the formation of any new organization to which a pope granted approval.

The Concordat also stipulated that Protestant Bibles could no longer be distributed in Italy, that evangelical meetings in private homes were forbidden, and that Catholicism was to be Italy’s official religion. Furthermore, religious teaching was to be extended into state schools and religion made a compulsory subject at the primary and secondary levels; Church-related educational institutions were to receive preferences over similar lay or state institutions. Finally, February 11 was named a national holiday to commemorate the signing of the treaty.

The noneconomic consequences the Lateran Treaty was to have in Italy need not concern us here. The financial effects of the pact were far reaching, however, though not immediately visible. On June 7, the very day the Lateran Treaty was ratified, Pope Pius created the Holy See’s Special Administration and appointed Bernardino Nogara, a relative of the Archbishop of Udine, to watch over the large sum of money the Italian government had granted the Vatican. From the time Nogara received his appointment the names of prominent and trusted Vatican laymen began to appear on the boards of directors of various Italian companies. Significantly, Nogara’s name rarely if ever showed on any company’s roster of officers, but it is known that no Vatican layman, no matter how good his rapport with the pontifical family, could receive such an appointment if he did not have the blessing of Nogara. It should be mentioned that in later years the Nogara name did appear on a few corporation listings, where it was teamed in each case with several other key Vatican names.

What can be deduced from this is that Nogara wanted his own men in at the policy-making level of any company in which he placed Vatican funds. He made his careful investments one by one, and he appointed an “agent” to go with each. Where the sum was big, so was the name. Where the sum was bigger, several Vatican names could be found. Nogara never put “his” money into anything unless the sentinel went along.

One of Nogara’s early targets was a gas combine called Italgas. Soon after the end of World War I, an Italian financier by the name of Rinaldo Panzarasa managed to get control of six small gas companies. These were La Stige, Italgas, La Societa Italiana Industria Gas di Torino, La Gas e Coke di Milano, La Veneta Industria Gas di Venezia, and La Romana Gas; they furnished home fuel for twelve of Italy’s largest cities, including Milan, Rome, Turin, and Venice. The companies were grouped by Panzarasa into a combine that came to be known as Italgas —and didn’t prosper. In fact, Panzarasa’s gas fortunes, figuratively, exploded.

By 1932, the worth of Panzarasa’s group of companies had plunged from $13.7 million to $1.4 million. Italgas was in trouble, and when the Fascist Italian government refused Panzarasa any kind of financial help, Nogara moved in swiftly. With Senator Alfredo Frassati and the Marquis Francesco Pacelli (whose brother later became Pope Pius XII) providing the front, Italgas fell into the embrace of the Vatican. Nogara built up this decadent organization so that it could begin to service other major cities in Italy. Today Italgas, which sold a total of 679 million cubic meters of gas during the fiscal year 1967-8, is the sole supplier of gas for Italian homes in thirty-six cities. The Vatican remains its controlling stockholder.

But all was not clear sailing after the Vatican embarked for new financial horizons. Italy, like other parts of the world, was lashed by economic storms between 1929 and 1933. Three of the country’s major banks in which the Vatican had invested heavily—the Banco di Roma, the Banco di Santo Spirito, and the Sardinian Land Credit — were floundering. Among other problems, the largest of these banks, the Banco di Roma, possessed large packets of securities that had lost much of their worth and nearly all of their prestige. No one knows, even to this day, what deal Nogara made with Mussolini to bail out the Vatican, but in short order the moribund shares were transferred to the government holding company, I.R.I. (Istituto di Ricostruzione Industriale), that the Duce had formed as a catchall for shaky industrial organizations and banks. Mussolini, whose ignorance of economics made him an easy target for Nogara, let the Vatican bank transfer the securities, not for the current market prices, but for prices commensurate with their original worth. All told, I.R.I. paid the bank approximately $632 million—a sum far in excess of what the securities were then worth. The tremendous loss was written off by the Italian treasury.

Between 1929 and the outbreak of World War II, Nogara assigned Vatican capital and Vatican agents to work in diversified areas of Italy’s economy—particularly in electric power, telephone communications, credit and banking, small railroads, and the production of agricultural implements, cement, and artificial textile fibers. Many of these ventures paid off.

Nogara gobbled up a number of companies including La Societa Italiana della Viscosa, La Supertessile, La Societa Meridionale Industrie Tessili, and La Cisaraion. Fusing these into one company, which he named CISA-Viscosa and placed under the command of Baron Francesco Maria Oddasso, one of the most highly trusted Vatican laymen, Nogara then maneuvered the absorption of the new company by Italy’s largest textile manufacturer, SNIA- Viscosa. Eventually the Vatican interest in SNIA-Viscosa grew larger and larger, and in time the Vatican took control—as witness the fact that Baron Oddasso subsequently became vice president.

Thus did Nogara penetrate the textile industry. He penetrated other industries in other ways, for Nogara had many tricks up his sleeve. This selfless man, who probably did more to infuse life into the Italian economy than did any other single businessman in Italy’s history, recognized that the subsurface strength of the Lateran Treaty lay in Clauses 29, 30, and 31 of the Concordat. Although some intellectuals had inveighed against the concessions Italy had made on education, marriage, and divorce, few observers had paid any close attention to those clauses of the Lateran Treaty that were mainly economic in nature. To most people they seemed of secondary importance.

But not to Nogara, the man with the dollar sign on his mind and the sign of the Cross in his heart. Clauses 29, 30, and 31 dealt with tax exemptions and the formation of new, tax-exempt “ecclesiastical corporations,” over which the Italian state would have no controls.

Nogara reasoned that if he could get Mussolini to put a liberal interpretation on the word “ecclesiastical,” he would be able to save Vatican corporations millions of dollars a year in Italian taxes. This was no small task, yet the Vatican Hercules succeeded at it.

The cunning Nogara euchred Mussolini into granting every Catholic corporation, whether its actual function was ecclesiastical or fiscal, either full exemption from taxes or substantial tax abatements. Somehow, Mussolini was convinced that a Vatican-owned bank was “a temple doing the work of God”! and that what was good for God was good for the Vatican—and that that was good for Italy.

The friendship of the Vatican and the Fascists continued throughout most of the thirties. It was especially strong after Italy invaded Ethiopia in 1935. A Nogara munitions plant supplied arms for the Italian army. But the friendship started to wane toward the end of the reign of Pius XI, who died in 1939.

When Pius XII took possession of the pontifical throne, Mussolini, who was suspicious of his polyglot intellectualism and believed him to possess the “evil eye,” refused to kneel and kiss his hand, and he commanded photographers not to take pictures of him and Pius XII which would in any way convey the idea the Duce might be the humble servant of the Church. Relations between the Italian dictator and the Vatican had crumbled, but by then the Catholic Church was well entrenched in the Italian economy. Nogara was still steering the financial ship, and the Church had no worries about its future course.

Benito Mussolini had never quite been able to achieve the empire of which he dreamed, but he enabled the Vatican and Bernardino Nogara to create a dominion of another kind.

What Is the Pope? VI

ONCE, DURING A solemn and symbolic ceremony in St. Peter’s Basilica, when knickered throne-bearers were carrying Pope Pius XII down the center aisle, a little Italian boy of about twelve cried out to the pontiff in a voice plain to hear, “Santo Padre, I want to be like you someday—I want to be pope!”

His Holiness smiled at the lad and, as the dais-bearing porters paused for a moment, made a sign of the Cross, bent forward in his ornamented chair, and was overheard to say in whispered tones, “My son, being a pope isn’t as great as you think.”

Still awed by the sight of the pontiff’s tall tiara and white-and-gold robe, the boy shrugged his shoulders in reverent resignation and said, “Then I don’t want to be the pope either.”

It might be appropriate here to examine the office of the papacy from a new angle. Theologians delve deeply into such questions as, Why is the Pope? and, Who is the Pope? Newspaper correspondents in Rome file thousands of words of copy each year on, Where is the Pope? and How is the Pope? Few writers, however, deal with what may be the most significant question of all, What is the Pope?

At first this may not seem like a proper question, and yet the answer provides insight into the workings of the least populated state in the world, whose leader rules over the largest number of organized people in the world— some 550 million Roman Catholics. Since the 322 million Mohammedans, the 309 million Hindus, the 300 million Confucians, and the 202 million Protestants have never been able to overtake the Catholics in terms of numbers, the Vatican chief executive is the spiritual leader of the largest religious group on our planet.

The papal office is not without its impressive array of titles, official and unofficial. Officially the Pope is the Bishop of Rome, Successor of the Prince of Apostles, Supreme Pontiff of the Universal Church, Servant of the Servants of God, Patriarch of the West, Primate of Italy, Archbishop and Metropolitan of the Roman Province, and Sovereign of the State of Vatican City. Unofficially he is often called Rector of the World upon Earth, Father of Princes and Kings, Supreme Pontiff, and Pontifex Maximus. This last name is usually seen in abbreviated form, as “Pont.Max.” (with no separation at the middle period). The Latin word pontifex means builder of bridges, and in ancient Rome the title Pontifex Maximus was given to the luminary who presided when a bridge was erected across the Tiber and the spirits of the river had to be conciliated. At the time of his murder, Julius Caesar was the Pontifex Maximus, but in the year 440 the title was transferred to Pope Leo I, and it has since unofficially remained with the papacy. Although no inscription on a fountain, building, or tomb in Rome seems complete unless a “Pont.Max.” is included, no pope has personally used the signature for centuries. From the time of Gregory the Great, who died in the year 604, the title employed on papal bulls has been Servus Servorum Dei, Servant of the Servants of God.

The Vatican Archives contain a copy of a papal letter, an answer to one from Queen Victoria, indicating what one pontiff thought of his various designations. Queen Victoria, who apparently did not want to give acknowledgment to any of the papal titles, began her letter (which is also in the Vatican Archives) with “Most Eminent Sir” instead of the usual “Your Holiness.” The pontiff was apparently offended. In his reply, he addressed Victoria as “The Most Serene and Powerful Victoria, Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and Other Regions, Illustrious Empress of India.”

In Italy, the pope is generally called Il Papa, a title that comes from pater patrum, a Latin phrase meaning father of fathers. He is also referred to, most commonly in Rome, by the family name he gave up when elected. Thus the Romans call Pope Paul VI Papa Montini, just as they called Pope John XXIII Papa Roncalli, and Pius XII Papa Pacelli. To some people, the use of the last name may seem disrespectful or irreverent. It isn’t, however. For one thing, the Italians are accustomed to having the pope in their midst. He may be idolized, worshiped, and esteemed by pious Italians, but he is often taken for granted in Rome and is regarded in other parts of Italy more as a man than as a saintly being.

Without meaning any insult whatever, the Italians tell many jokes about the papacy. One especially good anecdote made the rounds when Clare Booth Luce was the United States ambassador to Italy (l’ambassatrice, the Italians called her).

Converts, say the Italians, are the most fervent of Catholics. The story is about the time Mrs. Luce, a convert, was received in private audience by Pope Pius XII. Neither she nor the Pope emerged from the reception chamber for a long, long time. Vatican aides began to fret. After several hours they peeked into the room. The Pope was backed up into a corner; Mrs. Luce, talking a blue streak, paused for breath. “But, Mrs. Luce,” the aides heard the Pope say in a gentle, yet quivering voice, “I already am a Roman Catholic!”

Another story, told by Bill Pepper, Newsweek’s former resident correspondent in Rome, is perhaps closer to the truth. It concerns the first time Pope John’s relatives visited the Apostolic Palace after his coronation. An impressive experience for anyone, a papal audience can evoke in a devout person a tremendous sense of humility. On the occasion of the special audience for John’s family, the relatives walked timidly through the golden halls, past the omnipresent Swiss Guards. When they saw John, dressed in his pontifical white robes, they dropped to their knees and bowed their heads.

“Lasciate perdere (Forget all that)!” said John. “Don’t be afraid. It’s only me!”

When a man is elected pope, he loses many things. He loses his family name. He loses most of the civil ties that bind him to the country of his birth. Moreover, a new pope finds that his daily life is regulated, often down to the most minute detail, by tradition. The men around him may change, but those who replace them have the same functions to carry out, according to the same well- imbedded customs.

The pope’s confessor, an ordinary priest, must be a Jesuit; he must visit the Vatican once a week at a fixed time, and he alone may absolve the pope of his sins. The master of the Apostolic Palace must be a Dominican; the sacristan an Augustinian. If a pope changed any of this, a whole religious order would regard the gesture as an affront.

Newly elected popes have reacted in many ways when they realized they had become the Supreme Pontiff of the Universal Church. Pius X, a simple man, was at first terrified to find himself a monarch who is a slave to his mission. Pointing at the Swiss Guards standing sentry outside his apartment, he once whispered to an old friend, “There are my jailers!”

One of former New York Herald Tribune Rome correspondent Barrett McGurn’s favorite stories has to do with the time Pius XII was readying a speech for the occasion of an English Catholic centennial.

“How do you pronounce ‘centenary’?” he asked an American prelate. “SEN-tenerry,” answered the Yank, putting the accent on the first syllable. “But don’t the British say sin-TEE-nerry?” the pontiff asked. “Yes, Your Holiness—but four fifths of the English- speaking world speak in American style.” “But it’s the English language—the British started it. It’s for them to say how it should be used.”

“Sin-TEE-nerry,” with the accented second syllable, was the way the Pope pronounced it during his discourse a few days later. Nevertheless, when an English bishop paid a visit some time after that, Pius made haste to ask him, “How do you pronounce ‘centenary’?” For the rest of his life the polyglot Pope kept seeking opinions on that one word.

The pope, being one of the world’s few absolute rulers, is not easy to speak with—yet he is the easiest chief of state to see. Most popes hold frequent audiences in the Apostolic Palace (Paul VI’s audiences are often on Wednesdays at noon). On Sundays, usually at noon, popes customarily appear at the window of the top-floor papal apartment to bless the crowds standing in St. Peter’s Square. Pope John emerged many times from his sheltered quarters to make visits in Rome and in other parts of Italy. Paul VI has visited more countries (India, the Middle Eastern countries, the United States, Portugal, Turkey, Colombia) than any other pope in history— and each time his presence has attracted huge crowds of Catholics and non-Catholics alike.

There is no question of the pope’s charismatic appeal. Despite the fact that there are millions of people who owe the pope no spiritual allegiance, papal influence in world affairs has compelled nations and their leaders to extend the pope diplomatic courtesies normally reserved for civil rulers. No other religious leader in the world is afforded such treatment. No single state officer has been such a consistent drawing card, away from his immediate domain, as has the man who sits on Peter’s Chair in the Eternal City.

Avro Manhattan, a frequent commentator on Vatican affairs, attributes much of the papal lure to the dual nature of the Church. He once told me in a taped interview, “Although the most uniform of religious institutions, the Church is also the most diversified. While the most unchangeable, she has a genius for adaptability; and while constantly obsessed with things pertaining to a future life, she is vigorously active in controlling things pertaining to this world. Last but not least, she has the greatest centralization of power in the world.

“Her administration,” Manhattan continued, “is unique. Although a church, she is at the same time a sovereign government. Although a mighty religious institution, she is also a mighty political presence and a major economic center. Although her officials are drawn from many nationalities, when acting as members of her government they have none; while speaking the major languages of the world, she issues her ordinances in one which only a few can understand. Although territorially the smallest state in existence, hers is the most significant in the world. And although neither an empire, a kingdom, nor a republic, it is a mixture of all three.

“The head of such government wears not one but three crowns. Although without an army, a navy, or hydrogen bombs, he has more power than if he had at his disposal the greatest arsenal on the globe. Spiritually and hierarchically, no one is above him except God, the source of his authority.”

Once again we come, then, to the question, What is the Pope? This can be answered or explained in part by reviewing the duties, responsibilities, powers, and operations of the papacy.

Lord paramount of the Holy See, the pope is first among his bishops, all of whom come under his direct jurisdiction; in theory he has full and absolute power over the Roman Catholic Church. Every decree requires his approval. He can obey or ignore precedent. He can set aside tradition; he can write (or rewrite) constitutions; he can change discipline without consultation; he can proclaim dogmas on his own. Although on important matters the pope is supposed to seek counsel and advice from the College of Cardinals, he is empowered to make up his own mind and take action. On theological questions, the pope invariably consults with his bishops and cardinals, but, on matters of high policy, he may evolve a course of action without any previous consultations, as did Pope John when, without calling in the Curia cardinals for their views, he decided to go ahead with the Ecumenical Council.

The pope has executive as well as legislative and judiciary powers. He can be judged by no man, and there is no appeal from his decisions. In this respect his position is tantamount to that of a sovereign who cannot be brought to court. Acting in his executive capacity, the pope may (1) approve or sanction or suppress religious orders, (2) grant indulgences, (3) beatify or canonize saints, (4) appoint bishops, (5) erect, administer, alter, or suppress bishoprics, (6) assign an auxiliary bishop to one who is incapacitated, (7) found and legislate for papal universities, (8) issue liturgical books, (9) administer the temporal goods of ecclesiastical foundations, (10) erect and govern missions dependent on the Holy See.

As a legislator, the pope may (1) call, preside over, and adjourn ecumenical councils, (2) regulate holy days and Catholic feasts, (3) introduce new rites and abrogate old ones, (4) issue ex cathedra decretals on belief, (5) introduce, alter, or suppress Church laws on any subject, (6) defend doctrine against heresies, (7) define fast days and periods of fasting. Also liberally defined are the pope’s judicial duties. He may (1) relax vows and oaths for members of the religious who want to return to secular life, (2) give matrimonial dispensations, (3) act as a court, (4) establish rules of judicial procedure, (5) establish censures or punishments, (6) organize courts for hearing cases, (7) organize courts or appoint synodal judges for the diocese of Rome.

Inasmuch as the men elected to the papacy tend to be advanced in years, there is always the question of whether a septuagenarian or an octogenarian could become mentally enfeebled while serving as pontiff. Rome correspondent Robert Neville once took this problem to a Vatican prelate and asked him what would happen if a pope were to lose his reason or become physically incapacitated. Neville pointed out that the fact that popes are elected for life, with no provisions either for their recall or for their abdication, and the further facts that there is no proviso in Church regulations for creating a regency and that the College of Cardinals cannot be legally convened to take over made the problem appear insoluble.

The Vatican officer said, “The Good Lord seems to protect the Church from such a catastrophe. Popes just apparently do not lose their mind or reason. But should the impossible happen, I believe the Vatican bureaucracy would act as an effective brake against rash or embarrassing acts.”

To better understand the question, What is the Pope? one must examine the structure of the Holy See, which is the government of the Vatican and of the Roman Catholic Church.

As the head of his church, the pope runs a vast business. He runs it as a corporate structure, working with twelve congregations (committees) of cardinals—a system that dates from the late sixteenth century—and with three apostolic tribunals and five departmental offices. Because he is the chief executive officer of the State of Vatican City, the pope is guaranteed independence of any civil power. No other religious leader in the world enjoys a comparable position.

To understand the foundations of papal authority is to understand who, why, and what a pope is. His primacy of jurisdiction, not only over the clerics but also over the hundreds of millions of the faithful, extends to matters affecting his religion, but it also extends to all other matters in which the Roman Catholic Church is interested throughout the world. Using his wide religious authority, the pope plays a distinctive role in the affairs of the world, exercising a power that is independent of his temporal position as head of Vatican City. The 550 million people who are Roman Catholics are but a modest number of the hundreds of millions who recognize the juridical sovereignty of the Holy See as a moral authority while not agreeing in substance with Catholicism’s theological basis.

Various countries of the world therefore maintain diplomatic relations with the Vatican. Papal ambassadors are to be found not only in Catholic nations but also in Protestant, Islamic, Buddhist, and atheist countries. An ambassador of the pope is called a nuncio, and he has the same status as the ambassador of any great power. At this writing, while Pope Paul is still reigning, the Vatican maintains official ambassadors in the following countries: Argentina, Austria, Belgium, Bolivia, Brazil, Burundi, Cameroon, Chile, China (Taiwan), Colombia, the Congo (Leopoldville), Costa Rica, Cuba, Czechoslovakia, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Egypt, El Salvador, Estonia, Ethiopia, Finland, France, Germany, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Hungary, India, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Kenya, Korea (Seoul), Latvia, Lebanon, Liberia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malawi, Malta, the Netherlands, Nicaragua, Pakistan, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, the Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Rumania, Rwanda, Senegal, Spain, Switzerland, Syria, Turkey, Uruguay, Venezuela, Yugoslavia, Zambia.

If a country does not have a nuncio, the Vatican bypasses the problem by nominating a representative without the official status of an ambassador; such representatives are called apostolic delegates. Officially an envoy of the pope, the apostolic delegate is unofficially an ambassador in the guise of an ecclesiastical official of the Catholic Church. He is not accredited by the government of the country in which he stays, but in practice he is usually given many of the courtesies and privileges extended to fully recognized ambassadors. At present, the following countries give hospitality to apostolic delegates: Albania, Australia, Bulgaria, Cambodia, Canada, Great Britain, Greece, Laos, Mexico, New Zealand, Tanzania, Thailand, the United States, and Vietnam (Saigon). Apostolic delegates are also maintained in Copenhagen for the Scandinavian countries, in Algiers for North Africa, in Nairobi for East Africa, in Dakar for West Africa, in Pretoria for South Africa, in Lagos for Central West Africa, and in Yaounde for Central Africa.

Adjudged by the bar of world opinion and international law, the pope enjoys immunity from the territorial jurisdiction of any human authority. Consider what happened when Hitler’s occupation troops in Rome completely surrounded the pope’s tiny state. German soldiers never crossed the frontier. Had they decided to invade Vatican City, the blitzkrieg would have taken all of a half hour, and the man who was then pope would have been conquered—but not defeated. In his own way, Hitler provided a dramatic confirmation of the real, if intangible, moral authority of the pope, however diminutive his territory. The pontiff’s unique position in the world was aptly expressed by one writer, who said, “The pope is not sovereign because he is the ruler of the Vatican state; he is the ruler of the Vatican because he is a sovereign.”

The papal case is, of course, unique in contemporary international law and diplomatic practice. It is said that Winston Churchill, during a visit with Joseph Stalin, attempted to convince the Soviet dictator of the advisability of having the Vatican as an ally. Stalin, the story goes, asked derisively, “How many divisions does the Pope have?”

According to one reporter, the episode was related to Pope Pius, who commented, “Mr. Stalin will meet my legions in the other world!”

Of the pontiff’s celestial consociates little can be said here. In the practical day-to-day world of the twentieth century, His Holiness often depends on terrestrial colleagues to help him carry out his complex operations. The pope has under him the Roman Curia—the body of congregations, tribunals, and departmental offices. The congregations, corresponding somewhat to the ministries of other countries, include the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (which before the recent Curia reforms was the Holy Office), the Congregation for Bishops (formerly the Consistorial Congregation), the Congregation for the Oriental Churches, the Congregation for the Discipline of Sacraments, the Congregation for the Clergy (formerly the Congregation of the Council), the Congregation for the Religious and for Secular Institutes (formerly the Congregation for the Religious), the Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith (which is now also called the Congregation for the Evangelization of the Nations), the Congregation of Rites, and the Congregation for Catholic Education (formerly the Congregation of Seminaries and Universities). Though these overlap a bit, the cardinals who serve in the Curia are formed into one of two “parties,” which comprise the conservative and the progressive elements. These “parties” can exercise pressure on given papal decisions— such as the bitter pill Paul was made to swallow with the recent encyclical against birth control.

Next to the pope himself, the single most important individual in the Vatican hierarchy is his immediate aide, the secretary of state—whose duties correspond to those of the prime minister in other government organizations. For most of his tenure in office (1939-1958), Pope Pius kept the post in his own hands. But this is not usually the case. Most popes have leaned heavily on the secretary of state—Pope John once described a secretary of state as “my closest collaborator”—because the secretary’s office has a variety of major functions. The secretary recommends to the pontiff the names of men to represent the Vatican abroad, has jurisdiction over all such appointees, gives instructions to Catholic lay organizations all over the world (thus often exerting pressure on the internal affairs of foreign countries), prepares the texts of agreements with foreign countries, participates in the appointment of bishops, confers Vatican honors and titles, and deals with such ecclesiastical questions as divorce and contraception. Often the secretary of state represents His Holiness at official ceremonies. The secretary sits on the pontifical committee for the government of Vatican City, and he serves as the Vatican’s chief negotiator. One of his most important duties is that of overseeing the cardinals’ committee on the finances of the Vatican.

Veritably the most active officer now in the Vatican, the present secretary of state is the only person who sees Pope Paul on matters of business at least once a day; often he communicates with his immediate superior over the phone as many as a dozen times in one morning. One of his duties is to prepare a daily summary of world press reports for the papal desk. Vatican authorities are inclined to believe the Pope is one of the best-informed chiefs of state in the world—better, they assert, than the President of the United States.

News of all kinds—ecclesiastical, political, economic —comes to the Vatican through a gigantic machine that extends to the remotest corners of the earth. Nuncios and apostolic delegates, who have access to the same information ambassadors and representatives of other governments do, send frequent reports to the secretary of state. But by far the most elaborate reports come from the bishops. Nearly fifteen hundred bishops, scattered all over the globe, send in periodic accounts on matters of interest to the Holy See. Consequently, an enormous amount of correspondence reaches the Vatican every day, including up-to-the-minute stock market analyses and incisive views of current economic trends.

In addition to this “espionage” service, the Vatican requires that each bishop come to Rome to see the Pope personally at least once every five years if he is stationed in Europe, and once every ten years if he is stationed elsewhere. On his arrival, the visitor must submit a report on his diocese; the report must answer a specific set of questions, which covers spiritual, ecclesiastical, social, physical, and economic conditions among the clergy and the parishioners. Considered extraordinarily accurate, these reports go deeply into the sentiments and feelings of the populace of the countries or regions concerned. Any bishop—or for that matter, any clergyman of any rank— who has a report of an urgent nature can communicate in code with the Vatican’s secretary of state by cable or by radio. The secretary of state will quickly pass the message to His Holiness if he considers the dispatch of top priority.

One of the most efficient secretaries of state in recent years was Pope John’s first secretary, Domenico Cardinal Tardini. The two men had excellent rapport with each other, but the Cardinal also had his differences with John —a fact that was often bandied about in inner Vatican circles. A stubborn Roman who could not fathom John’s desire to “open up” the Church to the outside world, Cardinal Tardini was bothered by his superior’s “new ways.” Tardini, whose office was one floor below the Pope’s, had a habit, especially when miffed, of referring to John as “the one up there.” Since news tidbits and gossip travel quickly inside the Vatican, it wasn’t long before word got to John, who summoned Tardini forthwith.

“I’d like to clear up a matter,” the Pope said. ” ‘The one up there’ is the Lord, the Eternal Father in Heaven. I’m just ‘the one on the fourth floor.’ So I beg of you, don’t throw confusion into the ranks.”

Building a Business by Building Buildings VII

PERCHED ATOP Monte Mario and overlooking a panorama of ancient ruins and Renaissance settings is the busiest of Rome’s new international hotels, the one flying the Hilton flag. Of the thousands of persons who use the four hundred rooms and suites in the Cavalieri Hilton each year, few are aware that the hotel is largely owned by the Catholic Church. Through the Societa Generate Immobiliare, the Vatican has a big interest in the hilltop hotel, which is operated by Hilton International. Said interest is, to be exact, a three-quarter ownership.

As the largest of Italy’s construction companies, the Vatican-owned Societa Generale Immobiliare has been in business for more than a century. S.G.I. has entered every facet of the building business—not only construction but also planning, investment, production of specialized building materials and equipment, and management.

From 1870, when S.G.I., Italy’s oldest construction company, moved its headquarters from Turin to Rome, until the end of World War II, S.G.I.’s interests and properties were concentrated in and around the Eternal City. Then the company branched out on a nationwide scale, growing into a diversified corporation which took on thousands of new employees. Now S.G.I. has moved onto the international scene. It has thrust itself into the business of constructing large-scale residential projects and selling them to private customers. And lately, this Vatican company has become involved in urban development, with the planning and building of entire metropolitan or suburban centers and communities.

S.G.I.’s investment in construction projects has jumped to over $45 million at this writing. Its gross assets, which were approximately $50 million in 1955, were about $170 million in 1967, while net earnings went from $2.4 million in 1955 to $6.2 million in 1967. Today S.G.I. holds a controlling or substantial interest in over fifty Italian companies. Four of these specialize in investment and property holdings; nineteen are real estate development institutions; nine deal with urban development projects; four engage in agricultural works; eight are industrial and manufacturing corporations; and the rest are technical and service companies.

Although Italy’s housing industry recently suffered a serious slump, S.G.I. was not badly hurt. Its earnings still rose 16 percent and its gross assets went up 20 percent. Moreover, the Vatican company’s investment in land increased 25 percent, due largely to the completion of a long-term plan that involved the formation of a satellite city near Milan.

Nevertheless, there was a slowdown in the sales of S.G.I.’s newly finished buildings. Against a background of reduced mortgage credit facilities, Vatican strategy called for a corresponding increase in S.G.I.’s bank borrowing (from a Vatican bank, to be sure). A satisfactory ratio between current assets and liabilities was restored following the successful issue of 6 percent convertible debentures for the equivalent of $26 million.

In 1966, in Rome alone, the Vatican’s construction society completed or nearly completed three apartment houses, seven garden villages, twelve luxury homes, a five-building apartment development, an office building with ground-floor stores and a cellar garage, two other office buildings (comprising 174 office units), and a twelve-villa garden development.

During the same year, in Milan, S.G.I. finished a three- building housing project that has sixty-two family dwellings, eighteen offices, seventeen stores, and an eighty-car garage. Plans have been drawn to add two more buildings to the project by replacing the old Vatican-owned structures on an adjoining site. Elsewhere in Milan, and also in 1966, S.G.I. completed a seven-building (196-apartment) housing complex and was in the process of putting up a shopping center. The shopping center’s site is the famed Piazza Loreto, the square where the bullet-riddled bodies of Mussolini and his girl friend were hanged upside down during the closing days of the war.

In Genoa, 1966, S.G.I. nearly finished a 150-apartment development along the Via Bobbio, opened and rented to capacity its plush Residence Park Riviera, and began construction of a new 92-apartment development. And plans were made by an affiliate of S.G.I. (the Eden di Nervi Company) to build a large motel just outside Genoa, in an area near the Vatican-owned Hotel Eden.

S.G.I., which recently moved from its cramped headquarters in downtown Rome to an eight-story glass building in the city’s outskirts, has also put into execution building projects of various sorts in other parts of Italy. In Florence, Naples, Palermo, and Catania many of its undertakings are handled by related companies. Few people know which of the related companies belong to S.G.I. and which are controlled by parental pursestrings. S.G.I. guards her fifty plus offspring like a mother hen, preferring to shield them from too much attention. This is done for a number of reasons, some having to do with taxation and others with regional strategy.

To illustrate: S.G.I. does not own Rome’s Cavalieri Hilton directly. The three-quarter owner is a front company called Italo Americana Nuovi Alberghi (I.A.N.A.), which answers only to S.G.I. Similarly, the Societa Italiana Arredamenti Metallici (S.I.A.M.) is owned by the Vatican but administered indirectly by S.G.I. S.I.A.M., which runs a large plant for the production of steel furniture, was the company that supplied the steel furnishings for the Italian luxury liners the Raffaello and the Michelangelo.

S.G.I.’s other companies include the Compagnia Italiana degli Alberghi dei Cavalieri (C.I.D.A.L.C.), which operates hotels in Pisa and Milan; Bellrock Italiana and S.A.R.F.E.C, which produce specialized building materials; and the Manifattura Ceramica Pozzi, which manufactures petrochemicals, plastic products, and plumbing fixtures.

Italy has no regulations or laws against private holding companies, and S.G.I. controls several.

One of the largest is the Societa Generale per Lavori e Pubbliche Utilita (S.O.G.E.N.E.), a construction company with extensive experience in public works. In recent years the Vatican-owned S.O.G.E.N.E. has built a 328 foot-high dam at Mulargia in Sardinia, a 430,000-squarefoot, reinforced concrete flood-water diversion for the Arno River at Pisa, a 125-foot dam at Gramolazzo near Lucca, a hydroelectric power plant near Terni, a 54-mile consortium aqueduct for the cities of Ascoli and Fermo, a 29,950-foot tunnel for the pipes of the projected Frida Aqueduct, hundreds of miles of embankments for Italy’s main superhighway, the tunnel for the Gran San Bernardo highway connecting Italy to Switzerland, concrete emplacements for much of Milan’s new subway, the 4.5mile- long highway between Chiasso and San Gottardo, and a number of bridges and viaducts in various parts of the country.

Demonstrating a know-how that makes it far more than an ordinary general contractor, S.O.G.E.N.E. has even produced entire factories under private contract. The impressive new Colgate-Palmolive plant at Anzio, which covers 430,000 square feet of land and has over seventeen million cubic feet of interior space, was designed and put up by S.O.G.E.N.E. technicians and engineers— that is, by experts who drew their pay from Vatican coffers. This same team of experts also built the $565-million Italsider iron and steel complex; the largest such complex in all Europe, this one, in Taranto, sprawls over 3.9 million square feet of land. A telecommunications plant at San Siro was set up by S.O.G.E.N.E., which handled the entire project. In Sardinia the same Vatican contractors set up not long ago a 64,000-kilowatt thermoelectric power plant (near Cagliari) and a 480,000kilowatt plant (at Sulcis). Working for Italy’s nationalized electric industry (E.N.E.L.), busy S.O.G.E.N.E. teams installed a 200,000-kilowatt thermoelectric power structure at Civitavecchia and a 300,000-kilowatt plant near Perugia.

On opening day, all of S.O.G.E.N.E.’s projects are given the customary blessing by an attending cardinal, and often there is a special good luck message from the Pope himself. The sign of the Cross was made many times in 1966, when S.O.G.E.N.E. completed public and private works that totaled $27.6 million. Although this figure is 25 percent less than that for the preceding year, a decrease attributed to Italy’s economic dip, the outlook for S.O.G.E.N.E. is good, for a number of public projects have already been contracted for and Italy’s economic situation shows every sign of improving.

Most of S.G.I.’s enterprises outside of Italy have been undertaken by still another subsidiary company, Ediltecno, S.p.A. Fully owned by S.G.I., it was liquidated in 1967. Ediltecno, which was organized in 1961 to service projects abroad, was a technical, consulting, and engineering management company with branch offices in Washington and Paris and a representative in New York City. There is also a Canadian company known as Ediltecno (Canada) Limited, located in Montreal, and a Latin American affiliate called Ediltecno de Mexico, S.A., based in Mexico City.

In the past seven years S.G.I. has acquired a controlling interest—nearly 70 percent of the common stock and 50 percent of the preferred—in Watergate Improvements, Inc., of Washington, D.C. Through it, the Vatican is playing a major part in the completion of a large officeand- apartment complex on the edge of the Potomac. The first stage of the project was finished in 1965 with the completion of Watergate East, a thirteen-story cooperative apartment building with 238 apartments, 60,000 square feet of commercial space, and five acres of parking on four underground levels. During the project’s second stage, completed in 1967, a thirteen-story apartment hotel with three underground levels, 221 suites, 10,000 square feet of commercial space, and a 40,000-square-foot indoor garage was built, as was an eleven-story office building with 180,000 square feet of office space. Work on the third stage began in 1967, and by 1969 a building of 144 apartments near Washington’s Rock Creek Parkway is expected to be finished. Then the fourth and last stage of the project (the plans of which have not yet been made known) will begin. Altogether, the luxury project in the Foggy Bottom section of the U.S. capital is expected to cost in the vicinity of $65 million.

In Canada, S.G.I. is active through subsidiary companies. For instance, it is the largest single stockholder, owning 85 percent of the shares, in Montreal’s Redbrooke Estates Limited. Redbrooke recently completed, in one of the most fashionable sections of Montreal, a thirty-three-story apartment building with three underground levels. Including 224 apartment units and 100,000 square feet of indoor parking, the structure (known as Port-Royal) has been taken over by a newly formed Vatican company called Immobiliare-Canada Limited. The company has a capital (in Canadian dollars) of $456,900 and share obligations of $14.4 million, of which S.G.I. holds 93 percent. Immobiliare-Canada owns the forty-seven-story Montreal office building, the Stock Exchange Tower, that houses the Canadian and Montreal stock exchanges. The building cost approximately forty- seven million Canadian dollars and was designed with the cooperation of Rome’s Pier Luigi Nervi, the cement wizard. Over 600 feet high, it is believed to be the tallest reinforced concrete building in the world. Another Vatican- controlled company in Canada is the Sogesan Construction Company Limited, which has been putting up one-family houses southwest of metropolitan Montreal. In the community known as Greendale, Sogesan has so far built and sold over three hundred houses and is still building and selling.

In Mexico, the Lomas Verdes S.A. de C.V. construction company is building a suburban city on some thirteen hundred acres of scenic land outside Mexico City, near Tlalnepantla; the city will ultimately house about a hundred thousand persons. S.G.I. owns about 30 percent of the Mexican company’s stock and is providing the technical consultants and the project manager. A four-lane, tree-lined superhighway, La Superavenida, connecting the new city to the main superhighway and thus to the center of Mexico City, has already been completed by Lomas Verdes. Another Vatican-affiliated company, Immobiliaria Corinto S.A. (in which S.G.I. holds one-third interest) is engaged in building five sixteen-story apartment houses in Mexico City’s fashionable Paseo de Las Palmas sector.

In France during 1967, the Vatican’s S.I.C.E. company (Societe Immobiliere Champs-Elysees), a French company with its head office in Paris, completed work on an elegant marble-faced office building on Paris’ Avenue des Champs-Elysees. The nine-story structure, with four underground levels, provides 110,000 square feet of office space and 87,000 square feet of indoor parking.

With Vatican-owned construction companies building everywhere, there have inevitably been some hints of scandal. Not the least interesting of these stories, which are almost invariably suppressed by the Italian press, was that of the sale to the Italian government of church-owned real estate for the 1960 Olympic installations.

In 1958, shortly before Italy took on the responsibility of hosting the Olympics in Rome, the Vatican owned more than 102 million square feet of property within Rome’s city limits. These holdings made it the biggest landowner, apart from the government, in all Italy. They were accumulated by the Vatican through quiet purchase, inheritances, donations, and foreclosures over a long period of time.

The National Italian Olympic Committee purchased large stretches of land from the Holy See for an unspecified sum and erected some fifteen stadiums at a cost of almost $29 million. To connect the sport structures located in the northern part of the city with those in the southern sector, Rome built the Olympic Highway. The throughway followed a circuitous route because it was placed on land that the city of Rome had purchased from front companies owned by the Societa Generale Immobiliare.

Although the deals for this land had been made long before any mention of public bids, they might have passed unnoticed had it not been for the fact that the speedway began to sprout major cracks and crevices shortly after the Olympic athletes returned to their homelands. Societa Generale Immobiliare, which had participated in the building of the road through several front companies, at that point offered to resurface the holes under a series of new contracts from the municipal government; the offer was accepted, for sums that were never disclosed, and the potholes and splits in the Olympic Highway were finally covered up. So was the scandal—almost.

There’s No Business Like Vatican Business VIII

THE TALE OF the eel that one day left its home in Lake Bracciano, some fifty miles outside Rome, and swam all the way to Vatican City to make an unscheduled “appearance” underneath the Pope’s window has every earmark of a fish story—and yet it happened.

The eel, in swimming around the bottom of the lake, apparently slithered into a cement water pipe. At a point forty-six miles from where the fish started, the main forked off in two directions—one way went to Rome, and the other to Vatican City. Bearing to the right, the eel took the way that led to the Vatican. After passing another underground junction, the eel slipped into a drain and managed to get itself stuck inside one of the two famed fountains in St. Peter’s Square, just below the papal chambers.

The eel was blocking off the fountain’s water. But the irreverent creature would not have made its mark on Vatican history if it hadn’t been for Pope Pius XII, who had just finished shaving when he glanced out the window and noticed to his bewilderment that there was no water in the fountain. At breakfast he commented to his housekeeper on how odd it was that there was water gushing from the far fountain but not from “our fountain.”

Sister Pasqualina picked up the phone and called the fire department. The firemen arrived, as did some newspapermen, and when the fountain’s innards were examined, the eel was found. When it was removed from the tiny pipe in which it was lodged, the fountain came to life again. The eel was carried away in a pail.

A few days later, a newspaper reporter asked what had become of the eel. Since the Vatican ignores all such questions, cynical Romans provided their own answer. The Vatican, they claimed, had taken the eel to one of Rome’s many outdoor fishmarkets, and sold it—which, they said, put the Pope in the fish business as well as every other.

What actually happened to the aquatic intruder is, of course, not known. But the story does indicate what Italian skeptics think about the Vatican and its business interests. According to these cynics, the Vatican is involved in so many business enterprises that even the selling of fish would not be beneath its dignity. As far as anyone knows for sure, the Vatican is not presently in competition with Rome’s outdoor fishmongers. But many Romans are inclined to believe some of the Vatican’s financial operations do have a fishy odor about them.

So widespread and complex are the Vatican’s moneymaking enterprises, that it is almost impossible to get a clear picture of all of them.

In the last chapter we described Vatican participation in the building and construction industry through the Societa Generale Immobiliare. In this chapter we will try to trace the Vatican’s participation in manufacturing, energy, communications, banking, insurance, and other fields. The reader is asked to take a deep breath before entering the maze.

There is hardly a sector of Italy’s economy in which the Vatican’s “men of trust” are not representing the Church’s interests. Almost all of these men hold high positions in companies in which the Church is financially involved. They hold their responsible posts year in and year out, sometimes on the basis of the percentage of profit that the Holy See realizes on its investment.

For many years, Bernardino Nogara served on the board of directors of the Montecatini Company (now Montecatini Edison). Let us take a look at this company. One of the largest corporations in Italy, and indeed, in the world, it deals in mining and metallurgical products, fertilizers, synthetic resins, textile fibers, and pharmaceuticals as well as electric power—and it is bound to the Vatican with hoops of steel. The extent of Vatican participation in this major corporation is not known; probably the Vatican does not have a majority holding, but its interest is substantial indeed. Since the death of Nogara, several Vatican watchdogs have replaced him on the company’s board and take part in all the important decisions, such as that in 1966 to merge Montecatini and the Edison Company. For that year of the merger Montecatini Edison reported total sales of $683.9 million and a net profit of $62.6 million. The 1967 report and balance sheet showed substantial boosts in nearly all sectors of the company’s activities, with total sales having jumped to $854 million and the net profit to $66.1 million. Monte-catini’s investments in other companies amount to over $942 million, its real estate holdings to better than $22 million, and its industrial plants to approximately $1.3 billion.

Montecatini Edison has a number of foreign associate companies, all of which are doing well. The Novamont Corporation at Neal, West Virginia, is doubling its production capacity to take advantage of the expanding polypropylene market in the United States. In Holland, the Compagnie Neerlandaise de L’Azote recently modernized its plant at Sluiskil and increased its daily production to one thousand tons of ammonia and two thousand tons of nitrogenous fertilizers; it also began construction of a new plant that will produce six hundred tons of urea a day. In Spain, Paular, S.A., in which Montecatini Edison has a joint holding, completed a new factory at Puerto- llano for the manufacture of polypropylene and polypropylene products. The Madras Aluminum Company of India expects to increase its production of alumina to fifty thousand tons a year and that of aluminum to twenty-five thousand tons a year. The continually expanding Brazilian Heliogas group recently acquired 140,000 new users and has increased its annual sales of liquid gas to about one hundred sixty thousand tons. And Panedile Argentina during 1967 brought its work on the damming of the Rio Hondo and the construction of a hydroelectric power station at Ullun to completion.

In Italy, Montecatini Edison owns or controls nineteen companies. These include Societa Orobia, Mineraria Prealpina, Miniere di Ravi, Sorap-Societa Raffinazione Petroli, Miana Serraglia, Ascona, Clio, Fortuna, Hermes, Immobiliare Capricorno, Melide, Parnaso, Ribolla, Sant- Agostino and Societa Mineraria Presolana, all of Milan; and Cieli and Societa Imprese Elettriche Scrivia, both of Genoa; Societa Emiliana di Esercizi Elettrici of Parma; and Resia of Casoria.

Now in its second century of existence, Italcementi— which came under Vatican control after the war and is run by papal “agent” Carlo Pesenti—accounts for 32 percent of the total cement production of Italy; it is the world’s fifth largest producer of cement and the second largest in Europe. In 1967, Italcementi, which employs over 6,500 workers, reported a net profit of $5.5 million, and it produced more than twenty-six million tons. The company, which has its headquarters in Bergamo, has a capital of $51.2 million. Because of a crisis in Italy’s building industry in the last few years, Italcementi’s profits had somewhat decreased (they were over $4.2 million in 1965, and not quite $4 million in 1966). The company had taken the decrease more or less in its stride, and according to Massimo Spada (speaking for the board of directors), expects to show up even stronger in 1969 and 1970 when construction picks up again. Thus, Italcementi recently built and put into operation a new cement plant near Brescia. The plant, which covers an area of over two million square feet, produces six hundred thousand tons of cement a year. Much of this is a new white cement known as Supercemento Italbianco which is quick drying and highly resistant to breakage.

The SNIA-Viscosa Company of Milan, which produces more than 70 percent of Italy’s artificial and synthetic textile fibers, is known to be maneuvered by Vatican financiers. It is not owned by the Vatican. It is, however, tied to the CISA-Viscosa Company, which produces viscose fibers and rayon, and to the Saici Company, which manufactures cellulose—and both of these companies are owned by the Vatican. Also, SNIA-Viscosa holds considerable stock in a cotton plant, Cotonificio Veneziano, which is a Vatican-controlled company. SNIA-Viscosa, which has a capital of $89.6 million, has among its shareholders the British textile group Courtaulds, and it owns two profitable textile companies in Spain, two in Brazil, two in Mexico, and one each in India, Argentina, and Luxembourg. The Vatican is a heavy stockholder in these foreign companies, and in two instances holds the controlling shares. For 1966, when it showed a net profit of over $9.7 million, SNIA-Viscosa declared a dividend of 130 lire on each of its 46,703,125 shares. In 1967 when profits dipped substantially to only $310,000, the company nevertheless declared the same dividend of 130 lire but asked its stockholders to take into consideration the advisability of a merger with one of several possible companies that would provide diversification—now perhaps the most holy of words in Vatican business strategy.

One of the Vatican’s biggest companies, Manifattura Ceramica Pozzi, which makes sinks, wash basins, toilet bowls, bidets, and other bathroom fixtures, has been in difficult straits during the last six years, reporting substantial losses each time. At the end of 1967, Pozzi came up with its smallest loss in recent years, $2 million. Adding that to the $11.9 million that Pozzi had dropped during the previous five years, the company’s total deficits now have reached the sum of nearly $14 million. Thus it came as no surprise during 1968 when the Vatican sent in one of its ace troubleshooters, Count Enrico Galeazzi, to sit in on the board of directors as vice president.

With its capital listed at $36.96 million, Pozzi is nevertheless on a solid footing in Italy’s economy. By diversifying into refractory materials, paints, plastics, and chemicals, the company—which is one of the oldest in Italy—is reorganizing its operation. During 1967 it completed the construction of a hygienic-sanitary fixtures plant for the Hungarian government and put into operation a new plant at Bizerte for Tunisia.

In addition to constructing the factories, the Pozzi firm trained personnel for them. Pozzi owns 90 percent of a company in France and 13 1/3 percent of another company in Brazil, both of which have shown profits in the last two years. In Milan the Pozzi company holds 100 percent of the stock in the new Pozzi Ferrandina chemical plant, which went into operation in June 1967 with a capital of $18.1 million. With Count Galeazzi now bringing in his know-how, Pozzi officials expect to get back into the black again within a few years by escalating the $43 million export level of previous years.

One of the most ramified, fully Vatican-owned companies is Italgas, which has its main office in Turin. With a capital of almost $59.9 million, Italgas controls gas companies in thirty-six Italian cities, including Rome, Turin, Florence, and Venice. During the fiscal year 1967-8 it supplied 679 million cubic meters of home fuel to its customers and reported a profit of nearly $3.5 million.

Trending upward for over two decades, Italgas also controls a number of companies that are related to the gas industry. The Cledca Company (tar), Iclo (anhydrides), Funivie Savona San Giuseppe (iron ore and phosphorus), Fornicoke (coke for steel mills), Pontile San Raffaele (coke), Cokitalia (distillates), Societa Acque Potabili di Torino (drinking water), Carbonifera Chia-pello (real estate heating plants), Propaganda Gas (gas stoves), Urbegas (gas appliances), and La S.p.A. Forni ed Impianti Industriali Ingg. De Bartolomeis di Milano (industrial ovens). Of the last-named company, Italgas owns only

20.29 percent of the stock. Not long ago I happened to mention to an American visitor that the Vatican owned a spaghetti factory in Rome. My pun-loving friend immediately said, “The Vatican is getting rich making all that dough!”

Molini e Pastificio Pantanella, S.p.A., is a fully Vatican- owned company that packages various types of pasta. As a profitable sideline, Pantanella also produces panet-tone holiday cakes and an assortment of fifty-two different types of cookies. Backed by assets listed at $16.3 million, Pantanella reported a net profit of $290,562 for 1966 but broke even in 1967. The company would have done better, according to board director Marcantonio Pacelli, if it had not been for government-imposed regulations in July 1967, which not only placed cumbersome restrictions on the country’s spaghetti factories but also controlled the price of soft and hard grains. But, as my friend might say, the Vatican is not at a loss for “grain” (Italian slang for money), for it owns outright, controls, or influences by its substantial though minority holdings all of the following companies which, according to the most recent financial statements, are in the black:

Societa Mineraria del Trasimeno (mining—capital: $3.2 million), LTstituto Farmacologico Serona (pharmaceuticals— capital: $1.4 million), La Societa Dinamite (dynamite and ammunition—capital: $624,000), La Torcitura di Vittorio Veneto (yarn—capital: $800,000), Fisac-Fabbriche Italiane Seterie Affini Como (silk—capital: $3.4 million), Concerie Italiane Riunite di Torino (furs—capital: $4 million), Zuccherificio di Avezzano (sugar—capital: $1.6 million), Cartiere Burgo (paper products—capital: $23.2 million), Industria Libraria Tipografica Editrice di Torino (publishing—capital: $1.6 million), and Sansoni di Firenze (publishing—capital: $1.08 million).

The following companies, with which the Vatican has a financial association of either major or minor degree, report a year-end loss or no profit as of this writing: Societa Santa Barbara (mining—capital: $4.8 million), Caffaro Societa per l’Industria ed Elettronica (chemistry and electronics—capital: $9.6 million), La Salifera Siciliana (salt—capital: $1.1 million), La Societa Prodotti Chimici Superfosfati (chemicals—capital: $244,800), Bottonificio Fossanese (buttons—capital: $480,000), Saici Societa Agricola Industriale per la Cellulosa Italiana (cellulose —capital: $24 million), Cotonificio Veneziano (cotton— capital: $3.2 million), Lanificio di Gavardo (wool—capital: $1.4 million), Fabbriche Formenti (textiles—capital: $104,000 [reduced from $1.04 million]), Sacit (readyto- wear clothing—capital: $256,000), Molini Antonio Biondi di Firenze (spaghetti—capital: $960,000), C.I.T. (travel and tourism—capital: $800,000), and C.I.M. (department stores—capital: $1.2million).

So much for private enterprise.

The question now arises, Does the Vatican have a stake in operations run by the state? The answer, not surprisingly, is in the affirmative. Let’s look at another aspect, unique by American standards, of the Italian economy— that of the state as a rival and competitor of private entrepreneurs.

In the postwar period Italy’s pell-mell economic expansion has had, at times, to walk a tightrope. Coming out of its catastrophic fascist cocoon, the Boot’s economy went from rags to Vespas to Fiats—thanks in no small part to the heavy investments of the Vatican. Italy’s gross national product pole-vaulted 143 percent in the period between 1953 and 1963 to $45.1 billion. Last year the G.N.P. reached over $66 billion at constant prices and was expected by the end of 1968 to boost itself an other 5.5 percent to over $70 billion. To understand how Vatican money has benefited the Italian economy, one must understand the structure and function of Italy’s Istituto di Ricostruzione Industriale. I.R.I., as it is affectionately known, is a public law corporation to which the Italian government assigns specific entrepreneurial functions. I.R.I. controls 130 firms, each of which is a share company that is run by the same rules as any private company in Italy.

What makes I.R.I. unique is that it has brought under government domination a vast complex of industries— and these include not only television and radio, railroads, airlines, and shipping, but also industries like steel, automobile manufacturing, and banking. I.R.I., which is therefore in competition with private industry, has over three hundred thousand people on its payroll. Its rate of investment is equivalent to nearly $3 million a day; its annual turnover, almost $3 billion; and the value of its industrial complex, about $12 billion.

Established in 1933, after the 1929 Wall Street crash set off a chain reaction in Europe, I.R.I. had two jobs: (1) to save the Italian banks, which had acquired shares in Italian industries that were in serious difficulty and, for that reason, were unable to guarantee the safety of their clients’ deposits; (2) to put the finances of Italy’s industry in order. It took almost five years to accomplish these tasks. But, in the end, credit was restored, and industry returned to life. The Italian government then took a second look at I.R.I. and, coming to realize that the giant, state-controlled industrial complex had been a daring financial experiment that had succeeded under the most difficult of conditions, decided to make it a permanent institution.

For every lira received from the state, I.R.I. companies have to raise another twelve from private investors. Since none of the I.R.I. companies could possibly finance its operations with its own capital, I.R.I. issues bonds on the open market. To date, nearly a half million Italian investors have put their money into I.R.I.’s issues. The biggest single investor has been the Vatican. There is no way of pinning down how much money the Vatican’s financial advisers have tossed into I.R.I. operations, but the areas into which the Vatican has plunged most heavily are now known. Strictly for the record, let it be stated that in no case has the Vatican managed to become a majority shareholder in an I.R.I. company, despite the fact that in certain companies it is the largest single investor. It must be remembered, however, that since the Vatican’s political party (the Christian Democrats) has been in control of the Italian government for over twenty years, the moving parts of the Italian state and its I.R.I. operation are well lubricated by Church money.

Critics of I.R.I. have accused it of being one of the main bottlenecks of Italy’s economy. The criticism actually extends beyond I.R.I. to the Italian government and to the Vatican itself. Lack of business confidence during the middle sixties has held down private investment. In fact, in recent years, private companies have only been able to raise very small amounts through stock issues. Today I.R.I. and other government enterprises account for 40 percent of all Italian investments. Private enterprise is keenly aware of the competition. I.R.I. has long maintained, however—and the Vatican has backed it all the way—that it has never kept private industry from doing anything it has wanted to, either by absorbing all available capital or in any other way. But often, where private industry has been reluctant, I.R.I. has not.

I.R.I. has been carrying on a flirtation with U.S. business in recent years. Several of America’s largest industrial concerns are tied in with I.R.I. subsidiaries. The U.S. Steel Corporation holds a 50 percent share in two I.R.I. steel plants. Armco International has a half interest in another. Raytheon and the Vitro Corporation have a stake in two of I.R.I.’s most calculated ventures in electronics. Siderexport, an I.R.I. trading subsidiary, has a 50 percent holding in Dalminter of New York. The Vatican owes its current favorable position in I.R.I. to Bernardino Nogara, who foresaw a high return on the enormous investment he made in the state’s industries. It is said that Nogara was considerably stimulated by the report of the governor of the Banca d’Italia at the end of the war. The report included the words, “We have reached a turning point. There is an arduous and fatiguing road that goes upward, and another, flat and easy, which leads to ruin.”

Bewildered as Italy may have been by the extensive destruction of its factories and other industrial installations, Nogara’s sights were clear. Italy would have to choose the first road and start on reconstruction immediately. What better place to invest the Vatican’s money than the government’s Finsider steel group? Although its plants were smouldering in ruins, Finsider gave promise of exceptional development once a rebuilding program was under way.

At the beginning of the postwar period, Finsider had an annual output of less than a million tons of steel. Today it produces ten million tons a year. By contributing decisively to making Italy self-sufficient as far as iron and steel requirements are concerned, Finsider has made an essential contribution to Italy’s development, and has become one of the pillars of the nation’s economy. With over 76,000 employees, and with an annual payroll of over $285 million, the company reports an annual profit of more than $24.1 million.

Finsider’s objectives were given effective stimulus when the European Coal and Steel Community was set up. The Vatican and the Christian Democratic party both recognized the advantages to be gained by joining this organization. By putting an end to the protectionism that had characterized Italy’s steel industry, the country entered into direct competition with the biggest steelmakers in the world, and is now the world’s seventh largest steel producer.

Finsider’s great strength today comes through its ownership of subsidiary companies. It owns, for instance, 51.6 percent of the Italsider Company, which produces pig iron, steel ingots, hot and cold rolled products, and welded pipes. Finsider is also a majority shareholder in the Dal- mine Company, which specializes in steel ingots and seamless and welded pipes. Ninety-seven percent of the Terni Company stock is held by Finsider. Terni produces steel ingots, hot and cold rolled products, castings, forgings, and drop forgings. In addition, Finsider holds full or controlling interests in some twenty other connected or related companies.

The greatest amount of Vatican money in any I.R.I. company is probably in the Alfa Romeo automobile company (capital: $72 million). Italy’s second largest producer of motorcars, Alfa Romeo makes about seventy-five thousand vehicles a year; by 1971, with the help of a new $500 million complex at Naples, it hopes to be producing more than a quarter of a million cars annually. Alfa Sud, the new plant in Italy’s southland, had been a point of contention between Fiat, which controls about three fourths of the Italian car market, and I.R.I. It pitted Fiat president Gianni Agnelli squarely against I.R.I., the Italian government, the Christian Democratic party, and the Vatican, which are jointly trying to encourage the building of new industrial plants in Italy’s depressed economic regions. Fiat termed the Alfa Sud factory “an economic error.” Instead of putting up a new auto plant at Naples, Agnelli said, Alfa Romeo and its parents (I.R.I. and the Vatican) should join Fiat in other undertakings, such as building up an aircraft industry. The major growth phase of the European auto market was coming to an end, he argued, and there would be danger of overproduction in the nineteen-seventies. Agnelli lost his war.

Although the Vatican’s biggest I.R.I. investment may be in Alfa Romeo, a considerable amount of papal money is also at work in Finmeccanica, the I.R.I. holding company that coordinates and finances I.R.I.’s engineering activities. There are thirty-five companies in Finmeccanica. In addition, Finmeccanica has a minority participation in thirty-two other companies, whose activities are ancillary; the Vatican holds the controlling interest in a few of these.

With all its affiliated companies, Finmeccanica is the biggest industrial concern in Italy, operating in almost every branch of the engineering industry—automotive and electrical engineering, electronics, design of aircraft and of railway cars, of heavy machine tools and of precision instruments, of heating equipment and of modern armaments (especially armored vehicles and tanks). Aided by heavy Vatican investments, the Finmeccanica group has shown remarkable progress since 1959, when its annual profits began to rise from $185.6 million to the present- day figure of over $420 million (and its exports from $41.6 million a year to nearly $100 million).

Vatican money has also found its way into Finmare, another I.R.I. holding company, which is responsible for the country’s most important passenger shipping lines (like the well-known Italian Line, and the Lloyd Tries-tino, Adriatica, and Tirrenia lines). With its ancient seafaring tradition and large tourist industry, Italy has never undervalued the importance of its ships. Accounting for almost 70 percent of the nation’s passenger service, Fin- mare ships rank second in the number of passengers carried on the European-North American run and first on the South American route. With a capital of $28.8 million, Finmare, which has over ninety ships, totaling more than 700,000 tons, transports nearly two million passengers annually and carries more than 1.9 million tons of freight a year; the gross income is approximately $150 million per year. The Finmare-controlled Italian line has two ships, the 45,933-ton Raffaello and the 45,911-ton Michelangelo, crossing the Atlantic between North America and Europe, and it is certain that Vatican funds went into the total amount of money needed to finance the construction of these two luxurious liners.

The extent of the Vatican’s investment in and control of Italy’s main telephone company cannot be accurately ascertained, but it is safe to say that both are considerable and that Vatican influence has made S.T.E.T. (Societa Finanziaria Telefonica) the respected and solid organization it is. At its last stockholders’ meeting in July 1968,

S.T.E.T. closed out its books with a declared net profit of $20 million for the second year in a row. Having recently increased its capital by $16 million, S.T.E.T. today is worth $304 million. With more than six million telephones, double the number in operation in 1958,

S.T.E.T. today employs fifty-eight thousand persons. By 1970 it expects to have invested a total of $1.12 billion in new facilities and equipment and to have increased the number of its employees to sixty-eight thousand. S.T.E.T. has also managed to spread itself into other companies. It is the sole or majority stockholder in many of these. In SIP-Societa Italiana per l’Esercizio Telefonico (telecommunications), it holds 53 percent of the shares; in Societa Italiana Telecommunicazioni Siemens, 98 percent of the shares; in Italcable (cables and telegrams), 60 percent of the shares; in SETA-Societa Esercizi Tele-fonici Ausiliari, 99.99 percent of the shares; in FONIT-CETRA (phonograph records), 99.99 percent of the shares; in EMSA-Societa Immobiliare per Azione, 52 percent of the shares; in SAIAT-Societa Attivita Immo-biliari Ausiliarie Telefoniche, 100 percent of the shares; in CSELT-Centro Studi e Laboratori Telecommunicazioni, 100 percent of the shares; in SAGAS-Societa per Azione Grandi Alberghi e Stazioni Climatiche, 100 percent of the shares; in SEAT- Societa Elechin, Ufficiali degli Abbonati al Telefono, 100 percent of the shares. The S.T.E.T. group is also a minority stockholder in RAI-Radiotelevisione Italiana (22.9 percent), Telespazio (33.33 percent), Ates-Componenti Elettronici (20 percent), SIRTI-Societa Italiana Reti Telefoniche Interur-bane (10 percent), GE MI NA Geomineraria Nazionale (33.33 percent), SIEO-Societa Imprese Elettriche d’Ol-tremare (11.09 percent), and SAGAT-Societa Azionaria Gestione Aeroporto Torino (4.5 percent).

The Vatican is also involved in Italian banking. The country’s three leading banks—Banca Commerciale Italiana, Credito Italiano, and the Banco di Roma—though belonging to the I.R.I. group, are closely tied to the Vatican. Together with a Vatican-owned bank, the Banco di Santo Spirito, they hold more than 20 percent of all bank deposits in Italy, have financed 50 percent of all foreign trade transactions, and placed two thirds of the new share and bond issues on the Italian stock exchange.

Two years ago, the Banca Commerciale Italiana, Credito Italiano, and the Banco di Roma decided to double their capital, by issuing shares against new money, so as to improve the ratio between their own resources and deposits. In the case of the Banca Commerciale Italiana, this raised the capital from $32 million to $64 million; in the case of Credito Italiano, from $24 million to $48 million; and in the case of the Banco di Roma, from $20 million to $40 million. In the last few years the time deposits and clients’ current accounts of these three banks rose by hundreds of millions of dollars to a total that surpasses $6 billion (nearly 20 percent of the national total).

As for the Banco di Santo Spirito, which was founded by Pope Paul V in 1605, and which is one of the oldest banks in the world, its social capital is set at $12.8 million. From a 1966 total of $667 million, the bank hiked its total deposits last year to $729 million and reported a net profit for 1967 of $1.24 million, an increase of $226,000 over the previous year.

Although the four aforementioned banks have their main offices in Rome, the Vatican’s real banking strength lies in the north of Italy. Cumulatively the Vatican’s northern banks—particularly in the provinces of Lombardy, Veneto, and Emilia—are in even better health than the thriving four in the Eternal City. Foremost of these banks in the thigh part of the Boot is the Banco Ambrosiano in Milan, which was founded in 1896 and has a capital of $6.24 million. At the end of 1967 the Banco Ambrosiano reported a net profit of $1.4 million, which was virtually the same amount (give or take pennies) it had declared for the preceding period, and paid a dividend of 220 lire for a total of $1,056 million on three million shares, a repeat of the previous year.

The Banco Ambrosiano recently bought interests in three foreign fiscal organizations—the Banca del Gottardo di Lugano (Switzerland), the Kredietbank S.A. Luxembourgeoise (Luxembourg), and Interitalia (Luxembourg). Because the Italian parliament has not at this writing passed a bill to set up Italian investment funds (one such bill was introduced in 1964), the aforementioned Vatican- controlled fiscal societies have been providing a service whereby Italians can acquire shares of foreign mutual funds. At the end of 1967, foreign mutual funds from Italian investors through over-the-border holding companies totaled close to $4.5 million. Now two more Vatican- owned banking organizations—the La Centrale holding company and the Banca Provinciale Lombarda—have joined the lucrative business of purchasing shares from foreign investment trusts in the Swiss and Luxembourg markets. In addition, the Banca Provinciale Lombarda has recently joined with the Dutch Robeco and the German Concentra investment trusts to help Italians acquire shares of foreign mutual funds. Until a common invest- ment-fund law is passed by the government, the foreign companies tied to the Vatican banks and investment companies will continue to operate profitably on the Italian market.

The Vatican’s northern banking affairs have become so intricate today that it’s almost impossible to explore their many ramifications. In an effort to provide some kind of clarity, we will not refer to those banks that have a capital of less than $80,000, and we’ll divide the others into three categories. In the first are seven large banks that are owned outright by the Vatican: the Banco Ambrosiano of Milan, the Banca Provinciale Lombarda, Piccolo Credito Bergamasco, Credito Romagnolo, Banca Cattolica del Veneto, Banco di San Geminiano e San Prospero, and Banca San Paolo. In the second category are thirteen banks in which the Church holds a heavy interest but not necessarily a controlling one: the Banca Nazionale dell’Agricoltura, Banca di Credito e Risparmio di Roma, Banca Popolare di Bergamo, Banca Piemonte di Torino, Banca del Fucino di Roma, Banca Romana, Banca Torinese Balbis e Guglielmone, Banca dei Comuni Vesuviani, Istituto Bancario Romano, Banca di Trento e Bolzano, Credito Mobiliare Fiorentino, Banca del Sud, and Credito Commerciale di Cremona. In the third category are sixty-two banks in which, although the Vatican interest is minimal, that interest is protected by one or more Vatican agents on the board or at the policy-making level; among the bigger banks in this category are the Banca Popolare Cooperative di Novara, Credito Varesino, Credito di Venezia e del Rio de La Plata, the Banca Agricola Milanese, the Banca Toscana, the Banca Popolare di Milano, the Banca Emiliana, the Banco di Chiavari e della Riviera Ligure, Credito Bresciano, and the Banca Popolare di Verona.

Finally, it must be mentioned that thousands and thousands of small rural banks spread all over Italy are owned 100 percent either by the Vatican or by the local parish church, which submits to Vatican controls and regular audits by a peripatetic Vatican financier. Many of these small banks are located in the south and on Italy’s two major Mediterranean islands, Sicily and Sardinia. As far as is known, the Vatican has control of only two large banks in this area—the Banco di Napoli and the Banco di Sicilia.

During 1967 eight banks bought by Italmobiliare, a financial institution owned by the Vatican’s Italcementi cement company, merged to give life to a new Istituto Bancario Italiano (I.B.I.). Italmobiliare, claiming reserves of close to $9 million and showing a 1967-8 profit of $642,000, is headed by Carlo Pesenti—sometimes viewed as Italy’s most knowledgeable banker, and certainly one of the Vatican’s most trusted captains in the field. Serving also as Director General of Italcementi, Pesenti bought the banks for Italmobiliare one at a time over a five-year period. In what some consider one of the most brilliant financial maneuvers in Italy’s dopoguerra economic history, Pesenti almost singlehandedly created the Istituto Bancario Italiano by having the Credito di Venezia e del Rio de La Plata (which he had acquired)—its capital is listed at $4.8 million—incorporate Pesenti’s other seven banks—namely, Banca Torinese Balbis e Guglielmone (capital: $2.4 million), Banca di Credito e Risparmio di Roma (capital: $2.4 million), Istituto Bancario Romano (capital: $800,000), Banca di Credito Genovese (capital: $1.12 million), Banca Romana (capital: $2.4 million), Credito Mobiliare Fiorentino (capital: $1.12 million), and Banca Naef-Ferrazzi-Longhi of La Spezia (capital: $640,000). Ranking among the first twenty in the fist of Italian banking institutions, thanks to cumulative deposits surpassing $512 million and a capital and reserve sum of $22 million, the new I.B.I. made quite an impact for an “infant” by reporting a profit of $800,000 during its first year of operation (1967).

Pesenti, who has control over two other important banking establishments (the Banca Provinciale Lombarda and the Credito Commerciale di Cremona) is serving as president of the newly founded bank, while Massimo Spada takes on the duties of vice president. The creation of I.B.I. will be only the first in a complex series of mergers of Vatican banks. The next merger will be that of the Banca Provinciale Lombarda and the Credito Commerciale di Cremona; it will result in the creation of a banking combine that will have over $1.28 billion in deposits—making it the largest private banking concern in Italy and one of the largest in all Europe, including Switzerland.

Vatican banking, however, is not confined to Italy. Funds managed by the Vatican’s Prefecture of Economic Affairs are deposited in numerous non-Italian banks. Some are in America, and many are in Switzerland, where the Vatican maintains its funds in numbered accounts. Nobody really knows how much money the Vatican has in Swiss vaults. But it is known that one reason why the Vatican likes to bank in Switzerland is because the Swiss franc can provide protection against inflation and devaluation of money in other countries. Since 1945, there have been more than 170 currency devaluations all over the world—twelve of them in Brazil alone. Unlike the American dollar or the British pound, which have substantially less than 50 percent backing in gold reserves, the Swiss franc is guaranteed up to 130 percent by gold. So, because Switzerland’s money is “hard money,” the Vatican holds the francs and exchanges them for the legal tender of another country when needed.

The Vatican also uses its Swiss accounts to maintain its anonymity when gaining control of foreign corporations. Swiss banks, unlike American banks, can act as stockbrokers; they hold large numbers of shares belonging to clients but not in the clients’ names. The Vatican, like any other depositor, can have a Swiss bank buy shares in a company in the bank’s name and can thus obtain control of the company in full anonymity. The “Gnomes of Zurich”—a pet name pinned on Swiss banking officials by the British—point out, however, that the total number of shares their banks hold in U.S. companies is less than 1 percent of America’s outstanding stock. Any speculation about how much the Vatican may have silently invested in the U.S. economy, at least at the corporation level, must take this figure into account.

Since Helvetian banking practices are based on secrecy, a style to which Vatican financiers are indeed no strangers, the Vatican and I.R.I., acting as major shareholders, operate the Banque de Rome Suisse, a Swiss offshoot of the Banco di Roma. This bank lists a $15.2 million capital stock; subject to Swiss laws, it keeps the names of its depositors clad in the impenetrable armor of legality.

A significant part of the Vatican’s calculated diversification program is concerned with the rarely publicized activities of its various special credit institutes. The precise determination of the Vatican’s stake in Italy’s credit system would require an enormous amount of time and digging. But it can be calculated that of the some 180 medium- and long-term special credit institutions operating in Italy, at least a third are fed by Vatican money.

It should be noted that long-term loans constitute a highly important source of financing for expansion programs, and in this respect Vatican money has done much to shore up small and medium-sized businesses, which have the greatest difficulty in raising funds directly on the financial market, and has served the cause of a balanced growth of Italy’s postwar economy. In this connection, mention should be made, albeit briefly, of two important aspects of this activity: (1) the significant financial support the Vatican’s special credit institutes have been extending, particularly in recent years, to the process of industrialization in the depressed southland, and (2) the considerable assistance the Vatican’s credit program is providing for the penetration of Italian industries into foreign markets.

The special credit institutes extend medium- and long- term credit. Each serves a particular sector of the economy, providing credit for industry, for example, or for public utilities companies or real estate companies or farmers or motion picture producers. Some of these institutes operate on a national scale, while others are limited to individual regions; some extend both medium- and long-term credit, while others specialize in medium-term transactions. Together with Italy’s banks, the special credit institutes are the major source of new capital, and they provide most of the loans and the capital for the acquisition of securities.

One of the largest of these financial societies is La Centrale. Just what percentage the Vatican has of the equity of La Centrale is not known. It is known, however, that La Centrale is wedded to the Pirelli rubber company, which no doubt exercises direct controls over the agency. Just how much influence the Vatican has on its operations has not yet been made clear, though its control is widely accepted in the Italian business community.

The area in which La Centrale has been most prominently engaged is that of electric power, but since the time the Italian government nationalized the power companies, La Centrale has successfully sought to shift its strength into agriculture, mining, engineering, and trade organizations, both in Italy and abroad. Today its capital totals $107.3 million. La Centrale’s assets are $276.8 million, of which $116.16 million are invested in the shares of some fifty-five companies and almost $60 million are out in loans to these companies. In addition, $156 million have been extended in credits to E.N.E.L., the national electric agency of Italy. La Centrale closed out 1967 showing a net profit of over $16.5 million.

During 1967, the Vatican-controlled Romana Finanziaria Sifir, S.p.A., fused with La Centrale and brought with it a stock capital of $72 million. Sifir’s total assets were $168 million, of which $17.6 million were invested in the shares of thirty-six other companies and $22.4 million were out in loans to these organizations. Add to that the $70.4 million that have been extended in credits to E.N.E.L. and one gets a better picture of La Centrale’s new associate.

One credit institution that is owned fully and outright by the Vatican is the Societa Finanziaria Industriale e Commerciale, with a capital of $480,000. Other special credit institutes owned partially or controlled by the Vatican are La Societa Capitolina Finanziaria (capital: $400,000), Credito Fondiario (capital: $16 million), Societa Mineraria del Predil (capital: $384,000), Il Finanziario Investimento Piemonte (capital: $182,800), Societa Finanziaria Italiana di Milano (capital: $400,

000), Fiscambi di Roma e di Milano (capital: $1.6 million), Efibanca-L’Ente Finanziario Interbancario (capital: $16 million), and La Sind di Milano (capital: $1.6 million).

A number of insurance companies are Vatican owned; others are merely controlled by the apostolic financiers. Two important companies that fall into the former group are the Assicurazioni Generali di Trieste e Venezia (capital: $23.2 million), which turned a profit in 1967 of over $4.67 million, and the Riunione Adriatica di Sicurta (capital: $6.9 million), which reported a profit of better than $1.27 million. Tied to the Banca Commerciale Italiana (which the Vatican controls), Assicurazioni Generali has a large portfolio of shares in Montecatini Edison, while Montecatini Edison has a large portfolio of shares in Assicurazioni Generali. Similarly, the Riunione Adriatica di Sicurta, which is tied to the Credito Italiano bank (under Vatican control), has a working relationship with the La Centrale and Bastogi special investment institutes, both of which are under Vatican influence, and works closely with the Vatican’s Italcementi cement company.

In violation of Italian laws, which prohibit members of the country’s parliament from having business ties with any commercial enterprise, four senators (all Christian Democrats), one of whom was a minister several times, are on the board of directors of Assicurazioni Generali. Far from being unduly disturbed by this, the company and its associate Riunione Adriatica di Sicurta have calmly conducted their affairs, and have done well. Over the years, they have profited from large insurance contracts involving government industries that deal in foreign trade, from indemnification against damage by nuclear bombardment and losses due to foreign nationalizations and confiscations of industries, and from various insurance programs written, with close state cooperation, for customers abroad. Over the years, Assicurazioni Generali and Riunione Adriatica, two companies that apparently do not see any ethical problems raised by having state officials represent their private interests, have become the two leading insurance companies in Italy.

Following is a list of other Italian insurance companies that are connected with and to the Vatican; in parentheses is each company’s capital.

La Compagnia di Roma, also known as Riassicurazioni e Partecipazioni Assicurative (capital: $960,000); L’Unione Italiana di Riassicurazione (capital: $960,000); Assicurazioni d’ltalia (capital: $2 million); Fiumeter (capital: $1.68 million); Compagnia Tirrena di Capitalizzazioni e Assicurazioni (capital: $2.4 million); L’Unione Finanziaria Italiana (capital: $640,000); Finanziaria Tirrena (capital: $160,000); Lloyd Internazionale (capital: $800,000); Fata-Fondo Assicurativo Tra Agricoltori (capital: $1.2 million).

The foregoing details provide an uncomfortably sharp realization that the Vatican and its men have indeed carved a niche for their firm in the world of big business.

This is no small accomplishment. After years of soul- searching, it has been decided, infallibly, that the accumulation of money is no more reprehensible, no more sinful, than the collecting of coins. True, the Vatican pays ad perpetuum lip service to poverty. But it doesn’t practice it.

The Vatican apparently does not subscribe to the thesis that the enrichment of one man necessarily impoverishes another. Indeed, taken in its proper perspective, the Vatican drive to make money has been highly beneficial to Italy. It has spurred Italy’s material progress and helped the country recover from the battered state it found itself in after the war. It has produced capital for investment. It has generated wealth from which nearly everyone has gained. In a free society, which needs concentrations of private wealth to counterbalance the power of the state, the Vatican—which is no longer seeking territorial aggrandizement— has rendered a service to the theories of capitalism and provided impressive guidelines for those who believe in money and who worship at the altar of big business. The Apostolic Palace and Wall Street are singing a remarkably similar tune.

Because of the secrecy of the Church’s complex business operations, the public image of the Vatican still remains ecclesiastical. The revelation of the Church as a big business often upsets people who should know better. Former Rome correspondent Barrett McGurn once reported the astonishment of U.S. Secretary of Labor James Mitchell after a visit with Pope Pius XII. McGurn interviewed Mitchell immediately after the visit. “The Pope knew all about the International Labor Organization,” Mitchell said, surprised, “and he was already aware that the recession in the United States is over. Why, we’ve just learned that ourselves!”

How the Vatican Takes Stock of the Market IX

IT ALL STARTED in 1962. . . .

The center-left coalition government under Premier Amintore Fanfani wanted at long last to end the preferential tax treatment Italy had been giving stockholders. In 1962, Fanfani established a dividend tax (called cedo-lare). Determined and sincere as he was, however, he tried to provide an exemption for the Vatican. It didn’t work.

For the first part of 1963 the Vatican, like other shareholders, paid tax.

In April 1963 there were elections, and the Fanfani cabinet went down to defeat. It was replaced by Giovanni Leone’s all-Christian Democrat “caretaker” cabinet. Leone’s representatives began quiet talks with the Vatican, and shortly before its ouster in October, the Leone cabinet, in an exchange of diplomatic notes with the State of Vatican City, agreed that the new tax was not to be levied on dividends paid to the Vatican. Minister of Finance Mario Martinelli (Christian Democrat) forthwith sent a circular letter to the tax-collecting agencies, mostly banking institutions, informing them of the exemption that had secretly been granted to the Vatican on the basis of diplomatic negotiations between the two countries.

What followed was perhaps even more incredible. The new finance minister, Roberto Tremelloni (Social Democrat), read the diplomatic notes and the circular letter signed by his predecessor, and with the solid support of the new deputy prime minister, Pietro Nenni (Socialist), and the minister of the treasury, Antonio Giolitti (Socialist), refused to go along with the preferential arrangement. For months thereafter, Prime Minister Aldo Moro (Christian Democrat), sought a compromise; he asked the Vatican to submit a statement of its holdings as a prelude to obtaining an exemption. But Vatican Secretary of State Amleto Cardinal Cicognani refused, asserting that one sovereign government does not tell another about the state of its finances. Premier Moro retaliated by resorting to an old fighter’s trick—holding back and waiting for the clock to run out. It worked—up to a point.

Interest in the Vatican’s stock market practices was aroused by the Italian government’s 1962 decision to levy a dividend tax (cedolare). This cedolare, which the paying office or the bank withholds on behalf of the government, is either 5 percent or 30 percent, depending on whether the stockholder records the securities with the tax office or chooses to remain unknown to the tax officials. The Vatican’s disputed exemption from it brought about the events we outlined at the beginning of this chapter.

After the Moro government toppled in mid-1964, and was succeeded by yet another Moro government, the new minister of the treasury, Giovanni Pieraccini (Socialist), also declined to ratify the Vatican’s exemption. In Italy, 1964 was a year when the business barometer was falling. The Vatican took advantage of this by threatening to dump several hundred million dollars’ worth of shares on the Italian stock market. This, if the Vatican had done it, would have seriously depressed the market and inflicted irreparable wounds on Italy’s already ailing economy.

Adding to Moro’s worries during this period was the resignation of President of the Republic Antonio Segni, for reasons of ill health. A campaign had already begun to have a non-Christian Democrat named to fill the semi- honorary post. (Later, in fact, Giuseppe Saragat, leader of the Social Democrats, got the nod.) By all reasonable standards, this was not the time to risk a tug-of-war with the Vatican over tax matters.

Some kind of deal was obviously made, because the Moro cabinet approved a bill, which was later signed by Tremelloni and Saragat, that ratified the Vatican’s exemption from the dividend tax. Although Socialist Minister Pieraccini refused to countersign the bill, it reached the competent legislative committee and was to go to the parliament for approval. As a bill, it never got there, though the subject did come up from time to time, either in the form of a query by a parliamentarian or a newspaper article.

For several years, the matter lay dormant. Then, early in 1967, it was revived. The Vatican had not been paying any dividend taxes since April 1963. Among other papers, the leftist Rome weekly L’Espresso wanted to know why. L’Espresso, which called the Vatican “the biggest tax evader in postwar Italy,” said that one fifteenth of all the stocks on the exchange were Vatican owned. Other pejorative reports in Italy’s left-wing press claimed that the Vatican’s investments on the Italian exchange were worth between $160 million and $2.4 billion, and that thanks to its questionable immunity from the dividend tax, the Vatican was saving anywhere between $8 million and $120 million (based on a 5 percent tax on the estimated “declared” worths of between $160 million and $2.4 billion) or between $48 million and $720 million (based on a 30 percent tax on said “undeclared” estimated worths). It must be remembered, however, that because the Vatican often uses so-called front companies, some of which do indeed record their securities with the tax office, or make their identity known to tax officials, and because other Vatican-controlled companies do not record their securities with the tax office, both the 5 percent and the 30 percent tax rates are in operation. No one as yet has been able to compile a list showing which companies are the “5 percenters” and which are the “30 percenters,” but whichever classification they fall into, they have not, so far, paid the tax that other companies (and the individual investors) are paying.

[In January 1968, the Italian government extended for another year the cedolare tax exemption enjoyed by the Vatican since 1963. The extension was granted, according to the announcement made by a government spokesman, to discuss a bill pending in the Italian parliament. The spokesman said that if the bill is not approved during 1968, the Vatican will have to pay all unpaid taxes since 1963 when the exemption was granted.]

On the basis of L’Espresso’s estimate, which maintains that the Vatican owns one fifteenth of all the stocks on the Italian exchanges, the total value of the Vatican’s stocks would come to $733 million. Using the 5 percent tax figure, on the one hand, the tax saving comes to $36 million, whereas with the 30 percent tax figure, on the other hand, the tax saving comes to $219 million.

Estimates of that kind, and others in the left-wing press (however exaggerated they appear at first blush), prompted Italy’s Finance Minister, Luigi Preti (a Socialist), to make in March 1967, an unusual public statement on the floor of the Italian Senate—unusual because up to then no government official had ever ventured any specific statistics or figures on the subject of Vatican taxes. Debunking the claim of one particular newspaper, which had asserted the Vatican had saved $64 million on its dividend inflow since the disputed bank circular of 1963, Preti said that the Vatican had earned $5.22 million in Italian stock dividends in 1965. On these earnings, he explained, the Vatican, if it had paid the 30 percent cedolare tax, would have turned in $1.6 million in taxes. Preti also said that the Vatican investment, according to indications, came to probably $104.4 million. From Minister Preti’s figures—which he never documented— it appears that, over the six years since 1963, the Vatican therefore has not paid in a total of $9.6 million in taxes on its security holdings in Italy.

The Vatican’s reaction to Preti’s revelation was twofold. Its press spokesman, Monsignor Fausto Vallainc, declared, “I have been authorized to give a ‘no comment’ answer. But if you want my personal view— which is just that!—the motive for the refusal to comment is obvious. It would not be opportune to air the matter while it is being discussed by members of Parliament.”

Unofficially, other sources in the Vatican said that the figures that had been cited in the anticlerical press were “clearly baseless.” Estimates of the Vatican’s tax savings were “absurd beyond being false,” one spokesman maintained, adding that the actual amount was closer to $160,000. The same man cited the provisions of the Lateran Treaty in which Italy recognized the Vatican as a sovereign independent state and exempted this state from Italian taxation. The Vatican’s unofficial newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano, eschewing its usual ecclesiastical verbiage, said that the amount of money involved was irrelevant, for the money was “holy money, entirely earmarked for charity.”

In July 1968, the question of Vatican taxes flared up once again. The new Leone Cabinet, though formed as a “baby-sitter” kind of government [See Chapter X], astonished everyone shortly before it won the confidence vote of parliament by a squeak. Premier Giovanni Leone, apparently in a gesture of appeasement to the left, a state-ofthe- nation message that the Vatican would have to pay its tax arrears. Leone said that rather than granting a new tax exemption—which was due to expire toward the end of 1968—the government intended to let the exemption drop and not seek parliamentary ratification for a new bloc of exemptions.

Bluntly coming to their defense, Church officials issued a protest through the Holy See press office, implying that the Vatican felt strongly about retaining its tax-exempt status. Monsignor Vallainc, in his capacity as the spokesman, noted that the Vatican contributes heavily to Italy’s income with its investments and tourist attractions. Moreover, he said, several other countries, including the United States, are giving the Roman Catholic Church tax exemptions because of its special nature and work. He reaffirmed the view that taxing the income of the Holy See, besides violating the acts that regulate church-state relations in Italy, would take away money destined for religious and social work projects carried out by priests in Italy and in other parts of the world. The official statement Vallainc read contained this paragraph:

The counterpart of this tax exemption can be seen in theframework of reciprocity, in the wide contribution that the apostolic activity of the Holy See has on tourism, as well as in the advantages Italy derives from the Holy See’s stock investments which contribute to increasing the national income.

Following still another Vatican blast against Premier Leone on the tax issue, Socialist Luigi Preti came back into the squabble by publicly rejecting the reasons listed by the Vatican to continue its tax-free privileges. He said:

It is true that Holy See activities are advantageous for the tourism influx to Italy and that this increases state incomes, but I cannot see why these should serve as reasons for the Vatican to be exempted from taxes. Also I think the Vatican has no grounds in pointing to the treatment it enjoys in other countries where the Holy See is exempt from taxes. The Italian law clearly indicates there are no exemptions for any foreigners having Italian stock holdings. The noble aims thatthe Holy See pursues here and elsewhere in the world arehighly respected in Italy, and by all political parties, but this is no reason for tax-free treatment.

Curiously enough, the 1967 tax squabble did not bring to light the long history of Vatican “tax evasion.” The record between 1929 (when the Lateran Treaty was signed) and 1962 is an interesting one. Let us examine this record, which up to now has been given no public attention.

Without entering into a long analysis, it is sufficient to repeat that the Concordat, the third document of the Lateran Treaty, provided for tax exemptions for “ecclesiastical corporations.” During the nineteen-thirties and the early nineteen-forties, the Mussolini regime gave added assistance to the Vatican treasury by way of special “dispensations.” In October 1936, for instance, Mussolini imposed a 5 percent corporation tax to help underwrite a large loan needed to pay for the war in Abyssinia, and levied in addition, to absorb the interest costs on the war loan, a 3.5 percent tax on every thousand lire’s worth of real estate holdings to run for a twenty-five-year period; Decree 1743 of October 5, 1936, set up this tax schedule, but Article 3 of the decree exempted the Vatican and Vatican companies from paying either of the two levies.

Vatican-owned companies were also exempted from a special duty ordered in October 1937. This required corporations to pay a graduated tax on their capital stock. The tax was originally levied on all corporations, but early in 1938, when the collection program got under way, a special order exempted those owned by the Vatican.

In 1940, Italy instituted a sales tax (I.G.E.). But, in a circular letter dated June 30, 1940, the finance minister freed the Vatican and all churches from paying it. The

I.G.E. tax remains in existence to this day. So does the Vatican’s exemption. Lastly, in October 1942, a law was passed, “in the spirit of our Concordat,” which exempted the Vatican from paying certain then-existing assessments on dividends. To make matters clearer, the finance minister, in a decree dated December 31, 1942, published an official roster that listed every organization that was not eligible for taxation on dividends. Nearly all of the organizations listed were Vatican affiliated.

The roster went unnoticed by the public because of the year-end holidays. It went unnoticed by the press because it was published not in the government’s Gazzetta Ufficiale (Official Gazette), but in an obscure state bulletin called Rivista di Legislazione Fiscale, on page 1,963 of the second volume for 1943, a volume that appeared a considerable time after the beginning of the year.

Attempts to avoid taxes are nothing new in the history of Italy’s stock exchange. The borsa valori has roots that go back to the Republic of Venice, where the first official exchange was set up in 1600. In early Italy, the borsa was often a square or street where all types of trading—in goods and services, in securities, in precious metals and money—were carried on. In the first half of the eighteenth century, the commodities markets were put on a formal basis; then, in the nineteenth century, separate exchanges were set up to handle securities. On February 6, 1808, Eugene de Beauharnais, viceroy of Italy and Napoleon’s stepson, established the first official exchange in Italy, at Milan. Nine other Italian cities— Venice, Trieste, Turin, Rome, Palermo, Naples, Genoa, Florence, and Bologna— now have exchanges; but the one in Milan is still the largest.

By the turn of the century, Italy’s first electric power companies had been formed, as had other public service companies, textile and chemical companies, and some companies devoted to heavy industry. Trading increased and more securities were listed. In 1901, the number of securities traded on the Milan exchange had risen to 102; 54 of these were common stocks. By 1938, 267 securities were traded at Milan; by 1960, 428. In the postwar years, the Milan and other Italian exchanges began to register appreciable volume; today, despite being small by American standards, the volume at the exchanges is heavy compared to what it was in the immediate postwar years. But public participation in trading is comparatively slight.

Few securities are owned by the Italian public. Many are owned by the Vatican itself; and many others by banks and other financial institutions, by insurance companies and pension funds, and by industrial concerns—a number of which are controlled or owned by the Vatican. Italy’s small investors show a decided disinclination to buy common stocks. They prefer fixed-interest-bearing securities, especially those guaranteed by the government. Banks are called upon for heavy support of the securities market. In the last year for which a report is available, banks and institutional investors absorbed 48 percent of the new issues of common stocks and preferred stocks— and although the facts are unclear or fragmentary, a goodly part of this seems to have been done with Vatican capital. The quoted value of all Milan’s securities, which represent more than three quarters of the total shares on all Italy’s ten exchanges, generally stands at about $8.5 billion. In any given year, there is usually a turnover of a little less than 7 percent of the total shares; slightly under 260 million shares are traded, at a market value of slightly under $1 billion.

Another 1962 decision by the Italian government— that to nationalize the electric current industry—also aroused interest in Vatican finances. When the national electric agency, called E.N.E.L., was formed, it was learned that the special credit institute La Centrale, a Vatican-associated agency that specializes in electric power companies, had a portfolio of 8,235 shares (worth $24,801,600) in the Selt Valdarno electric works and 8,417 shares (worth $25,153,600) in the Romana di Elettricita Company; that another Vatican special credit institution, Bastogi, had 10,265 shares (worth $13,838,400) in the Societa Meccanica Elettrica electric company, 6,407 shares (worth $8,441,600) in the Finanziaria Adriatica company, 5,385 shares (worth $12,146,000) in the S.G.E.S. company, 4,013 shares (worth $10,038,400) in Edison, 1,137 shares (worth $4,782,400) in the Elettricita Sarda, and 996 shares (worth $2,659,200) in Selt Valdarno. Payments on these holdings, by way of indemnity installments, are still being made by E.N.E.L. to La Centrale and Bastogi.

As one of the world’s largest shareholders, the Vatican holds securities frequently quoted as being worth $5.6 billion. The sum is probably an understatement, for the Vatican has invested in exchanges throughout the world, and even a conservative estimate of its portfolio tends to show that the figure is in excess of $5.6 billion. According to an appraisal made by London’s Economist a few years ago, the Vatican’s Italian portfolio contains (as L’Espresso had earlier claimed) approximately one fifteenth of the total number of shares quoted on the ten Italian stock exchanges; the value of these shares, said The Economist, was $8.8 billion at the end of 1964. This would put the amount of capital invested by the Vatican in Italian stocks at around $586.6 million. But taking into consideration the current $11 billion value of Italy’s ten exchanges and the fact that many of the stocks owned by the Vatican are held through front companies—banks, special credit institutes, and insurance companies—a more realistic estimate of Vatican penetration into Italy’s stock market would place it between 40 and 50 percent of the total number of shares quoted on all of the Italian stock exchanges. Hence, this would bring the Vatican figure within the $5 billion range.

Improbable as this may seem at first glance, the fiscal truth has been kept hidden by the Vatican itself, by a sympathetic Italian press, and by the corps of foreign reporters in Rome. Deferring to the notoriously thin- skinned Vatican, most correspondents avoid the subject in their dispatches.

How long will the Vatican’s “tax evasion” go on? * The answer depends on the Vatican. Why? Because the pope is the dealer in this strange game of poker between the Vatican and the Italian state. But I think the pope may have overplayed his hand by attempting to bluff the Italian people—and may, before the next round, have to put his cards, and his blue chips, on the table.

* Late in October, as this book was being printed, the Vatican disclosed through its daily newspaper that it had agreed to pay taxes on its Italian stock earnings. Explaining that it did not have immediate necessary funds on hand to meet such a large bill, the Vatican requested permission to pay the tax in installments. The Osservatore Romano, which concealed none of its bitter tone, said that although the 1929 Lateran Pact provided for Vatican tax exemptions, the Holy See nevertheless wanted a statement from the Italian Government as to how much would have to be paid.

The Vatican in Politics X

IN ITALY, the outstretched palm of the bribe-taker has become almost as familiar as the dinnertime plate of spaghetti. The venerable bustarella—literally, little envelope— slipped to government workers in exchange for favors has created ethical havoc between business and government.

The Italian version of payola flourishes in the thickets of cluttered bureaucracy, and the practice of bustarella often smacks of comic opera. It is perhaps not so amusing in the pharmaceutical field, where, by virtue of a curious Italian law, foreign drug companies are required to register the formula of any product they wish to market. The same law states that if a similar commodity is already being sold, then the foreigner cannot sell his product in Italy. The results are inevitable. No sooner does an American company register a formula than one of the Italian pharmaceutical houses pays somebody in the right office for the privilege of a peek at it. In no time at all, a duplicate product is on the shelves, usually under another name.

Many Italians believe that if you want to get something done, you play the game of bustarella in government offices—or you take money to the Vatican. The more cynical Italians will tell you that service is rendered in direct proportion to the thickness of the envelope. The hard truth about Italy’s political system, particularly since the end of the war, is that the Catholic clergy, having direct access to the ministers and other key government figures, can usually get what it wants. An Italian who wants something done will usually go either to his parish priest or to the bishop of his diocese, who will, as often as not, intervene with a key cardinal—who has the right connections.

This brings to mind a friend of mine, a tenor, who approached, through the usual channels, a highly placed cardinal in the Vatican. The singer, thinking he would enhance his career immeasurably if he could have the honor of opening the season at one of Italy’s major opera houses, asked the cardinal to get him the lead part for the first night. The cardinal suggested that a sum of approximately $32,000 might be appropriate—”for services rendered.” My friend declined making the payment. Later, an American tenor snapped up the part. The American, traveling the same path as his Italian contemporary, had found the same prelate, whose interest in C-notes was more financial than musical.

In another case, the husband of a family friend was killed by an Italian army truck while he was sitting in his parked automobile. The widow easily won her suit against the Italian government, but payments on the $25,000 judgment never reached her. After fourteen years, and no payments, she enlisted the aid of a powerful cleric inside the Leonine Walls. His fee for “making the necessary phone call” came to approximately $12,000. Within six months the widow got all her money from the Italian state.

Informed Italians know where to go when they want to get something done. It’s merely a matter of finding the right cog in the Vatican mechanism. The Italian people are well aware of how intertwined their government is with the Vatican, and the Vatican with their government. This is so because of the nature of Italian politics.

There was a time when the Vatican would have nothing to do with the ballot box. It is not difficult to discern that that time is now past. The Vatican, which has so far been content to manipulate indirectly rather than directly, plays politics in Italy partly because it wants to keep the Communist party at bay and partly because a heavy hand in the Italian cabinet and the twenty-six ministries is a kind of guarantee that the financial interests of the Church will be served.

Toward the end of World War II, the Vatican found it worthwhile to revive a conservative political party that had been founded by a priest, Don Luigi Sturzo, in 1919. The party, which was originally known as the Popular party, was reorganized with Vatican funds and skill and became the present-day Christian Democratic party, which has ruled Italy without interruption since the end of 1945.

The Vatican does not directly control the Christian Democrats, who are popularly known among the Italian people as democristiani, and also as i preti—literally, the priests. It does not give instructions to its men—but it doesn’t have to. It does not express opinions on given political issues—but the party leadership is always aware of the Vatican’s views. Ostensibly, Italy’s is a secular government, but the rules of conduct are formulated by the Vatican. For this reason, the Vatican has allowed only trusted practicing Catholics who will do the Church’s bidding to rise to the top political jobs in Italy.

One might ask whether the success of the Vatican in Italian politics can be attributed to the merging of its secular and spiritual qualities. The answer is indeed in the affirmative. The Vatican alternately poses as a church and as a political force, depending upon which pose will prove more advantageous at the moment. At the lower levels, through the local congregations, the Church presents itself as a religious organization and wins support by religious appeals to its followers; often these appeals influence voters. At the higher levels the Church becomes increasingly a political organization and, indirectly, exerts a controlling influence over the affairs of the Italian state. The Church’s chief instrument has been the democristi-ani, an army of faithful Christian Democratic politicians that has obviated the Vatican’s need for maintaining powerful lobbies. Italy’s postwar political history is intimately tied to i preti, under whom Italy has been carefully guided to its present position in the world of nations.

Italy is no doubt the better for it. But all has not been politically tranquil for the Vatican. After World War II, the Italian Communist party—a prime enemy of the Vatican— became the largest Red party outside the Iron Curtain, but now it appears to have been boxed in by Vatican forces.

Rebuilding a democratic political structure during the postwar era presented considerable difficulties for Italy, whose people had been denied any participation in the affairs of the country for over twenty years. The consequences were deeply felt between 1945 and 1947. Urgent measures were required to help Italy’s economy, and it was apparent that decisive steps would have to be taken in the political field. It was during this period that the Vatican elected to go into politics on a full scale, though deliberately eschewing direct participation. The decision was doubtless prompted by the extreme left-wing parties that were seeking to impose their will on Italy through public demonstrations.

In a period when internal law and order was threatened by strikes and demonstrations, there arose the name of Alcide De Gasperi. De Gasperi, a former Vatican librarian and a devout Catholic, needed little encouragement from the Vatican to enter the political arena and steal the spotlight away from the revolutionary parties. In its own way, the Vatican took on the task of settling Italy’s political unrest by pushing to the fore a man like De Gasperi, who would not only give help to a country badly in need of assistance but would also bring to it the social and economic equilibrium desired by the pope.

With courage and admirable political acumen, De Gasperi devoted himself to the material strengthening of his country. Although the shadow of the Vatican was always behind him, he could not and did not ostensibly cater to the immediate interests of his silent sponsors. Upon his appointment as prime minister in December 1945, he emerged as the strong man of Italian politics. By quieting the various factions that had blocked Italy’s postwar democracy, he was able to call the first free elections the country had had in nearly a quarter of a century. The elections, held in June 1946, had the twofold objective of letting the people decide whether they wanted a monarchy or a republic, and of electing deputies to a constitutional assembly. The referendum showed twelve million votes in favor of a republic and ten million in favor of a monarchy. Umberto II, who had become king after the formal abdication of Victor Emmanuel III in May 1946, and who had reigned for only thirty-four days, removed himself from Italy under protest, to continue to campaign from abroad for the restoration of his throne. His downfall eliminated one of the last brakes on the power of the Vatican. Now the duties of the chief of state were placed in the hands of Prime Minister De Gasperi.

The elections, which brought on the collapse of a number of small parties, allowed the Christian Democratic party to emerge in full strength. When Italy’s new parliament elected Enrico de Nicola the country’s first interim president, Prime Minister De Gasperi forthwith resigned. De Nicola then asked him, as leader of the majority party, to form a new cabinet. Of the many important moves made by the second De Gasperi government, one that particularly deserves mention was the drawing up of a preliminary plan for agrarian reform. This had been one of the Christian Democratic party’s—and the Vatican’s —chief aims at the time. Many aspects of De Gasperi’s agrarian plans have since been carried out.

A subsequent government crisis in 1947 led to the third De Gasperi government, known as the Tri-partite Government, because the cabinet consisted of democristiani, Communists, and Socialists.

In 1948, when Italy’s new constitution came into force, elections were held for the first parliament. In the elections the Italian Communist party, which boasted an unprecedented membership of one and a half million, and which had formed a common electoral slate with the Socialists, made a concerted bid to take over the country.

Italy’s survival of this take-over attempt marks one of the crucial points of its history.

Much of the credit for barricading the Reds in 1948 should go to the Vatican. The Church let out all the stops for that election—even to the extent of swinging open the doors of convents and marching cloistered nuns off to the polling places to vote for Christian Democrat candidates. In many instances where a democristiano won by only a few votes, it was the ballots cast by sisters who had been shepherded from their nunneries to an election booth that made the difference. With 92 percent of the country’s eligible voters casting ballots, and with over a hundred parties presenting candidates, the elections gave the Christian Democrats an absolute majority of 306 seats in the Chamber of Deputies, a high-water mark in democristiani fortunes. The party also showed up strongly in the Senate, winning 131 seats. Had it not been for the 107 special “life senators” appointed under a special provision in the new constitution, this would also have constituted a true majority. In joint session both chambers met and elected Luigi Einaudi president of the republic. Once again, De Gasperi was asked to form a government.

In order to escape the stigma of Vaticanism, De Gasperi assigned some cabinet posts to the Liberals, Republicans, and Social Democrats. A four-party (Christian Democratic, Liberal, Republican, and Social Democratic) center coalition was thus formed. Under it, a politically stable five-year period ensued, during which the astute De Gasperi set about reconstructing and strengthening his regime. During this period monetary stability was attained, a start was made on new construction, new plans for agrarian reforms were introduced, and projects were launched to assist Italy’s underdeveloped areas.

In May 1951, the first local elections were held. The results showed the sinew of the Christian Democratic party. A second national election took place two years later, in June 1953, and once more the democristiani won the majority of votes.

After heading a total of eight governments, De Gasperi finally fell, in August 1953, when a disagreement among the four parties made it impossible for him to obtain a majority for the new cabinet. In eight successive coalitions he had shown himself to be a great statesman who saw Italian politics polarized by the sharp conflict between red and black—the red banner of the Communists and the black cassocks of the priesthood.

The task now fell to another democristiano, Giuseppe Pella, whose government was essentially of a “caretaker” nature. But, with the development of the crisis over Trieste, Pella resigned. Mario Scelba (Christian Democrat) succeeded in re-establishing the alliance of the Christian Democratic, Liberal, Republican, and Social Democratic parties. The four-party government embarked on some farsighted political and administrative projects, negotiating the agreement that returned northern Trieste to Italy and passing new laws approving agricultural reforms, a modernized building code, and new public works. Keenly interested in the public works, the Vatican stood ready to offer the professional services of its construction companies to the government and to private builders alike.

When President Einaudi’s term of office expired in April 1955, the parliament elected Giovanni Gronchi (Christian Democrat) to the office. Shortly thereafter, there followed still another government crisis, when a group of deputies broke away from the National Monarchist party and formed another monarchist party, and Premier Scelba resigned in June 1955. In July, Antonio Segni (Christian Democrat) formed a new cabinet, which was composed of the same four parties as the previous one. This coalition succeeded in bringing into being a new tax law—favorable to the Vatican—and a new ministry, the Ministry for State Participations, which was made responsible for controlling the operations of government- owned holding companies. The Segni government, with pontifical blessings, also initiated several important public works projects in the lower part of Italy and in the northern Po delta region.

In May 1957, a new cabinet was formed under Adone Zoli (Christian Democrat). Parliament eagerly approved the treaty of the European Economic Community, which made Italy one of the founding members of the Common Market. Important decisions were also made for Italy’s depressed rural areas, and pensions for farm workers were approved. Premier Zoli stayed in power until shortly after the May 1958 elections, and, although i preti lost some ground and a number of seats in both houses, Amintore Fanfani (Christian Democrat) was charged with forming a new cabinet in July of that year. With center-left tendencies, the Fanfani cabinet, which included some members of the Social Democratic party, drafted a ten-year plan for the modernization and reconstruction of Italy’s road network (the contracts went mostly to Vatican- owned companies), voted $64.5 million for a ten-year agricultural plan, elaborated a decade-long educational program, and adopted protective measures against abuses in the wholesale business.

Fanfani’s efforts were continued by another cabinet, headed by Antonio Segni, who had previously been the premier from July 1955 to May 1957. Executing policies that encouraged industry and agriculture, Premier Segni brought on monetary stability and a balanced budget, reduced unemployment, and put into operation a vast public works program. But the political situation in Italy was changing and eventually led to a forty-day parliamentary crisis, after which Segni resigned. There followed the usual consultations with President Gronchi, and finally Fernando Tambroni (Christian Democrat) was given the task of forming a new government, consisting of Christian Democrats.

In July 1960, the Tambroni cabinet was replaced by one headed (again) by Fanfani. Fanfani managed to provide loans and other assistance for artisans and small industries, to modernize the telephone network, to reconstruct and bring up to date the national highway system, and to put into effect a five-year plan for agricultural development. He also was instrumental in pushing for more funds for the Southland Development Fund, which had been established to speed industrialization in the depressed regions.

Still another crisis brought the downfall of Fanfani’s cabinet in 1962; nonetheless, Fanfani was called on to try his hand once again. He formed a cabinet with the famous apertura a sinistra (opening to the left). The cabinet, which included Social Democrats, fully adhered to the principles adopted by the Christian Democratic party at its congress in Naples the month before.

Nothing in Italian politics in the postwar era brought on such fiery discussions as did the so-called opening to the left—a policy that was adopted not because of any special philosophical theory, but because it gained the Christian Democrats the support of the non-Communist left. Specifically, this meant the Christian Democrats would get cooperation not only from the Social Democrats but also from Pietro Nenni and his Socialist party. The Socialists—or, as they were more frequently referred to, the Nenni Socialists—had thirty-five seats in the Senate and eighty-four seats in the Chamber of Deputies. Although the new Fanfani cabinet did not include the Nenni Socialists, it had the assurance of Nenni that they would not vote against the Christian Democrats whenever the Prime Minister sought a parliamentary vote of confidence. During this Fanfani government, Foreign Minister Antonio Segni was elected president of the republic, replacing Gronchi, whose term had expired.

The Vatican’s role during this period merits review. If the Vatican had not wanted its Christian Democratic party to work with the left-wing, Marxist politicians, then there would never have been an “opening to the left” in Italian politics; as members of a Catholic party, the democristiani were obliged to maintain their Vatican- approved principles, but the first law of all successful politicians is to retain a position of power. The apertura a sinistra became possible, thanks to a change of climate within the Vatican itself. Much of the change was attributable to Pope John XXIII, whose policies were in strong contrast to the stiffly anti-Communist ones of his predecessor, Pius XII.

Pope John, who made some public pronouncements that did not condemn the Communists outright, felt that the Vatican should stay out of Italian politics as much as possible. By keeping his hands off Fanfani’s attempts to bring on the “opening to the left,” he did the Vatican a service, for because of the “opening,” the democristiani were able to remain in power. As one prominent journalist later said, “Pope John, by being a nonpolitical pontiff during this period, was indeed the most political of pontiffs, and it saved his Catholic party from who knows what!”

The apertura a sinistra worked well, although it was never without sharp criticism both from ranking democristiani and from the public at large. About this time Italy was undergoing a miracolo economico, and this boom helped the Fanfani cabinet consolidate its position. Among other things, it obtained the passage of some important school bills (which implemented a provision for eight years of compulsory education, provided free textbooks for elementary school children, and allocated $320 million to modernize and better equip schools and universities), increased social security payments, set standards to regulate the purity of food products, modernized the country’s judicial system (which had hardly changed in a century), made large-scale expenditures to shore up Sardinia’s economy, appropriated large sums to be spent over a ten-year period for the construction of hospitals, imposed a withholding tax on stock dividends (the Vatican was later—by the maneuver described in Chapter IX—exempted from paying this tax), imposed a new real estate tax that put a stop to land speculation in expanding suburban areas, provided financial assistance to needy university students, and nationalized the electric power companies. This last measure, a key item for the Nenni Socialists, was part of the price the democristiani had to pay for the Socialists’ parliamentary backing.

Premier Fanfani and his cabinet went down to defeat in the 1963 national elections, in which the Catholic party lost a substantial number of seats. The man who eventually succeeded Fanfani was Giovanni Leone, another Christian Democrat. Having formed a minority cabinet composed exclusively of democristiani, Leone ran a “caretaker” government until the political situation clarified.

In time, Aldo Moro, secretary of the Christian Democrats, took over and continued as prime minister until the May 1968, elections, having formed three straight center-left cabinets following one knockdown after another. In that election, though the Communist party made some gains (winning thirteen new seats at the expense of the United Socialist party—which had helped the Christian Democrats govern Italy for five years in the center-left coalition), the Christian Democratic party gained six new seats in the Chamber of Deputies (raising its total to 266) and two new seats in the Senate (bringing the total to 135).

In June, Senator Giovanni Leone, the middle-of-theroad Christian Democrat who had headed a stopgap government five years before, formed a minority cabinet composed of Christian Democrats in a political play with practically the same cast. This move was made when the Socialists refused to join in another center-left coalition because they blamed their May election loss of some two million votes on their having cooperated with the Christian Democrats. Until the Socialists had decided, at a party congress in November, whether to stay at the window or to rejoin the Christian Democrats in a renewed center-left partnership, the caretaker Leone government had to depend on uncertain support from other parties, or abstentions, to get any legislation enacted over the summer.

It appears that, although Italian governments have been falling at a fairly brisk rate since the Vatican entered the political arena, the same eighty men have been playing “ministerial chairs.” Nearly all of these eighty perennials are members of the Christian Democratic party. When Moro formed his third cabinet, only two of his twenty-six ministers were new; fifteen of the remaining twenty-four had served in the previous cabinet. Equally startling is the fact that, since July 25, 1943, when Benito Mussolini was arrested, Italy has had twenty-seven governments with a total of 588 ministerial posts, all of which have been held by only 181 men. Seventy men served only once, and thirty-two twice; thus the remaining 454 posts were shared by only seventy-nine men. This count gives only a partial picture of the durability of these politicians, for the numbers deal only with ministerial appointments and do not include the posts held by these same men as undersecretaries.

To understand, in part, how the Christian Democrats have managed to retain control for a quarter of a century, one must examine the role of Catholic Action in Italy. Conceived and organized by Pius XI soon after his ascension to the papacy in 1922, Catholic Action is a strong lay organization with a membership that numbers many hundreds of thousands. Although the organization’s stated purpose is to promote Christian education and charitable enterprises, its various diocesan branches are also active in politics and cooperate in furthering the political doctrines of the Church. Catholic Action derives its strength from the fact that it is able to influence bureaucratic appointments, to place its men on the boards of directors of state-run industries, and to get its own people major academic chairs.

A good example of the role that Catholic Action plays in Italy’s political picture is provided by Catholic Action’s activities in 1948. Almost certainly, Italy would have gone Communist in that year’s election if organized Catholic Action groups had not been able to meet the Communists in a rough-and-tumble, head-on collision. Since the Christian Democratic party did not at that time have an inner structure that would have enabled it to ward off the extreme left, the Vatican called on the Catholic Action groups in the country’s three hundred dioceses. The intervention of this network prevented the left from emerging from the election as the most powerful political force in Italy.

Whatever principles guide Catholic Action in Italy, it will not be hobbled by genteel considerations of democratic propriety. Politics in Italy, as everywhere else, is a dirty game—and Catholic Action will go to any lengths in order to exercise its power for the Vatican.

An official of the Socialist party’s executive committee holds to the view that no other group in Italy is as powerful as Catholic Action. According to him, “Most of the major policies that have evolved in this postwar period have been policies favored by the Catholic hierarchy, or at least, policies that did not run strongly counter to the values of Catholicism.” He continues:

We all know that with Vatican approval the Catholic Action effort to create civic committees was responsible for theamazing victory registered by the Christian Democrats in the 1948 election. I am of the personal opinion that we wouldhave in Europe today a different Europe—an entirely different Europe—had the Communists succeeded in winning that election. People in the Free World, particularly those in the United States, do not truly know just how crucial Italy’s 1948 election was for the entire world. It transcended the borders of Italy. Indeed Catholic Action made the difference. Because the Vatican has these Catholic Action committees ready, the Pope’s power as a politician is tremendous. The committeescan defeat Christian Democrats who do not cooperate, or at the very least, they can make the re-election of these individuals extremely difficult.

To understand Catholic Action’s enormous power, it is necessary to recognize the extraordinary control Catholic Action has over Italy’s women voters. Of the twelve million ballots guaranteed to the Christian Democratic party in a given election, seven million come from female voters, who are dominated by local Catholic Action workers.

Generally speaking, women in Italy have very little grasp of politics. But Italian women do have the right to vote. And local Catholic Action workers do not fail to take advantage of the situation.

One British author perhaps put his finger on it when he interviewed a Sicilian peasant and recorded her statement:

The cross bears us to heaven. Who does Padre Pietro tell us to vote for? Always for the cross [the symbol of the ChristianDemocratic party is a red cross emblazoned on a white elongated shield], for God knows how to reward us. My mother, paralyzed as she is—they carry her to vote—and I go into the room where you vote, and I put the sign for her, on the shield with the cross. I am not two-faced with God, I do not betray Him. Certainly, all of us make mistakes, and even inthis party there are men who make them, but God looks after them. High-ups promise us a lot of things, make us hope, deceive us, and then give us nothing—but that isn’t to saythat one shouldn’t vote for God. There are many priests inthe Christian Democratic party, and there’s the Pope himself, too—and how can these make mistakes?

The Vatican’s Expenses XI

IN THE SUMMER of 1962, Vatican officials received a letter from Mrs. Elina Castellucci, a seventy-nine-year-old woman who lived twenty miles outside of Florence. Contending to be a direct descendant of Michelangelo, the woman wrote that she had a “small” claim on the Sistine Chapel but that she was not asking for it to be paid. All she wanted was a check for 300 lire (48 cents) to pay for a ticket to the Vatican Museum so that she could see her great-great-great-great-great-great-grand-uncle’s masterpiece.

“I would like the satisfaction of visiting the Sistine Chapel free,” she told a reporter. “Why should I buy a ticket to see something a member of my family painted?”

Although Mrs. Castellucci’s claim to being related to Michelangelo Buonarroti had been checked by genealogical experts and found to be true, Vatican officials did not answer her letter. One Italian critic chose to explain the Vatican’s silence this way: “The Pope economizes and saves his company three hundred lire!”

Among the Italians, particularly among the residents of Rome, the Vatican has a reputation for being “cheap,” “tight,” “stingy.” Without much provocation, the ordinary man in the street is likely to tell you, Il Vaticano riceve—ma non da a nessuno! (The Vatican receives— but gives to no one!) This is not true, of course. For the Roman Catholic Church is a practicing charitable institution— it receives charity; and it gives charity. In recent years especially, the Pope has made it a practice to allot gifts to countries hit by natural disasters, even where the people concerned are not Roman Catholics. These gifts have regularly been five-figure ones, most of them from $10,000 to $50,000. There is no way of ascertaining just how much money the Pope gives away in such outright grants, because the Vatican does not make the outlay public. Moreover, the Vatican offers little or no information about how much money it spends each year or each month. But it is known that there are sizable monthly expenditures.

To run any kind of business, to run a country of any size, large amounts of money must be spent. Running the Vatican is no exception. During one of his rare press conferences, the late Cardinal Tardini revealed the fact that the Vatican’s annual payroll came to about $7.25 million. It wasn’t clear, however, whether this figure referred only to the payroll for the State of Vatican City. Most likely it did, because veteran Vaticanologists are inclined to estimate the pope’s total expenses at somewhere close to $20 million a year.

What are some of the costs incurred annually by the Vatican? Those of keeping its huge palaces, offices, and residential buildings in repair, painted, and heated, and of having its spacious gardens groomed by a staff of lay workers. Those of maintaining a private army, the Swiss Guards and the Gendarmery, of about two hundred men, who receive some $260,000 in pay, according to rank and arm. Those of providing funds for an extensive diplomatic corps, including papal “ambassadors” in over eighty countries. Those of maintaining St. Peter’s Basilica and St. Peter’s Square, which alone must run to approximately $700,000 a year, of keeping a fleet of sixty cars in running order, of operating a powerful radio station, and of printing a newspaper six days a week. Churchmen, from cardinals down to ushers, must be paid. So must staff Latinists, throne bearers, lawyers, librarians, and myriads of others who provide their services inside and outside—and upon—the Leonine Walls, which, solid and thick as they are, need constant attention by a special crew of stonemasons.

Low as salaries are within the Vatican, no overtime is ever paid. Unharassed by unions, and not given to extravagance, the Vatican nevertheless granted several recent pay hikes. At the present time, a cardinal on the Pope’s immediate staff draws a monthly salary of $650, plus a $100 housing allowance if he lives outside Vatican City. If a cardinal also heads a congregation, he is allowed an additional $50. Thus some prelates earn salaries as high as $800 each month. This figure does not include donations and fees given to—and kept by— cardinals for lending their presence at such special events as weddings, funerals, and the laying of cornerstones.

The Vatican payroll reflects favoritism toward any married worker who has children. For instance, a gardener receives a base wage of $115 a month, but if he has four dependent children, his monthly salary is increased to $195. A Vatican usher in the lowest category receives, after ten years’ service, $235 a month; the editor of the daily paper draws $340, while a printer gets $120; a private in the Swiss Guards gets a monthly $120 and his food and board. Each of these employees is awarded an extra $20 a month for every child, with no limit imposed as to the number of children (or bonuses). Altogether there are some three thousand persons who draw paychecks from the pontifical treasury.

It was Pope John XXIII who awarded salary increases to Vatican employees, and in doing so, revealed his compassionate nature. Given to taking long afternoon strolls in the Vatican Gardens, the Pope never liked the fact that all the workers scurried away from him. One day when a group of path sweepers fled as he neared them, the Pope insisted that the men come out of their hiding places behind the bushes. One by one they emerged, timidly approached the pontiff, and went to their knees. But John was not one for ceremony; he asked the men about their families, and after several had boasted of their children, and of how many of them they had, he asked how much sweepers were paid for their work.

“What?” the Pope exclaimed when he heard that a day’s pay came to only 1,000 lire ($1.60). “No family with children can live on that. What has become of justice? Just wait . . . that’s going to change!”

The Pope went immediately to his office to get the full facts about his employees’ pay scale. On his order, a general review of all Vatican wages and salaries was made. Apprised of the figures, the Pope then ordered an across-the-board salary increase.

When he announced the new salary schedule, John told Vatican administrators, “We cannot always require others to observe the Church’s teaching on social justice if we do not apply it in our own domain. The Church must take the lead in social justice by its own good example.”

The pay raise, the first in many years, added an estimated $2.4 million a year to Vatican payroll expenses. Then in 1963, Pope Paul VI granted another raise, 20 percent to the entire staff. This increased the Vatican’s annual salary costs by another $1.44 million. It must be mentioned here that whenever such pay hikes are granted, the Vatican grants concomitant raises, in the form of “adjustments,” to former employees (civilian workers, not clergy) on pension. In another unprecedented move, Pope Paul, in December 1965, ordered that a special 100,000-lire ($160) bonus be paid to all Vatican staff to mark the successful end of the Ecumenical Council. This sum was over and above the tredicesimo, or thirteenth, an annual extra month’s pay that Italian law requires employers to give each employee.

The Vatican wage scale may be low by American standards, but the almost unbelievable fact about the papal payroll is that the Pope himself receives not a penny in salary. Therefore, when a ranking cardinal wins election to the pontifical seat, he earns a much-esteemed promotion— with a substantial reduction in pay.

Popes have had varying amounts of personal wealth, but probably no pope has had as little as Pope John. Before he assumed the papal throne, Cardinal Roncalli managed to get together enough money for his family to buy back the house in which he and his brothers had been born so that the Roncalli relatives could once again live under the same roof. Dr. Piero Mazzoni, the Roman physician who attended Pope John in his dying days, discovered that a fountain pen was one of John’s very few personal possessions of value.

“You have done much for me,” the peasant-like pontiff whispered to Dr. Mazzoni on his deathbed. “Take this pen—it’s all I have with which to repay you for your care and devotion. It’s almost new; I’ve hardly ever used it.”

The only other tangible possession John left behind was his pectoral cross, which he gave to Franz Cardinal Koenig, Archbishop of Vienna, who wears it at special events.

But personal funds are not a papal concern. It’s the Vatican’s expenses that engage popes in battles with the ledgers. To meet unforeseen expenses, the Vatican sometimes has to “rob Peter to pay Paul,” in the figurative sense, of course. During the final months of the Ecumenical Council, for example, the Vatican sold $4.5 million in gold to the United States government. The bills accrued by the council required dollar payments. For one thing, the Vatican had to pay transportation costs for most of the 2,200 prelates who had to travel long distances to take their council seats each session. Most of the representatives came on foreign airlines, which required payment in American dollars; the Vatican had to come up with $2.12 million for that expense alone. Additional outlays included those for electronic calculators and special precision devices. These were supplied by non-Italian companies, which would not accept Italian lire in payment. The $4.5 million did not, of course, represent the total cost of underwriting the Ecumenical Council. Miscellaneous expenses—foremost of which was the installation of a meeting hall on the floor of St. Peter’s —amounted to a staggering $7.2 million. A precise accounting of the expenses run up by the Ecumenical Council cannot be made—but speculations have placed the total between $20 and $30 million.

Apart from such special expenses as those of the Ecumenical Council, the Vatican treasury is constantly drained by the Church-sponsored organization that, with its staff of hundreds, spreads the Catholic religion to remote corners of the globe. This organization, known as the Congregation for the Evangelization of Nations or the Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith (known, too, by its Latin name, Propaganda Fide), was founded by Pope Gregory XV to attend to the financial requirements of Vatican missionaries. Operating in the red, because it will not take financial aid from the natives it serves, Propaganda Fide relies fully and completely on the Vatican’s pecuniary resources. While special collections are made in Catholic churches everywhere to help Propaganda Fide, and while a considerable sum is raised through this source, the Vatican still has to draw liberally on its own funds to make up deficits. Although the Vatican is known to be masterful in the practice of economy measures, it pours millions of dollars into its missions every year.

Does taking on such indebtedness have any justification in the Vatican scheme of things? Propaganda Fide missions are in most of Africa and in large portions of Asia. Although the number of colonial areas has been diminishing, the Catholic population of the mission territories has jumped by fifteen million in the last ten years and is now estimated at forty-five million. Much of this increase in population can be attributed to the creation of native priests and the naming of Asiatics and black Africans to high posts within the Vatican structure. The number of native-born priests in Africa, Asia, and the South Sea islands has increased by more than six thousand in the last twenty-five years, while the number of European priests in these territories has gone down by a third during the same period, according to the latest statistics. In the early nineteen-twenties, Africa and Asia had one native bishop; there are now seventy-five in Asia and about forty in Africa. The Vatican is willing to absorb the costs of the missionary army in order to achieve its purposes, even though, from a money standpoint, the loss is a total one.

Propaganda Fide is but one of the Vatican’s money- losing operations. Most of its charitable undertakings are under the wing of the Congregation for the Clergy (formerly called the Congregation of the Council), which administers such projects as the financing of new schools and hospitals to replace those that have been destroyed by natural catastrophes. Wherever a poor parish needs financial help, the Congregation for the Clergy stands ready to give aid, usually in the form of money. Ordinarily the Vatican does not provide succor to specific individuals, but upon occasion it may help a parish priest to get certain poor families back on their feet. The amount spent on this type of assistance is unknown, but the figure is surely sizable. Another organization that makes heavy demands on Vatican resources is Vatican Radio, the official station of the Holy See. The station broadcasts in Latin and thirty other languages and relays many programs to countries behind the Iron Curtain. On a given day, the powerful Vatican transmitters may beam two shows to Hungary, two to Czechoslovakia, and three to Rumania. In the course of a week, there will be four broadcasts in Byelorussian, three in Ukrainian, two in Bulgarian, and a half a dozen in the various Yugoslav dialects. Most of the broadcasts, however, are in Italian (with English in second place, for Far Eastern audiences). Newscasts on the Pope’s activities, special church ceremonies, masses, religious music, and papal messages are transmitted on twenty-four short-wave and three medium-wave bands, and are heard all over the world. The transmitters, which cost $3 million, are located on the highest ground in the Vatican Gardens and in a walled-in, two-mile-square plot north of Rome, which has been given extraterritorial status.

Unknown to most people, even regular listeners to Vatican Radio, is the fact that during the early morning hours of each day the office of the Vatican’s secretary of state broadcasts messages—some of them in code—to priests, nuncios, apostolic delegates, and cardinals in all parts of the world. Each Church dignitary knows about what time to expect special announcements pertaining to his region. He also receives coded signals from the Vatican to remind him of the “date” he has with his receiver.

In contrast with other stations, Vatican Radio often communicates private messages that will not be understood by anyone but the papal representative for whom they are intended. One might, for instance, hear something like this: “Father Tizio, with reference to the information in your letter of the eighth of September, re the peasant woman who sees visions of the Virgin Mary, we have considered your suggestion, but suggest that ad captandum vulgus. . . .”

Several years ago, when N.B.C. correspondent Irving R. Levine visited the station and was told that there was such a daily transmission to the United States, he asked in jest, “Is that when Cardinal Spellman gets his orders from the Vatican?”

The staff member who was acting as Levine’s guide replied with a grin, “No, sir, it’s just the other way around!”

Vatican Radio is a significant papal expense; so, too, is the unofficial Vatican newspaper. An eight- to ten-page evening paper printed six times a week, L’Osservatore Romano sells at 60 lire (10 cents) a copy on newsstands. An annual subscription in Italy costs $25, whereas, for copies that go abroad, the subscription rate comes to $40 a year. An incredibly dull publication, it has virtually no newsstand sales, but it does have a paid mail circulation of about fifty thousand copies, including four that are sent by air to Moscow. Issued in Italian, it frequently contains several columns in Latin, and it will often print speeches and reprint documents in the German, English, French, Spanish, or Portuguese in which they were first delivered or printed. The paper carries a very small amount of advertising and almost never runs photographs.

L’Osservatore operates at a loss of $2 million a year, and, despite the paper’s importance to the Vatican, this fact disturbed Pope Pius XII.

Pius, who tended to be a penny-wise-pound-foolish administrator, diligently watched every penny the Vatican spent. To save on electric current, for instance, Pius often made the rounds of the papal apartments flicking off the lights. Not infrequently he refused to make necessary repairs because he didn’t want to spend the money. “I cannot,” he said, “be extravagant with the funds of the Holy See.”

It was Pius XII who established the Vatican policy of reusing envelopes. Intra-Vatican communications were not to be sealed in such a way that the envelope could not be used again. It was also Pius who wrote his last will and testament on the back of an envelope that had made the rounds—and who once discovered, to his chagrin, that he had a drawerful of obsolete bank notes that would have been worth close to $1,000 if he hadn’t neglected to turn them in before the government’s redemption deadline.

Scandals, Scandals . . . XII

POSSIBLY THE LEAST understood spot on the globe is the Italian island of Sicily, which is noted chiefly for its exportation of gangsters to the United States.

Sicily is a world unto itself, a world in which people live in wretched poverty. The Vatican has a formidable stake in this miserably depressed area, a fact that sometimes forces the clergy to join hands with the Mafia.

In Italy you are friends if you have the same enemies — and in Sicily a forty-four-year-old poet and architect from the “hated north” has emerged as the nemesis of both the Vatican and the Mafia. Known as the Sicilian Gandhi, Danilo Dolci of Trieste has already become something of a legendary hero. He is also one of the most hated men in Italy.

Although powerful, his enemies—the dreaded Mafia, the powerful Sicilian landowners, and the Vatican—have not been able to destroy him. For if there is hatred for Danilo Dolci in the most influential Italian circles, there is unbounded admiration for him outside Italy. His dramatic work among the Sicilian poor has drawn hundreds of volunteer pilgrims from Sweden, Switzerland, and England — people who pay their own expenses for the privilege of working with the gentle, round-faced rebel.

Sixteen years ago, Danilo Dolci was, at twenty-eight, a successful architect, the author of two architectural books, and a respected man in his field. Then he made a tour of Sicily, saw the appalling ignorance, apathy, and misery of the people—and decided to abandon his profession. He settled down in the fishing village of Trapetto, married a semiliterate widow with five children, and after adopting five more children, began using Mahatma Gandhi’s nonviolent methods to campaign for social reforms.

The first battle was fought with a hunger strike. Widely publicized, it brought some help to Trapetto. The next battle, however, brought the police. Dolci had rounded up two hundred unemployed men to work without pay on a road that needed repairs for which the Christian Democratic government seemed unable to delegate funds. Dolci led what was in effect a “strike in reverse,” for when the police ordered him to desist, he and his helpers calmly continued with their work. Infuriated, the police arrested him for “trespassing on public property.” In Palermo he was tried on five counts and sentenced to seven weeks in prison.

The nature of the “crime” and the ludicrous aspects of the trial resulted in unprecedented publicity. Before long, spontaneous Danilo Dolci committees sprouted up all over Europe and began to send money. Italian politicians were embarrassed, and when Dolci accepted the Lenin Prize for a volume of poetry, they tried to dismiss him as a Communist agent.

But financial aid still reaches Dolci, and foreign pilgrims still come to work with him. And Dolci is creating some minor miracles. He has built a shelter, known as the Village of God, for orphans and destitute families. He’s also dammed a small river to provide irrigation, built two modest-sized hospitals and a pharmacy, and constructed many sewers and roads. After moving his headquarters from Trapetto to the larger town of Partinico, which he considered a bigger challenge, he began, with forty foreign volunteers, a program to teach the peasants how to use new farming methods and to develop new crops.

In recent years, Dolci has been using long sit-down strikes in various small hill towns of western Sicily. In the fall of 1963, for example, Dolci staged a nine-day fast and mass sit-down in front of the only church in the town of Roccamena. Joining in the protest were movie star Vittorio Gassman and author Carlo Levi. Intellectuals from other European countries also joined the six hundred townsfolk and spent entire nights sitting and sleeping outdoors on straw mats. Gassman occasionally provided entertainment by reciting passages from Dante’s Divine Comedy while standing in the glare of auto headlights.

At issue was the Bruca Dam. The project had been delayed by Christian Democratic politicians for thirty years. Rome had earmarked $12.8 million for the Bruca Dam in 1952, but the money had disappeared, and work was never begun. The earlier $1.6 million that the government had appropriated for preliminary work had also vanished. So Roccamena remained without water, and its people were left to try to scratch a living from their arid but potentially fertile soil. The little water available was used for the advantage of the wealthy few, who had the support of the Vatican and the Mafia, while millions of gallons of water from the unharnessed Belice River ran off and was wasted. As the Dolci sit-in headlines mounted, so, too, did the pressure on Rome. At long last, the Ministry of Public Works conceded and issued an order to begin work on the Bruca Dam.

Situations like that in Roccamena often develop because Vatican strategies are based on a belief that it is easier for the Church to maintain its strength where poverty, misery, and ignorance breed. Italy’s southland is a case in point. Ironically, the situation is aggravated by the Cassa per il Mezzogiorno (Southland Development Fund), which, instead of bringing economic relief to an insular backyard like Sicily, has become a gigantic patronage organization. Often, developmental contracts are awarded strictly on the basis of political considerations —one of the most important of which is loyalty to the Christian Democratic party. Because the practice is no secret, bishops and local politicians have little trouble impressing recalcitrant individuals with the fact that there is little to be gained from supporting activities not approved by the Vatican.

The system is so firmly entrenched that it is not surprising to find many people who believe that Sicily, despite its formal governmental machinery, is nothing more than a Vatican holding. People have been shaking their heads over the situation for years, but until Danilo Dolci came on the scene, the combined forces of the old nobility, the Mafia, and the Church had escaped meaningful opposition. Dolci, a professed Roman Catholic who never attends mass, puts into practice the humanitarian ideas of the Church; the Vatican opposes him not on philosophical or theological grounds, but on hard business principles. Because of Dolci, there is danger that the Vatican’s most valuable resource—its churchgoing believers—may be diminished.

Paradoxically, Dolci is well liked by the local priests, who know him personally, and he is held in some admiration by Mafia chiefs, who, for reasons of their own, have left him alone. In Sicily it is said that if Dolci has not been assassinated by now, he never will be.

Dolci, who asks no quarter in his struggles against the Catholic hierarchy, is disliked in papal circles and is considered a thorn in the side of the Christian Democratic party. He is often accused of flirting with Communism and opening the way to a red-backed renaissance in Sicily. But his encounters with the mainland democris-tiani are largely ignored by the Vatican, which does not want to elevate him by engaging in a direct confrontation.

But if the Vatican has preferred to avoid a collision with Dolci, the Bank of Sicily (Banco di Sicilia) has chosen another course. The bank, a financial arm of the pope, is the overseer of the Vatican’s holdings in the western end of Sicily and, as such, has tried without marked success to make short shrift of the so-called Sicilian Gandhi. A recent scandal within the bank has reduced some of the pressures on Dolci.

Carlo Bazan, the bank’s highly respected president, was arrested in 1967 on charges of alleged irregularities. Over an eight-year period, he had hired nearly a hundred members of his family to fill various key posts in the bank —and, while nepotism is not unknown in Palermo and does not necessarily constitute a legal offense, Bazan, thrust into the glare of an unfavorable spotlight, was accused of having doctored records and overlooked payments due on loans made to members of his family.

Postwar Italy has been rife with scandals. Perhaps no more but certainly no less than any other power institution in Italy, the Vatican has had its share of troubles in this respect. But because of the Vatican’s position and prestige, foreign correspondents in Rome, and all too many Italian newspapermen also, have remained silent, or almost so.

Two recent subjects of scandal—the Fiumicino airport and the price of bananas—deserve more attention than they have received.

There are whole generations of Italians that don’t know what a good banana—a real banana—tastes like. Italy’s banana scandal made headlines inside Italy but caused no stir outside its borders, mostly because of the protective attitude of Rome’s resident correspondents toward the Catholic Church.

“La camorra delle banane” (the banana racket) began innocently enough. On December 2, 1935, while Italy was at war with Ethiopia, the Gazzetta Ufficiale published a decree that announced a new state monopoly—on the sale of bananas. Italy’s merchant ships were charged with the responsibility of transporting bananas from Libya, Somalia, and the Italian-owned islands of the Aegean. Up to that time, under a system of free enterprise, bananas had been exported to Italy not only by its colonies but also by the Canary Islands, by the Antilles, and by Guinea. Altogether, these last countries had raised their banana exports to Italy almost 200 percent, from eleven million pounds in 1925 to nearly thirty-one million in 1934. Bananas from Somalia in 1925 represented only 2 percent of Italy’s total banana imports, but by 1955 the Italian colony, through favoritism, had garnered better than 83 percent of the banana trade with Italy, having reached a total of close to eighty million pounds.

The establishment of the new Italian monopoly was more a political move than an economic one. It was designed to help the Italians establish themselves as “colonizers” in Africa by developing trade between the colonies and the mother country. The African bananas were an unsound economic proposition in the general European market, for it cost too much to produce them, too much to ship them, and, what’s more, they were of inferior quality. To administer the new monopoly, the Italian government set up a special agency, Regia Azienda Monopolio Banane (R.A.M.B.), which purchased the bananas from the growers and stabilized the prices with the middlemen and the retailers.

According to the terms of the decree, R.A.M.B. was supposed to put up for public bid concessions for forty- eight wholesalers, each of whom would have a specified territory. But, between 1937 and 1940, R.A.M.B. “temporarily” assigned these concessions—until a public competition could be held. The forty-eight persons who received the supposedly temporary concessions were high- ranking Fascists and Vatican-endorsed men and their relatives. These agents retained their concessions during the forties, the fifties, and the middle sixties.

In February 1945, the Minister of the Treasury dissolved R.A.M.B. and nominated a special commission to study the sale of bananas. After nine years, during which an emergency committee of R.A.M.B. continued administering the sale of bananas while the special committee undertook the inquiry, a new government agency was set up to deal with the banana monopoly. It was called 1’Azienda da Monopolio Banane (A.M.B.), and what it was was essentially only the old Regia Azienda Monopolio Banane with a new name and a new set of identifying initials.

A.M.B., in one of its first acts, raised the number of concessions from forty-eight to eighty-six. All eighty-six concessions were to be good for only one year; then the public was to be given a chance to bid on them. The public competition never took place, however, and the eighty-six concessionaires continued to hold their assigned territories.

A.M.B., in another of its first acts, established a fixed price for bananas in the wholesale and retail markets. Although the price of bananas in other countries fluctuated with the season, the price in Italy remained the same throughout the year. And the retail price of a colonial banana in Italy was over twice the price of a banana from the Canary Islands or Spanish Africa in other European countries. Thanks to A.M.B., Italians had to pay 475 lire (approximately 77 cents) for a kilogram of bananas; in nearby France a kilo of bananas cost half of that—even when the fruit was in short supply.

To add to the injury, Somalian bananas were of inferior commercial quality. No other country would import them. But Italy did and, thanks to A.M.B., paid a wholesale price of 106 lire a kilo for them—at a time when the highest wholesale price being paid for superior bananas was the equivalent (in pesos, francs, and other European currencies) of only 50 lire a kilo.

It should also be pointed out that the banana growers were getting 18 to 20 lire a kilo from the Italian “banana handlers” who resold the bananas to A.M.B. at the fixed 106-lire price. These “banana handlers”—theoretically serving on foreign soil—actually did not five outside Italy, nor did they ever see any of the bananas they were “handling.” They transacted their business at the Via Veneto sidewalk cafes, lived in Rome’s posh Parioli district, and kept summer villas at Viareggio on the Costa Azzurra.

Because of their “understanding” with A.M.B., the so- called banana handlers netted the equivalent of $4 million a year more than they would have netted in a freely competitive situation. Owners of the merchant boats that brought the bananas to Italy’s ports also had a deal with A.M.B.—and were making an extra $2.4 million a year. Local wholesale distributors were taking in an extra $3.84 million, and retailers an extra $4.48 million. Thus a grand total of $14.72 million—extra—was “earned” by individuals connected with Italy’s banana business. But not all of this money stayed in their pockets; a percentage was given to certain pezzi grossi (literally, big pieces— Italian slang for bigshots) who were affiliated with the Christian Democratic party.

Despite the artificially inflated prices paid by the Italian people (who never realized what people in other countries were paying for bananas), the sale of bananas in Italy almost quintupled over a twelve-year period—rising from

56.2 million pounds in 1951 to over 279.3 million in 1963. And, in 1960, to add to the irony, Italy’s finance minister bestowed silver and bronze medals on the banana concessionaires for the fine work they had been doing over the years. Three years later, the decorated individuals were indicted on charges of having committed fraud in the handling and sale of bananas. That was in 1963 —the trials still have not come up.

Gathering dust in the archives of Italy’s newspapers are reports of other financial scandals, involving Rome’s gleaming multimillion-dollar Leonardo da Vinci Airport. In the archives of non-Italian newspapers, there is nothing, or almost nothing, about these scandals, for the fuss over the Leonardo da Vinci International Airport at Fiumicino received very little coverage outside Italy. One American newsman confided to me that he had filed some good copy on the subject, but his editor in New York had told him to “lay off.” Which he did.

When the story broke in 1961, I was representing McGraw-Hill’s technical news weeklies and was able to cable full details from Rome. Which were printed. Subscribers to Aviation Week and Engineering News-Record were thus kept abreast of the Fiumicino airport situation. But very few newspaper readers in the United States learned the deplorable, almost incredible facts.

In 1952, the city of Rome recognized that its airport at Ciampino would soon be inadequate. Ciampino, which was ideally located, had three runways, each of them 7,380 feet long. Each could have been extended to accommodate jet planes, for the airport was situated in an uninhabited area with plenty of available lands. But, instead of allocating funds for Ciampino’s expansion, the Italian government elected to buy up large parcels of land in the nearby coastal town of Fiumicino.

As an airport site, Fiumicino had nothing to recommend it. A marshland near the mouth of the Tiber, it had earlier (in 1944) been rejected by the United States Army Air Force as a landing field for bombers. The Air Force report stated that shifting sands, frequent fogs, and occasional flooding made the land somewhat less than ideal for an airport site. Nevertheless, the Italian government paid $21 million for it. The purchase was made after the site had been recommended to the government by the Vatican- owned Societa Generale Immobiliare.

Prince Torlonia, who was prominent in many Catholic organizations, and whose family was prominent in Vatican history, received for the land the equivalent of $ 1,300 a hectare (about $525 an acre), even though at nearby Casal Palocco a huge parcel of fog-free, flood-free land was available for sale at considerably less.

Had the existing airport at Ciampino been expanded, or had the available Casal Palocco land been purchased, the government would not have had to appropriate $7.2 million to shore up the shifting sands of Fiumicino in order to lay concrete for the runways. It took workmen at Fiumicino five years to control the sand. Often their labors were interrupted by heavy fogs that descended over the site. Fogs are still a problem at Fiumicino—so much of a problem that airport authorities frequently have to direct traffic to the old Ciampino field.

All of this skulduggery took place before Rome came around to recognizing, in 1952, that Ciampino Airport would no longer do, but the scandal of Fiumicino had not yet reached the front pages. The purchase of the Torlonia land had been carried out quietly, even though $21 million in public funds had been spent. As it developed, the $21 million was a mere drop in the bucket.

On January 15, 1955, the Italian government allocated $22.4 million “for the prosecution and completion of an international airport at Rome, by the Ministry of Public Works, to include such necessary other works as connecting roadways to the city limits, electrical installations, and a communications system.” Although three plans had been submitted, the Ministry of Public Works did not select any of them and, a year later (January 13, 1956), asked for the sum of $10.4 million to study some new projects for the airport. Three more years went by, and on April 28, 1959, the Ministry of Public Works asked for, and got, the sum of $6.64 million “to make the airport operative.” Three months later another $640,000 was allocated “for the prosecution and completion of the work.” Other special allocations had been granted along the way—$1.76 million for Ministry expenses accruing from the building of the airport, $8 million for connecting roadways to the city limits, and $6.4 million for debts the Ministry had accumulated because of the airport. All this money was granted a singhiozzi (hiccup style), in violation of an Italian law that clearly states that all financial allocations for public works of an extraordinary nature must be discussed by the parliament and that a bill must be passed for any withdrawals from the treasury. The appropriation of money for the airport was certainly irregular. There were to be further irregularities.

The contract to construct the runways was awarded to the Manfredi Construction Company. It is no small coincidence that Manfredi belonged to the Vatican. The contract to build the main terminal was put up for public bidding, in which eight construction companies participated. Provera e Carrassi, the Vatican-owned company that won the bid at $5.12 million, proceeded to build the terminal building, but on the 376th day of work discovered that it had “underestimated” the total cost. Without further ado, or any publicity, the sum paid to Provera e Carrassi was raised another $4.38 million. Not until the final accounting was made was it learned that Provera e Carrassi had received 80 percent over its “low bid.”

A contract was given to the Castelli Construction Company (also Vatican owned) to put up the hangars. The sum of money earmarked for this expense was listed on the budget at $4.54 million. On the final expense sheet, however, it was not possible to determine just how much Castelli was paid for the work. So, too, with the amount paid the Vaselli Company, another Vatican-owned company, which got the assignment of building the connecting roadways.

If this sounds like the making of a good scandal, that’s precisely what it turned out to be in the spring of 1961. Although the world press generally ignored the details, the Italian press gave them adequate attention. The coverage was particularly full in Rome’s left-wing evening daily, Paese Sera, which printed a series of documented articles. The articles named names.

The Christian Democratic government set up a legislative commission to probe the matter, and, although four ministers (all Christian Democrats) were cited for irregularities in the report to the President of the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies, no criminal charges were made. Since the special investigating commission was primarily intended to placate an indignant Italian citizenry, the only person who finally received any kind of punishment was a small-time colonel in the Ministry of Defense. His punishment took the form of a transfer from an office in Rome to a post in Bari, on the other side of the peninsula.

During its first years the Leonardo da Vinci International Airport had its problems. It still has problems. Because of the settlement of the fill and the impact of giant jet liners, the main runway developed cracks—some of them over a mile long—that had to be repaved. The three-story terminal building, made entirely of glass, has neither windows that open nor air conditioning. On warm days it tends to be unpleasant, to say the least. In cold weather it’s not much better, for radiant heat pipes just below the surface of the rubber floor send up acrid fumes of seared rubber. Combine these with the jet fumes that hang motionless in the nonventilated terminal, and one understands why some travelers become ill from the smell.

So much for the terminal building. As for the airport as a whole, some Italians, knowing its history, don’t like the stench.

Prophets and Profits XIII

“In the Vatican everything is forbidden, and everything is possible.” (Vatican saying)

IN THE SPRING of 1958, the Vatican became the victim of a “hat trick.” A publicist by the name of Guido Orlando was hired by the Millinery Institute of America, which wanted him to promote the sales of women’s hats. Orlando accomplished his task by pulling a stunt that involved Pope Pius XII.

Thinking (correctly, it turned out) that canon law, which requires women to cover their heads at services, might somehow be used to boost women’s hat sales, Orlando set about trying to get the Pope to make an official pronouncement stating that hats were a proper part of women’s dress. Toward this end, Orlando created the Religious Institute of Research, which forthwith announced the “results of a survey” indicating that over twenty million women in North America attended mass every week without their heads covered. The statistics were phony, of course, as was the letterhead of the Religious Institute of Research on which Orlando communicated the news of the “research” to His Holiness.

The letter suggested that the pontiff urge women to attend religious services dressed according to established rule, and thereby preserve the tradition of the Church. Boldly, Orlando added, “The remarks I thought Your Holiness might make could be phrased, ‘Of the various pieces of apparel worn by women today, hats do the most to enhance the dignity and decorum of womanhood. It is traditional for hats to be worn by women in church and at other religious occasions, and I commend hats as a right and proper part of women’s dress.’ ”

Aggressive though this was, it worked. A short while later, during a public audience, Pope Pius incorporated Orlando’s very words into a general recommendation that women wear hats. L’Osservatore Romano ran the story, which was then picked up by the wire services and the foreign correspondents. Most of the daily newspapers in the United States and Canada gave it space. The Pope’s quotation went on display in many hat-store windows, printed on large posters. Within a month there was a sharp upturn in the sales of women’s hats—and the Pope in his palace may have wondered about the questionable ethics of the world outside.

Today the world outside has comparatively little trouble getting into the inner recesses of the Vatican. Reaching the Pope is no longer a near impossibility, and the path Orlando took to get to His Holiness seems devious indeed. Today, a mere decade later, there is a new Vatican; many changes have taken place, and are taking place. These changes began to manifest themselves when the second Ecumenical Council met for its first sessions, in October 1962. Pope John himself established the keynote when a Church official asked him just what purpose the council was supposed to serve. Walking over to his study window and pushing it open, he answered, “That’s what the council’s purpose is supposed to be—to let some fresh air into the Church!”

Every pope has his own method of bringing “fresh air” into his administration. New popes have a way of cleaning house once they shed their cardinal’s robes and move into the papal chambers of the Apostolic Palace. So it was with the present pontiff, Paul VI, after he took over in June of 1963.

Pope Paul brought with him some personal belongings, set up a favorite desk and chairs, and installed his own comfortable bed. In addition, he wanted to bring a “new look” to his Vatican apartment—and amazed everybody in the enclave when he ordered the eighteen marble busts of previous popes which lined the palace’s private antechambers to be taken away and stored for safekeeping. Then he had the old damask and red brocade stripped from the walls in order to achieve a more modern decor. Local artists were summoned to redo the private pontifical chapel. At Paul’s request, bombproof storage cells were constructed to house many Vatican treasures beneath the lawns of the Vatican Gardens.

Also at Paul’s request, two great halls at Belvedere Court were readied to accommodate the new senate of bishops with which he would be meeting from time to time as a result of the Second Ecumenical Council. Another new assembly room seating twelve thousand people was fixed up to provide space for the overflow at papal audiences. In addition, Paul brought in new equipment —electronic brains, electric generators, modern switchboards, and the latest in public-address systems.

“The Church is not a museum of memories,” he declared. “It is a living community.” This is the attitude one encounters in Vatican City today. It is the recognition that the Church, however slowly, is changing in many of its aspects. It is the awareness that if the future is to hold any promise of perpetuity for the Vatican, the Church must indeed change.

Religion in general, and Catholicism in particular, is on the decline in the twentieth century. Catholicism cannot hope to thrive much longer on the credulous imagination of immature populaces. Quietly, Vatican leaders are coming to grips with the realization that religion is stronger in the more backward areas. With its nineteen centuries of experience, the Church—which purports to know about the next world—displays a great deal of knowledge about this one, too, and is doing a nuts-andbolts job of taking care of itself.

The contemporary decline of religious belief in many parts of the globe, a phenomenon that has followed in the wake of industrialization, political sophistication, and scientific and educational progress, spells trouble for the Vatican as a religious institution. And the Vatican knows it. But the Vatican is more than a religious institution, more than a political institution. It is a solid economic entity, firmly entrenched in the world of business and finance.

As a “big business,” the Vatican considers Communism its great enemy. Necessarily this could mean a fight to the finish between the Church of Rome and the “Church of Moscow.” Let no one have any doubts about the Vatican. It is afraid of the Communists, deathly afraid. There is, of course, the fact that Communism preaches atheism, but the greater danger lies in the financial sphere. Had the Communists successfully taken over Italy in the 1948 election, private enterprise would have ceased. And virtually every penny the Vatican had invested in Italy’s economy would have been confiscated by the state.

Heavy with the memory of centuries, the Vatican takes the long view on matters of immediate importance to its survival. One can discern, even from afar, the Vatican’s eagerness to pull the checkstring on Communism by bringing Catholicism to other continents. The creation of Asiatic and African cardinals and the escalation of efforts in the missionary countries, particularly in the development of a “native clergy,” are part of the global strategy being used by the Vatican. Not surprisingly, the Church wants to establish itself in non-European and non- American lands.

Perhaps more important, however, is the Church’s role as an economic force. Here again the Vatican’s emphasis is on survival—by meeting the enemy (Communism) head on. Having long ago formed “alliances” with Wall Street and other financial nerve centers, the Vatican stands ready to wield an economic sword in the “crusade” against godless Communism.

To counteract the danger of Moscow and Peking, the Vatican will support, in substance if not in theory, the methods of doing business in the United States. Unable to accept Marxist principles that represent a strong threat to its future security, the Vatican created a sort of no-man’sland between itself and the Kremlin; today, however, in a move to delimit the influence of the Communists, the Vatican is embarking on a mission to “make friends” with its deadly enemy. Consequently, it is facing one of the gravest dilemmas in its history. There are a great many blueprints for containing Communism, and each of them has its pitfalls, but the Vatican has a multi-billion-dollar investment to protect, and behind the scenes, is preparing for a life under a system of international security which necessarily involves some kind of working relationship with the other side. It is for this reason that in the sixties Pope John and his successor, Pope Paul, sought a settlement that would guarantee the future for both sides.

In the spring of 1967, Pope Paul expressed some wide- ranging views on the world’s social situation in his encyclical Populorum Progressio (On the Development of Peoples). The Pope declared that “the introduction of industry is a necessity for economic growth and human progress.” But on the subject of “liberal capitalism,” he added:

It is unfortunate that in these new conditions of society a system has been constructed which considers profit as the keymotive for economic progress, competition as the supreme law of economics, and private ownership of the means of production as an absolute right that has no limits and carries no corresponding social obligation. This unchecked liberalism leads to dictatorship.

One cannot condemn such abuses too strongly by solemnlyrecalling once again that the economy is at the service of man.

But if it is true that a type of capitalism has been the source of excessive suffering, injustices, and fratricidal conflicts whose effects still persist, it would also be wrong to attribute to industrialization itself evils that belong to the woeful system which accompanied it.

On the contrary, one must recognize in all justice the irreplaceable contribution made by the organization of labor and of industry to what development has accomplished.

Private property does not constitute for anyone an absoluteand unconditional right. No one is justified in keeping for his exclusive use what he does not need, when others lack necessities.

Speaking with a great sense of urgency, the Pope called for a far-reaching plan to bring economic progress and social improvement to the underdeveloped nations. He urged all men of good will to unite in an effort to end the world’s misery, adding that rich nations must give greater aid to poor ones. Studiously vague, the encyclical maintained that central economic planning is the key to economic development, that free markets and private enterprise have at most a minor role to play.

“Individual initiative alone and the mere free play of competition,” said Pope Paul, “could never assure successful development. … It pertains to the public authorities to choose, even to lay down, the objectives to be pursued, the ends to be achieved, and the means for attaining these, and it is for them to stimulate all the forces engaged in this common activity.”

Pope Paul, although well versed in the intricacies of the social sciences, and especially of sociology, preferred to ignore the subtle argument that Adam Smith espoused —that an individual “by pursuing his own interests . . . frequently promotes that of society more effectively than when he really intends to promote it.”

Quite apart from any laissez-faire philosophy, the Vatican firmly subscribes to the thesis that central planning is the key to economic development. Its own financial history from 1929, when Bernardino Nogara began to run a “one-man show” with the then Italian dictator as his foil, through its profitable alliance with the Christian Democratic party has taught the Vatican some valuable lessons in the importance of maintaining careful economic control. Basically, the Pope does not endorse the view of the eighteen international businessmen and opinion leaders who offered to work with the Vatican toward world understanding of the Populorum Progressio encyclical and who declared in a resolution, “If the economic system is to prosper with the savings, investment, and development necessary, the state should not assume functions that can be better carried out by private initiative.”

The Vatican sees its future strength in itself. Christian Democracy, which had supported a policy to promote new collective bodies toward the construction of an organized Europe, provided government leaders who were champing for, as far back as 1955, the possibility of bringing about an organization of states that would merge their national markets through the gradual abolition of customs tariffs. Some of the very first mentions of a “Common Market” came up in Messina, Sicily, in June 1955, when the Council of Foreign Ministers of the European Coal and Steel Community met. This meeting is often viewed as being the germination point of discussions that were to lead to the drafting of the Common Market Treaty that was signed in Rome on March 25, 1957. As a result of their role in the formation of the European Economic Community, the Christian Democrats have emerged as an energetic political force not only in Italy but in Western Europe as a whole. As their fortunes have risen, so too have the Vatican’s. The Church today is in a healthier political and economic position than at any time in this century.

While the Vatican has remained secretive about its fiscal policy, it has never believed that the investment of Church money was either illegal, objectionable in principle, or contrary to good conscience. In seeking to resolve the conflict between that which is to be rendered to God and that which is to be rendered to Caesar, the Vatican has developed its own special modus vivendi between the sacred and the secular. The view of the pope as a kind of chairman of the board may shock some readers.

But let us remember that the Vatican is a remarkable, centuries- old institution, and that, when it comes to money, it is one that is fully in tune with the spirit of the times.

This writer foresees the day, perhaps a thousand years from now, when the Vatican will cease functioning as a religious institution and take up, on a full-time basis, the duties of a large-scale business corporation. The transition will not be as difficult to effectuate as one might suspect. For just as Catholicism will decline and eventually withdraw from the ranks of the major religions, so, too, will Church money find its way into nearly every area of the free world’s economy. Then, at last, the tycoon on the Tiber will shed the mantle of piety; then, at last, the Vatican will expose the full extent of its financial interests.

Continued from VIII. The Council of Trent.

I find this section very interesting history about how false doctrines about Baptism crept into the Church! Water had become a diety to some people!

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During the period beginning with the commencement of the fourth century, and ending with the sixth, baptism was commonly administered twice in the year, at Easter and Pentecost.

Preliminaries of Baptism.

There were three classes of sponsors generally employed during this period for three distinct lists of persons; one sponsor became surety for an infant, another for an adult, and a third for a person of deranged or defective intellect. In each case, the sponsor was bound to look after the religious welfare of his charge: even the sureties of adults “were their curators and guardians, bound to take care of their instruction before and after baptism.”

The baptized were anointed with oil, from head to foot, before receiving the sacred rite. This ceremony signified, in that day, the unction of the Holy Spirit, and grafting into the Olive Tree, Christ Jesus. It also denoted that celestial chrism, which qualified Christ’s earthly wrestlers for heroic struggles with the powers of evil.

The bishop breathed upon the candidate for baptism after he had been exorcised to expel demons, to indicate the gift of the Spirit to be conferred.

He touched his ear, saying: “Ephphatha (Mark vii. 34), Be opened; may God send thee an open understanding, that thou mayest be apt to learn and to answer.”

In north Africa, after signing candidates with the cross, the bishop gave them a portion of consecrated salt.

Just before the baptism was administered, the candidate faced the west, the supposed region of diabolical and dark influences, and then, by his sponsor or personally, he renounced Satan with his works and pomps, his service, his angels, his inventions, and all things that owe or render him obedience. This renunciation was commonly repeated three times, the speaker stretching out his hands, and striking them with horror, and spitting, in defiance of the Wicked One, in the direction in which his power was supposed to be exercised. Then, facing the east, the region of the rising sun, the quarter in which Eden, the type of the heavenly paradise, was planted, the candidate vowed to live ever after in obedience to the laws of Christ. After this, a solemn profession of faith was made in the articles of a gospel creed, with the eyes directed towards heaven. Such was the custom which continued at Rome and elsewhere, for a great while, in defiance of opposition. The baptism was administered after these observances.

Ceremonies immediately after Baptism.

When the candidate was baptized, his forehead, ears, nostrils and breast, were anointed with holy chrism.

White robes were placed upon him, to show that he was washed in the blood of the Lamb, and meant to keep himself unspotted from the world.

Lighted tapers (candles) were placed in his hands, as emblems of the lamps of faith, with which virgin souls go forth, to meet the divine bridegroom.

The kiss of peace was always given to the babe or adult just baptized, to show the perfect reconciliation with God now enjoyed.

Milk and honey were imparted to the baptized, to teach that, as babes in Christ, they required as simple food, of a spiritual kind, as natural infants needed of a material sort.

The ingenuity of the early fathers was sorely taxed to discover some new ceremony to add to the dignity of baptism, to make it more imposing and glorious in the estimation of men.

The Effects of Baptism.

Nothing in all earthly history ever wrought such prodigies as baptism at this period was supposed to accomplish. It removed the taint of original sin, blotted cut actual transgressions, made the baptized as innocent as an angel, gave him a new heart, and bestowed upon him an outfit for heaven so perfect that it was imagined that the best time to die was just after being baptized. How early these heresies appeared in the churches it is somewhat difficult to settle. Justin Martyr uses the word regenerate about baptism in a way that looks in the direction of baptismal regeneration. The passage is:

“They who are persuaded and do believe that those things which are taught by us are true, and do promise to live according to them, are directed first to pray and ask of God with fasting the forgiveness of their former sins; and we also pray and fast with them. Then we bring them to some place where there is water, and they are regenerated, according to the manner of regeneration by which we were regenerated.”

Possibly, Justin may have used this word regenerate in a figurative sense; but the probabilities are not favorable to that opinion. Evidently he attached an amount of importance to baptism unknown to Christ or his apostles.

Tertullian, a little later, expresses the doctrine of baptismal regeneration in terms as vigorous and unscriptural as any Romanist or ritualist could possibly employ; nay, they could not wish their sentiments more explicitly asserted. His words are: “We fishes, after the name (Greek word) of our Lord Jesus Christ, are born in the water.” The word (written in Greek) is an acrostic made of the first letter of the following names of Jesus in Greek: Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the Saviour. And it means, a fish. From this name, a fish became as common a symbol among the early Christians to indicate their faith as a crucifix is among the adherents of Rome in our times. We are born in the water, was a leading view of baptism, cherished by great and good men like Augustine, Chrysostom, and Ambrose. This doctrine springing up in the latter half of the second century, swept over Christendom, and left scarcely a trace of dissent in its pathway of triumph.

Baptism washes out all Sin.

From the third century down to the Reformation, except in a few isolated communities, baptism was the grand fountain of soul-cleansing. It was believed to contain the whole forgiving power of Father, Son and Spirit. And it was imagined that heaven could never be entered without it.

On this account many put off baptism till death threatened them, that their iniquities might be removed as the King of Terrors carried them into the land of spirits. And when an earthquake vibrated, or a pestilence, or a deadly war threatened, the clergy were besieged, and their utmost powers were tasked to administer baptism to frightened thousands, whose faith in the liquid deity was unbounded; and who were resolved to render no service to Jesus till the scepter of death seemed likely to strike them.

The Emperor Valens raised an army to drive back the insolent Goths who had crossed the Danube, and invaded Thrace, which he intended to lead in person. And as he reflected upon the risks of battle, he concluded he ought not to hazard his life without the protection of “divine grace,” and that he ought to secure “the complete armor of God by means of the holy rite of baptism.” And the intelligent Greek historian who records the transaction, says: “This was a wise and prudent reflection.” Eudoxius baptized him, and with his soul washed by water, as he foolishly imagined it to be, he supposed himself ready for battles with their savage havoc and huge graves. A foolish faith in the power of water to cleanse the polluted souls of men was universal. And it was believed that it gave a far more complete purification to hearts than it ever gave to hands or garments.

Many sick persons were baptized in their beds from the third to the sixth century. This was called clinic baptism, from the Greed word, a bed or couch. It met with much opposition, but as even this sort of baptism was supposed to take away all sin, it was freely resorted to in cases where the disease threatened to prove fatal. Novatus,of Rome, enjoyed the application of water in this way when it was imagined that he was at the point of death, and his future career as the founder of a new sect of Puritans, opposed to some of the customs of the churches in his day, brought his baptism into notoriety and disrepute. But he believed that it gave him a full outfit for the “Shining Shore,” at a time when he supposed that he was leaving the earth.

In A.D. 253, a council of sixty-six bishops sat in Carthage, with Cyprian at its head. To this council Fidus, a rural bishop, presented by letter two questions for solution; one about Victor, a presbyter, and the other a query, asking how soon after birth a babe might be baptized; and suggesting that it should never receive the sacred rite till after the eighth day, as it would not be pleasant to give it the kiss of peace before it was eight days old. Cyprian and the council say to him in reply, among other things,

“Therefore, most dear brother, this was our opinion in the council, that no one should be hindered by us from baptism and the grace of God, who is merciful, kind and affectionate to all; which rule, as it holds for all, so we think it more especially to be observed in reference to infants and persons newly born, to whom our help and the divine mercy are rather to be granted, because at their first entrance into the world, by their weeping and wailing, they do no other thing than implore compassion.”

Cyprian proceeds to give his rustic brother a little information, by saying:

“Whereas you assert that an infant, the first days after its birth, is unclean, so that any of us abhors to kiss it, we reckon that this ought to be no impediment to giving it celestial grace; for it is written, ‘To the clean all things are clean’ …. Though an infant is fresh from the womb, yet is it not such that any one should be horrified to kiss it, in giving grace, and in making (the kiss of) peace.”

One of the reasons for the baptism of a child before it is eight days old, in this letter is, that Elisha stretched himself upon the dead son of the Shunamite, in such a manner that his head, face, limbs, and feet were applied to the head, face, limbs, and feet of the child, showing a certain equality between a child and a man, in features if not in stature, and this equality, Cyprian argues, is intended to show that the soul of a child and of a man are of the same stature, dimensions, and needs, that all souls are alike and equal; and then he proceeds to infer, that if the weightiest sinners are not kept from baptism and grace, “How much less reason is there to refuse an infant, who being newly born, has no sin, except that as a descendant of Adam, after the flesh, he has from his very birth contracted the contagion of the death anciently threatened, who comes for this reason the more easily to receive the remission of sins, because the sins forgiven him are not his own; they were committed by others.”

This doctrine about baptism inspired the same false hopes everywhere which it lighted in the hearts of Cyprian and his fellow bishops at Carthage. It took away the iniquities of the strong man burdened with guilt, and when the young were brought to its saving water, it removed the stains and curse of Adam’s sin.

The words of Peter on the day of Pentecost, “Repent, and be baptized every one of you for the remission of sins,” tended largely to nourish this heresy; and, among the ancient fathers, they were commonly understood to link forgiveness and baptism together. In Matt. iii. 11, John the Baptist says: “I, indeed, baptize you with water unto repentance” The word unto is properly into. John did not baptize these persons to procure repentance; he baptized them into a profession of repentance which they claimed to possess. It is said in the same chapter that “Jerusalem and all Judea, and all the region round about Jordan, were baptized of him in Jordan, confessing their sins.” Matt. iii.5, 6. They were penitent, and they were baptized, not for the purpose of obtaining a change of heart, but into a profession of the sorrow for sin which they already felt. Peter’s words, translated “for the remission of sins” are literally “into the remission of sins,’ a saying exactly like John’s, and they mean “into a profession of the forgiveness of sins already enjoyed through penitential faith.”

Christ gave the woman who washed his feet with her tears a full pardon, without the slightest allusion to baptism. Luke vii. 47. He forgave the paralytic man let down through the roof of the house into his presence without any reference to baptism, and as he does not save through two instrumentalities, faith alone grasps the Captain of our Salvation, and gives everlasting salvation to the soul.

The passage in John iii. 5, “Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit he cannot enter into the kingdom of God,” was understood universally by the fathers of the third century, and their successors for many ages, as teaching the magical efficacy of baptism in regenerating souls. If the words “kingdom of God” mean the Church in this world, there is considerable unanimity in receiving the doctrine that the birth of the Holy Spirit and the baptismal birth are necessary to church membership. But if these words mean heaven, then the birth of water cannot be baptism; for, doubtless, there are myriads in heaven who never received that ordinance. The words, “Born of water and of the Spirit,” describe the new heart given by the Divine Comforter when a man first repents of his sins, and the floods of pardoning grace which immerse the man born of the Spirit, and, carrying away all his sins, assure him of God’s love. In this way only can any one share in the blessings of God’s kingdom, either here or hereafter.

Modern Romish baptism.

The middle ages made few changes in baptism. The Emperor Charles the Great commanded the archbishops of France to inform him what instructions they and their suffragans gave the priests and people about baptism. He demanded the reason for ranking an infant among the catechumens (persons being taught the principles of Christianity). He asked what a catechumen was. He inquired what was meant by renouncing the devil with his pomps and works; why they exorcised an infant, and breathed upon it; why they gave it salt; why they touched its nostrils; why they anointed its breast; why they covered it with a veil and clothed it in white; and why they gave it the body and blood of the Lord. From these questions it is evident that Romish bap- . tism differed little in the time of Charlemagne from the same ordinance in the fifth century; nor is it much changed now from the manner of its observance in the days of the great son of Pepin,

Baptism according to the Catechism of the Council of Trent.

Part second, chapter second, question 11. “But it is to be observed that although simple water, without any addition, in case of necessity, is the proper element for administering the sacrament, yet from a tradition of the apostles always observed in the Catholic Church, when baptism is conferred with solemn ceremonies, holy chrism is also added, by which it is evident that the effect of baptism is more fully declared.” …. .

Quest. 17, . . . . “For those who ought to be initiated by this sacrament are either immersed in water, or water is poured upon them, or they are baptized by sprinkling. But, whichever one of these modes is observed, we must believe that baptism is properly given; for water, in baptism, is used to signify the cleansing of the soul which it accomplishes, Wherefore, baptism is called by the apostle ‘a bath.’ But baptism is made no better when any one is immersed in water, although we notice that this mode was long observed in the earliest times in the Church, than by the pouring out of water, which we perceive to be a frequent practice now, or by aspersion.” . . . . .

Quest. 23. After naming bishops, priests, and deacons as the proper ministers of this sacrament, the catechism specifies a fourth class who may baptize: “The last list of those who can baptize when necessity compels them, without the solemn ceremonies, includes all, even of the laity, of both sexes, whatever creed they may profess. For this office is permitted even to Jews, to infidels, and to heretics, when necessity compels; provided that they intend to perform that which the Catholic Church effects in that office of her ministry.” ……

Quest. 24. This article prescribes the order to govern those who administer baptism. If a priest is present a deacon must not baptize; if a deacon is present a layman must not; if a man is present a woman must not, unless she be a “midwife, accustomed to baptize, and the man inexperienced” in the method of saving the dying by water.

Quest. 25. “As therefore every one, after he has been born, needs a nurse, and an instructor, by whose assistance and labor he may be educated and trained in knowledge and useful arts; so also it is necessary that they who begin to live a spiritual life at the baptismal font should be committed to the fidelity and prudence of some one, through whom they may imbibe the precepts of the Christian religion, and be instructed in every pious way.”…..

Quest. 30. “The law of baptism is thus prescribed by our Lord to all men; insomuch that unless they are regenerated to God through the grace of baptism, whether their parents be Christian or infidel, they are born to eternal misery and destruction”… .

Quest. 41….. “They are to be taught in the first place, that by the admirable force of this sacrament sin is remitted and pardoned, whether derived originally from our first parents or committed by ourselves, however great its enormity.”

Quest. 51. “Now truly by baptism we are united and joined as members to Christ the head.” ……

Quest. 57. “But beside the other advantages which we secure from baptism, the last as it were, and that to which all the rest seem to be referred, is that it opens to each of us the gate of heaven closed formerly against us by sin.”

Quest. 64. “The exorcism follows, which is administered by holy and religious words and prayers, to expel the devil and to break his power.”

Quest. 68….. At the font, “the priest puts three distinct interrogatories to the person to be baptized: Dost thou renounce Satan? and all his works? and all his pomps? To each of which he, or the sponsor in his name, replies: I renounce. The priest then questions him on each article of the creed, and asks him if he believes it? To which the sponsor answers: I believe.”

Quest. 69. “When the sacrament is now to be administered, the priest asks the person about to be baptized, if he will be baptized?” and after receiving the usual answer, he is invariably dipped, if the ceremony is performed in Milan, or poured upon, or sprinkled, if he is baptized elsewhere.

Quest. 70. “The baptism being now over, the priest anoints the baptized on the crown of the head with chrism, that he may understand that from that day, as a member, he is joined to Christ the Head, and ingrafted on his body.” ……

Quest. 71. “Afterwards the priest clothes the baptized with a white garment.” ……

Quest. 72. “A lighted candle is then put in his hand, which shows that faith, burning with charity, which he received in baptism, should be nourished and increased by the pursuit of good works.”

Canons of the Council of Trent.

“If any one shall say that baptism is optional, that it is not necessary to salvation, let him be accursed.”

“If any one shall say that the baptism given by heretics, in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, with the intention of doing what the Church does, is not true baptism, let him be accursed.”

“If any one shall say that the baptized are free from all the precepts of holy Church, which are written or received by tradition, so that they are not bound to observe them, unless they wish to subject themselves to them of their own accord; let him be accursed.”

By this last canon all baptized persons are bound to obey the entire precepts of the Church of Rome, whether they approve of them or not. Willing or unwilling, if the Church has the power they must yield, or suffer at the discretion of the clergy. By the second decree all Protestant baptisms are good in the Catholic Church, and every Protestant, baptized in any way, is a son of the Bishop of Rome, and bound to obey the holy father, or bear the consequences just as severely as if he and his fathers for twelve hundred years had been in the Holy Church that gave birth to St. Dominic and the inquisition.

It is universally believed among Protestants that large numbers of children, not belonging to the Romish Church, in our chief cities, are baptized by popish priests, to whom they are stealthily conveyed by nurses and others. [William] Hogan (a priest who left the Catholic Church) says about his residence in this city, when priest of St. Mary’s:

“I baptized more children than any clergyman in Philadelphia; among these were hundreds of Presbyterians, Episcopalians, Methodists, and Baptists, brought to me for that purpose by their Roman Catholic nurses, without the knowledge of their Protestant mothers.”

No doubt but this is true. And even here, it is more than likely that many a “father” since Hogan’s day could have made the same statement. This was the favor conferred upon the baby Israelite, Mortara, some years ago by his nurse, for which he was wickedly torn from his parents, and brought up in a convent in the religion of Rome. If some Catholic Bishop, armed with such powers as his brethren have often exercised, were to reclaim all the children baptized in the Catholic Church in Philadelphia, perhaps half the leading Protestants of this city might be compelled to suffer the wrongs of Edgar Mortara (See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mortara_case); or worse evils, if they proved rebellious.

But as heretical baptism is orthodox, and as the baptized must obey all the precepts of Holy Church, with their own accord or without it, the pope needs but the power to seize us all, and train us to obedience, or crush us by such fierce displays of tyranny as have given his Church the most hideous record in the annals of cruelty and sanctified murder. Well may the pope eulogize his magical baptism in the words with which Tertullian begins his tract on that ordinance: “Oh, fortunate sacrament of our water!”

Continued in The Papal System – X. Confirmation

All chapters of The Papal System by William Cathcart

popery
ˈpəʊp(ə)ri/
noun derogatory, archaic
noun: popery

The doctrines, practices, and ceremonies associated with the Pope or the papal system; Roman Catholicism.
“the Anglicans campaigned against popery”

Why has the word “popery” become archaic? It was a term well-used by American Protestants in the 19th century. By the 20th century, Jesuit infiltration had become so great in American Protestant churches that most Protestants no longer considered the Pope or the Roman Catholic Church to be a threat to American democratic institutions.

William Hogan was born in Ireland educated at Maynooth College and became a Catholic priest before emigrating to America around 1810. Assigned to St. Mary’s parish in Philadelphia, he proved himself a popular priest. But he soon ran afoul of Bishop Henry Conwell, who resented his popularity and disapproved of his vigorous social life. When Hogan resisted Conwell’s attempts to rein him in, Conwell suspended him. The trustees of St. Mary’s rushed to Hogan’s defense and Conwell soon had a full-blown schism on his hands. He eventually excommunicated Hogan in 1821 and then, like many American bishops in the 1820s, wrested control of the parish from the lay trustees. Following his excommunication, Hogan managed a circus, studied law, and married twice, before reemerging in the 1840s as a leading voice of anti-Catholicism. He went on the lecture circuit, wrote belligerent essays in popular journals, and published in 1851 a book entitled, Popery as It Was and as It Is. The general tone of the latter is conveyed in the following statement: “I am sorry to say, from my knowledge of Roman Catholic priests … that there is not a more corrupt, licentious body of men in the world.” (Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Hogan_%28priest%29)

I consider former Roman Catholic priests my best sources of information. They were insiders of a highly secretive and insidious organization. Most people do not think of the Roman Catholic Church as a secret society such as the Freemasons or Skull and Bones. Catholicism appears to be an innocuous branch of Christianity to many, but those who think so are woefully lacking in basic knowledge of world history. In any nation where the Catholic Church is a minority, they seek equal rights. But when they are the majority power, they want to rule in every way, religiously, spiritually, and especially, politically. It is for this very reason that the Japanese Tokugawa government expelled all Roman Catholic (Jesuit) missionaries in the 17th century! They knew that the Catholic Church was seeking military and political control of Japan and was therefore a threat to their government and nation. For more information about this, please see History of Catholic Aggressiveness in Japan

The last section called “POPISH BISHOPS AND PRIESTS ABSOLVE ALLEGIANCE TO PROTESTANT GOVERNMENTS” was so long that I had to divide it up further with titles that are not in the original book.

Americans who read this work may think, “This is all very interesting history of the Catholic Church in America in the first half of the 19th century, but it is not like that today.” While it’s true that modern American Catholics have a more tolerant attitude toward non-Catholics, what do the priests and bishops think about it? They are still seeking domination of America. Just look at the Supreme Court today (2025). Six out of nine of the judges are Roman Catholic! Former President Joe Biden is Catholic and quite proud of it seeing how shows the mark of ashes he got from his priest! Could this be one of the Marks of the Beast?

This book was found on https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/37705

PREFACE.

In submitting the following pages to the public, I can say, with truth, that I am actuated by no other motive than a sincere desire to promote the interest, and contribute all in my power to perpetuate the free institutions, of this, my adopted country.

It is many years since I have had any intercourse or connection with the church or priests of Rome; and I vainly imagined that, after the first outbreak of their animosity, for repudiating their doctrines, it would succeed into a calm indifference. I was aware of the custom, in that church, to defame and calumniate all who “went out from her;” but especially those who have held any distinguished position.

Against such, appeals are immediately made to the people by their priests, until, finally, maddened by sophistry, fanaticism, and falsehoods, they look upon the seceder as one whom it is their duty to destroy; and in whose word, honor, and virtue, no confidence is to be reposed. The object of the Romish church, in this, cannot be mistaken. it is too plain to escape even the least observant eye. A lawyer who can render legally valueless the testimony of opposing witnesses, seldom fails in establishing his case; and hence it is that the Romish church never fails to destroy, if she can, the credibility of all who break loose from her, knowing them to be the best witnesses of her iniquities. But for some years back, and until recently, the violence of Popish priests against myself seemed to slumber. This was natural. In the body ecclesiastic, as well as in the natural body, a morbid excitement often succeeds a stupor; and recently these gentlemen have assailed me again. To apparent indifference succeeded a frantic zeal; and from one end of this continent to the other, they have tried to injure me, by appeals to the public through their presses, and especially through the confessional. All this I would have disregarded, as usual, but I find that these priests have become politicians, and that every blow aimed at me, for the free exercise of my judgment as to the best mode of worshipping God, is aimed at the constitution of my adopted country, which grants this blessing, without let or hindrance, to all the children of men.

Well aware that Americans are not acquainted with the designs of Popery against their country and its institutions, I feel it my duty to lay before them the following pages. The perusal of them will satisfy every American that our country is in danger, not so much from enemies abroad as from foes within. They will find that Papists have reduced political, as well as religious corruption, to a system, and are, at this moment, practising it amongst us, upon a great and gigantic scale.

Synopsis of popery, as it was and as it is.

When this country renounced its allegiance to the British crown, and proclaimed itself independent Popery was on the wane in Europe; it was there getting more sickly, more languid and feeble, until it had little more than a mere nominal existence; but while its blossoms were fading, its thorns retained their vitality, inflicting pains and wounds on all who came in contact with them. The Jesuits, one of the most influential orders of friars belonging to the Roman church, continued still active as ever in their fiendish avocations; they roamed about, like so many gnomes, from country to country, and from people to people, carrying with them, and strewing on their paths, the seeds of moral death on all that was precious and valuable in the social system. Whatever they touched was blighted; whatever they said or preached breathed treachery; wherever they went, vice, crime, and duplicity marked their track. But dark as the times were then, enshrouded as they had been in ignorance, and idolatrous as the people were, they began to manifest some dissatisfaction at the machinations of Jesuits in their efforts to acquire temporal power. They began to feel it in the loss of their property, out of which they too late saw themselves gradually swindled; they felt it in the loss of their liberty and civil rights, out of which they had been persuaded, all for the good of the church. Endurance became intolerable, and those unhallowed agents had to be partially suppressed.

The Popish church, at this time, seeing the influence of her most active agents gradually diminishing, her ancient glories fading, and her power vanishing from her grasp; and scarcely able to breathe any longer in the putrid atmosphere which her own corruption and impurities had created, very naturally turned her eyes towards this brilliant new world. It was then young and beautiful; it abounded in all the luxuries of nature; it promised all that was desirable to man. The holy church, seeing these irresistible temptations, thirsting with avarice, and yearning for the reestablishment of her falling greatness, soon commenced pouring in among its unsuspecting people hordes of Jesuits and other friars, with a view of forming among them institutions which were already found to be destructive to the peace and morals of all social and religious principles in Europe. We now see Popish colleges, and nunneries, and monastic institutions, springing up in our hitherto happy republic; and, if similar causes continue, as they have ever done, to produce similar effects, it needs no prophet’s eye to see, nor inspired tongue to tell, what the consequences must be to posterity. Many suppose that Popery has been modified; that it is different now from what it was in ancient times; that the spirit which actuated Papists in those dark days ceases to influence them now that the faggot, the rack, and various other modes of torture, are not still in use in the Roman church, and that it has long ceased to lay claim, by divine right, to temporal sovereignty, or to any other of those prerogatives which they formerly insisted upon. There are some so fastidiously liberal as to grant them all immunities which may be with safety granted to other sects; others there are, so patriotic as to hold at defiance all their power; and others so self-conceited as to fancy themselves an over-match even for Jesuits, in religious chicanery and political intrigue.

All this arises, not from want of true zeal in American Protestants, but because they are unacquainted with the canons of the Romish church. These canons are inaccessible to the majority of the American people, even of theologians, and with the purport and meaning of them none but those who have been educated Roman Catholic priests have much or any acquaintance. I hesitate not to say—although I do so with the utmost respect and deference—that there are but few American theologians who have much acquaintance with the doctrines or canons of the Romish church. They form no part of their studies; a knowledge of them is not necessary in the legitimate discharge of their pastoral duties; and hence it is, that in many of their controversies with Romish priests, they are not unfrequently browbeaten, bullied, and often almost ignominiously driven from the arena of controversy by men who, in point of general information, virtue, piety, zeal, and scriptural knowledge, are greatly their inferiors. He who argues with Catholic priests must have had his education with them; he must be of them and from among them. He must know, from experience, that they will stop at no falsehood where the good of the church is concerned; he must know that they will scruple at no forgery when they desire to establish any point of doctrine, fundamental or not fundamental, which is taught by their church; he must be aware that it is a standing rule with Popish priests, in all their controversies with Protestants, to admit nothing and deny every thing, and that, if still driven into difficulty, they will still have recourse to the archives of the church, where they keep piles of decretals, canons, rescripts, bulls, excommunications, interdicts, &c, ready for all such emergencies; some of them dated from three hundred to a thousand years before they were written or even thought of; showing more clearly, perhaps, than anything else, the extreme ignorance of mankind between the third and ninth centuries, when most of these forgeries were palmed upon the world. With the aid of these miserable forgeries, they attempt to prove, among other things, that the divine right of the Pope to the sovereignty of this world was acknowledged by the fathers of the church, in the earliest days of Christianity.

There are to be found now, in the Vatican at Rome, canons and decretals which go to show that the Pope was considered “equal to God,” as early as the third century. More of these impious forgeries attempt to show that some of the most pious fathers of the church, in the days of her unquestioned sanctity and piety, acknowledged “Mary, the mother of Jesus, to be equal to God the Son, and deserved supreme adoration.” With these forged instruments, they attempt to show that the primitive Christians believed in the real and actual presence of the whole body and blood of Christ, in the wafer which they call the Eucharist.

Monstrous, horrible, and impious, as these absurdities are, I once believed them myself. So much for the prejudices of education.

The object of the following pages is to show, first, the origin of Papal power; secondly, to call the attention of Americans to its rapid growth in many of the nations of the earth; and, thirdly, to put my fellow citizens on their guard against giving it any countenance or support within the limits of the United States.

Origin of the temporal power of the pope.

We have no authentic evidence that the bishops or presbyters of the primitive Christian church laid claims to temporal power, much less to universal sovereignty, such as Popes have arrogated to themselves, in subsequent times, even down to the present day. Constantine, as we are informed by the best authorities, was the first to unite civil and ecclesiastical power. He introduced Christianity among the Romans by civil authority. This occurred between the years 272 and 337; but never during his reign, nor before it, was there an instance of a bishop or presbyter of the church aspiring to temporal jurisdiction. They were poor and persecuted; they were meek and humble; they were well content with the privilege of worshipping God in peace. The instructions of their divine Master were fresh in their minds—they almost still rung in their ears. They felt that they were sent into the world with special instructions to “preach the gospel to every creature.” Their heavenly Master told them that his “kingdom was not of this world.” They felt the full force of that high and holy admonition, “Render to Cæsar the things that are Cæsar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.” They cheerfully submitted to the civil authorities. They claimed not the right of giving away kingdoms, crowning emperors, deposing princes, and absolving their subjects from their oaths of allegiance. These pure Christians and devout men asked for no distinctions, but those of virtue and zeal in the cause of Christ; they sought for no wealth but that of Heaven; they desired no crown but that of glory; they sought no tiara save that of martyrdom; they were surrounded by no court but that of the poor; no college of cardinals waited on their pleasure; there were no nuncios sent from their court; no foreign ambassadors passed between them and the powers of this earth. The only court with which they had business to transact, and in which their treasures were laid up, was the court of Heaven; and their only ambassadors at that court were the angels of heaven, sent forth to minister unto them. But this state of things did not last long. As a modern writer beautifully expresses it, “the trail of the serpent is over us all.” The Emperor Constantine, seeing the poverty of the primitive church,—her vast and progressive increase in numbers and the consequent demand upon her charities,—granted to her bishops permission to hold property, real and personal. This concession on the part of Constantine, simple and trifling as it seemed to be; this commingling of the things of heaven and earth, was unnatural. It contained within itself the principles of dissolution, or rather of entire destruction; and became, in time, the source from which have sprung most of the wars, massacres, and bloody strifes, that have desolated and divided into fragmentary sections, the richest, the fairest, and the finest portions of the globe, during the last fifteen hundred years; and will continue to do so, unto the end of time, unless the advance of civilization, and the great progress which the human mind has made in ethics, morals, and metaphysics, on this continent, puts an immediate check to Popish interference with the policy of our country.

Could we suppose an individual, who knew nothing of ancient times; who was an entire stranger to the darkness which pervaded Europe during the middle ages; who had no acquaintance with the pretensions, arrogance and insolence of Roman pontiffs; who knew no other constitution and no other laws but those of our own country; he could not but feel surprised at being first told, that there now lived in Rome, an upstart ecclesiastic, called a Pope, who has the hardihood to assert that he is Sovereign Lord, and that too by divine right, of these United States, as well as of all other kingdoms of this world. He goes even further, and contends that his predecessors had similar divine rights, and that all the citizens and inhabitants of this country owed allegiance to him personally, and to no one else, unless delegated by him to receive it. But strange as this may appear, it is no less true, as I will show from authorities, which cannot be questioned, by those who claim such extravagant immunities.

The Pope of Rome predicates his claim to universal sovereignty upon the power of loosing and binding on earth and in heaven; which, in the exuberance of their fancy, Roman Catholic writers contend was given to St. Peter. Their next step is to prove, that this supremacy was acknowledged by the primitive fathers of the church, and consequently their rights and claims are beyond dispute. But before I proceed to give any of the authorities, upon which Roman Catholic writers rest the antiquity of the recognition of their Pope’s temporal power, it may not be amiss to inform the reader that the very first on which they rely is one of the most unblushing forgeries on record; and is dated about six hundred years previous to the time at which it purports to have been written. It is taken from the words of a conveyance of certain temporal concessions, said to be made by the Emperor Constantine to Pope Sylvester, some time between the second and third centuries. It is in the following words:

“We attribute to the chair of St. Peter all imperial dignity, glory, and power. We give to Pope Sylvester, and to his successors, our palace of Lateran, one of the finest palaces on earth; we give him our crown, our mitre, our diadem, and all our imperial vestments; we resign to him all our imperial dignity. We give the Holy Pontiff, as a free gift, the city of Rome, and all the western cities of Italy, as well as the western cities of other countries. To make room for him, we abdicate our sovereignty over all these provinces, and we withdraw from Rome, transferring the seat of our empire to Byzantium; since it is not just that a terrestrial emperor shall retain any power where God has placed the head of the church.”

It would be a waste of time to show that no such donation as the above ever existed. No mention is made of it in any history of the Popes that has ever been written, or in any other document which had reference to them during the reign of Constantine. It is a forgery so shallow, unreal, and unsubstantial, that there is no well-educated historian, and never has been one, who gave it any credence. The historian Flewry pronounces it a falsehood; and he, being a Roman Catholic, must be considered good authority upon all matters relating to the holy church. The quotation, however, from this supposed deed of concession, by Constantine to Pope Sylvester, is not without instruction to the citizens of this country. It should arouse them to a sense of the dangers which are hovering over them. It should remind them that every thing is perishable. The fairest flower must fade; the loveliest lily must wither; the laughing rose must droop; even our fair republic may lose its bloom, and pass away. A state of things may arise in this country, when its executive may be a Papist, its judiciary Papists, and a majority of its population may be Papists. These things are not beyond the range of possibility; and are you sure that your own descendants, and those of the pilgrim fathers, may not, one day or other, give this republic as a free gift to the head of the Papal church? You are now strong—so was Rome. Your power is now irresistible—so was that of Rome and other countries. Your arms are invincible—so were those of Rome. You are now distinguished all over the world, for your progress in the arts and sciences; the world looks to you as models of patriotism and pure republicanism—so did the world once look to Rome. But what is Rome now, and what drove her from the high position she once occupied? I will tell you;—the intrigues of the Popish church. And a similar fate awaits you, unless you cut off all connection, of whatever name, between the citizens of the United States and the church of Rome. While this sink of iniquity breathes, it will carry with it destruction and death wherever it goeth.

We have had several histories of the Popes, and the first mention made of donations to them, at least of any comparative value, is by Anastasius, who wrote about the beginning of the tenth century, or a little before the close of the ninth. He informs us that Charlemagne conferred upon the Holy See (as that hotbed of iniquity is impiously, even at the present day, called) whole provinces, and acknowledged that they belonged to the Pope by divine right; though it is well understood, and denied by no competent historian, that Charlemagne never even owned these provinces. It is well known to the readers of history, that there existed no empire of any extent, but that of the East, until the beginning of the eighth century. Charlemagne assumed the title of King of Italy, in the year eight hundred. He received homage from the Pope, and so far from being subject to him, he acknowledged no divine right in him; but on the contrary, he held the Pope in strict subjection to himself. He even went so far as to prohibit the Holy See from receiving donations of any kind, when given without the consent or to the prejudice of those who had just and equitable claims to them.

This, if there were no other proof, is sufficient to show that neither the Popes nor the Holy See had any pretensions to universal supremacy, or to supremacy of any kind, as far down as the eighth century. It will not be denied that the civil authorities of Rome were liberally disposed towards the Popes or fathers of the church in the early days of Christianity. The Emperor Theodosius the Great, who died in the year three hundred and ninety five, recommended to all his subjects to pay “a due respect to the See of Rome.” Valentian III. commanded his subjects “not to depart from the faith and customs of the Holy See.” It will however be borne in mind, that this Valentian was acknowledged emperor at the age of six, and his affairs were managed principally by his mother. So dissipated were his habits, that he finally fell a victim to them. But up to this period there is no evidence whatever that the Popes either claimed or exercised temporal authority.

About this time several councils met for the purpose of adjusting disputes that arose between the sons of the successor of Charlemagne, who unwisely, as historians suppose, divided his empire into three equal parts among them. It was at one of these councils, that the doctrine of the divine right of Popes to temporal authority was first broached by the production of some of those forged documents to which I have heretofore alluded. Pope Gregory the Fourth took an active part in fomenting the dissensions which necessarily arose from the division which the successor of Charlemagne had made of his empire among his sons. The Pope, with that craft peculiar to all ecclesiastics of the Roman Catholic denominations, was active in widening the breach between father and sons, and having effected this to his content, his next move was to sow further dissensions between the sons themselves, and finally to create such a general confusion and dissatisfaction among all parties, as to render a mediator necessary. Having attained his object, he offered his services to the Imperial Father, and it was accepted. He presented himself at his camp, obtained an entrance, and what were the consequences? History tells the tale—it was a tale of treachery.

Americans will bear in mind that Roman Catholics believe their church to be infallible; that she never changes; that what was deemed right by her in the days of Gregory and those of his immediate successors, is right now, and, vice versa, what she deems right now was right then. In a word, the church of Rome is infallible. This is believed by every one of her members at the present day. It is taught by every Popish bishop and priest in the United States.

The following curse is contained in the Roman Catholic Breviary, in which, every Romish priest reads his prayers three times every day. “Qui dicit ecclesiam catholicam Romanam non esse infallilrilem, anathema sit—Whoever says that the Roman Catholic church is not infallible, let him be accursed.” Such is the belief of every Roman Catholic. Will not Protestant Americans pause and reflect for a moment? The population of the United States is about twenty millions, and about two millions are Papists. Consequently, seventeen millions and a half of our people are accursed and damned, according to the doctrine of the Romish ritual; and yet we Protestants are called upon to extend the hand of friendship to these Papists, and our legislators are asked to grant them charters to build colleges, churches, nunneries, and monk-houses, not for the purpose of teaching the growing generation the revealed will of God, as read in the Scriptures, but to persuade them that all other religions, except that of Rome, are erroneous; that their parents, brothers, and sisters, are heretics, accursed forever, and by implication entitled to no allegiance from them.

The Pope is now setting on foot a movement which is intended to embrace the whole world, and of which he desires Rome to be the sole representative, centre, and circumference. The powers of the Pope have met with several severe shocks since the Reformation. His forces have been broken, his armies of Jesuits, his friars of all orders, Dominicans, Franciscans, and Capuchins, have been scattered and enfeebled. He determined to arm himself afresh, and this new world appeared to him as the safest ground on which he could unite his scattered forces in Europe. This he well knows cannot be done, without throwing some fire-brand of dissension among our people, which at this moment he is trying to effect; and which nothing but the resistance offered to him by American Republicans can check or prevent.

On the continuance, strength, and union of this party, depends the stability of our government. This the Romish priests and bishops well know, and are beginning to feel; and hence they are denouncing them from their pulpits, and in all their presses. But no Protestant opposes this party Why call it a party? It is no party. It is but the spontaneous move of the good and the virtuous of all parties who love their God, their Bibles, and their country, and upon whose strong arm and bold hearts rests the question whether Americans shall be free or the slaves of his royal holiness the Pope of Rome. Often have I lifted my voice, a feeble one, indeed, in favor of American Republicans. I believe their cause is the cause of God and freedom, and upon them every American and every Protestant foreigner must rely for protection against the merciless spirit of Popery.

It requires no stretch of imagination to fancy a difference of opinion, or even of interest, between the citizens of this country. Suppose, for instance, that the North and South were at variance; suppose them actually at war with each other; what would be the course of the Pope’s emissaries, hundreds of whom are now roaming through this land? The safest course and the surest mode of ascertaining what they would do in such an event, is to look back and ascertain what they have invariably done under similar circumstances. It is seldom wrong, and as a general principle it is safe, to judge of the future from the past; and if so, there can be no doubt of the course which Jesuits and Roman Catholics would pursue in the event of any difficulties or collisions between the people of the different sections of this country. Would they try to reconcile them? Did they ever do so in a like case? What was the conduct of the Jesuits and Popes as early as the eleventh century, when the Roman people differed in opinion as to their form of government, and some points of religious faith? The Pope laid an interdict upon the whole people; the weaker party was overpowered by the Papal authorities; and their leader, as Flewry informs us, was burned alive by order of the Pope Adrian. Frederick, called Barbarossa, who was the tool of the Pope on this occasion, became the next victim to his barbarity. And why? what had he done? what crime did he commit against the state? His only crime was,—he refused to hold the Pope’s stirrup. For this he incurred the displeasure of Adrian, nor did he ever enjoy a day’s peace until the Pope seduced him into an expedition against Saladin; where, together with thousands of others, who were persuaded to undertake that religious crusade, he died after several hard fought victories.

The history of the Popes, in all ages, shows that they never abandon any temporal or spiritual authority to which they lay claim; and had they the power of enforcing it now, they would exact from this country the same obedience which they did in the most benighted days of the middle ages. Should a separation of these States take place; should the chain that has bound us together for the last half century, in links of love and social happiness, be unfortunately broken, by any untoward circumstances; think you, fellow citizens, that foreign Papists in this country would try to re weld it? Far from it. They would unite in breaking it, link by link, Until not a particle of it remained. This they have done in every country where they obtained a footing; this they are doing now, under various pretences, all over Europe; and should this country escape the fate of others, where Jesuits and Popes dare to exercise their supposed authorities, it will stand prominent and proudly, though solitary and alone, amid the records of ages, and ruins of time. I have no such hope. The efforts which are now making to check the progress of Popery, may, perhaps, retard the day of our downfall; but come it must, unless the allegiance, which is now demanded by the Pope of Rome from his subjects in the United States, is unqualifiedly forbidden. The Pope is a temporal prince. Like other kings and princes, he should never be permitted to meddle, directly or indirectly, temporally or spiritually, with this country. He should not be permitted to appoint bishop or priest to any church, diocese, living, or office in the United States. The Pope’s bulls, rescripts, letters, &c., &c., should not be published or read from any pulpit this side of the Atlantic; and, though Roman Catholics should not be prevented from the free exercise of their religion, they should be compelled to do so without reference to foreign dictation. If they must have a Pope, let him be an American, and sworn to support our constitution. Let him, and all Roman Catholics, be denied the right of voting, or of holding any office of honor, profit, or trust, under the government of the United States, until they forswear all allegiance, in spiritual as well as temporal affairs, to all foreign potentates and Popes. Until this is done, an oath of allegiance to this government, by a Roman Catholic, is entitled to no credit, and should not be received. This will appear evident to Americans, if they will turn their attention for a moment to the following oath, which is taken by every Romish bishop, before he is permitted to officiate, as such, in any of these United States:— “I do solemnly swear, on the holy evangelist, and before Almighty God, to defend the domains of St. Peter against every aggressor; to preserve, augment, and extend, the rights, honors, privileges, and powers of the Lord Pope, and his successors; to observe, and with all my might to enforce, his decrees, ordinances, reservations, provisions, and all dispositions whatever, emanating from the court of Rome; to persecute and combat, to the last extremity, heretics, schismatics, and all who will not pay to the sovereign pontiff all the obedience which the sovereign shall require.”

While this oath is obligatory upon Romish bishops, they are not to be trusted. They should not be permitted to interfere, directly nor indirectly, with the institutions, laws, or ordinances of any Protestant country. Their oaths should not be taken in courts of justice; their followers, every one of whom is bound by a similar oath of allegiance, should be excluded from our grand juries, from our petit juries, but more especially, from our halls of legislation; for wherever and whenever the supposed interest of the Pope clashes with that of the civil authority, or even with the administration of reciprocal justice, a Papist, under the control of his bishop, will not hesitate to sacrifice the good of the country, the interest, life, and prosperity of his fellow-being, for the good of the church. Of the truth of this, history abounds with examples, and Popish writers are replete with authorities.

Thomas Aquinas, whose authority no Roman Catholic questions, says in his work de Regem., “The Pope, as supreme king of all the world, may impose taxes and destroy towns and castles for the preservation of Christianity.” The American reader will bear in mind, that by Christianity, St. Thomas means Popery. Pope Gregory the Seventh, about the year one thousand and fifty, has made use of the following language, and proclaimed it as the doctrine of the Romish Church. “The Pope ought to be called Universal Bishop. He alone ought to wear the tokens of imperial dignity; all princes ought to kiss his feet; he has power to depose emperors and kings, and is to be judged by none.” Pope John the Twelfth, in the year nine hundred and fifty-six, announced the following to be the universal belief, that “Whosoever shall venture to maintain that our lord the Pope cannot decree what he pleases, let him be accursed.” Pope Bonifice the Eighth, in 1294, declares, ex cathedra, “that God has set Popes over kings and kingdoms, and whoever thinks otherwise declares him accursed.” The same Pope, in another place, says, “We therefore declare, say, define, and pronounce it to be necessary to salvation, that every human creature should be obedient to the Roman pontiff.” The Pope of the present day, as every Roman Catholic writer maintains and teaches the laity to believe, has the same power now that the Popes had at any period of church history.

The council of Trent, the last held in the Popish church, declares that Pius the Fifth, who was then Pope of Rome, “was prince over all nations and kingdoms, having power to pluck up, destroy, scatter, ruin, plant, and build.” Cardinal Zeba, a sound theologian according to Popish belief, maintains, with much ingenuity, “that the Pope can do all things which he wishes, and is empowered by God to do many things which he himself cannot do.” All writers upon canon law compliment the Pope by calling him our Lord the Pope, and this title was confirmed to him by the council of Lateran. In the fourth session of that council, it is maintained “that all mortals are to be judged by the Pope, and the Pope by nobody at all.” Massonius, who wrote the life of Pope John the Ninth, tells us that a bishop of Rome, namely, a Pope, cannot commit even sin without praise.

Were there no other reproach upon the Romish church but the bare utterance of such blasphemy as this, it would be enough to disgust mankind; it should raise every voice in her condemnation, and every hand to pull down this masterpiece of satanic ingenuity. But strange as it may appear, the present Pope maintains similar claims, and enforces obedience; nay, more;—in this year of our Lord, 1845, insists upon the right of deposing all in power, and of absolving their subjects from further allegiance.

But, extravagant as Papal pretensions were between the ninth and tenth centuries, it was only about the middle of the eleventh that they began to show themselves in the full blaze of their hideous deformity. Hildebrand, whom we have had occasion to mention as Gregory the Seventh, shook off all civil restraint, and proclaimed the universal and unbounded empire of the Popes over the rest of the world.

As Shoberl expresses it, “he caused to be drawn up a declaration of independence in all things, temporal and spiritual, expressly specifying the Pope’s divine right of deposing all princes, giving away all kingdoms, abrogating existing laws, and substituting in their place such as the holy Pope for the time being may approve of.” This declaration, or bill of rights, is correctly translated by Shoberl, and published in his work, entitled, “The Rise and Progress of the Papal Power.” Many, probably, may read this volume, who have had no opportunity of seeing Shoberl’s work; and others there are, who may refuse giving his statement that credence which circumstances compel them to give the writer.

Having been educated a Roman Catholic priest, and the fact being well known that admission cannot be had into her priesthood without being well versed, at least in her own doctrines, it is fairly to be presumed that my statements are entitled to full credit, when those of Protestants may be denied by Romish priests, who, while united with that church, are compelled, under pain of being cursed, to subscribe to any falsehood, however gross, provided it subserves the interest of the Pope; and deny any truth, however plain, rather than contradict or weaken the authorities by which the impious follies and wicked pretensions of the church of Rome are supported. I will give this bill of rights to my readers. It should be in the hands of every American. It should find a place in every primary school in the United States. It should be among the first lessons of infancy, so that every child, when he grows up and sees a Roman Catholic bishop or priest, should pause and ask himself, Does that man believe those things? Are we called on to pass laws for the support and protection of churches, where such doctrines, as this bill contains, are promulgated? Can we trust the man who promulgates them, or those who subscribe to them? Is it safe to live in the same community with them? Do they not endanger our civil institutions? Do they not jeopardize the morals of our children? Will it not, at some future day, be a blot upon the page of our history, and a foul stain upon our character for intelligence, that we have ever sanctioned such doctrines, or that we had ever allowed men who professed them, any participation in our civil rights? But let Pope Gregory’s declaration of Papal divine rights speak for itself.

“The Romish church is the only one that God has founded.
“The title of universal belongs to the Roman pontiff alone.
“He alone can depose and absolve bishops.
“His legate presides over all the bishops in every council, and may pronounce sentence of deposition against them.
“The Pope can depose absent persons.
“It is not lawful to live with such as have been excommunicated.
“He has the power, according to circumstances, to make new laws, to create new churches, to transform a chapter into an abbey, and to divide a rich bishopric into two, or to unite two poor bishoprics.
“He alone has a right to assume the attributes of empire.
“All princes must kiss his feet.
“His name is the only one to be uttered in the churches.
“It is the only name in the world.
“He has a right to depose emperors.
“He has a right to remove bishops from one see to another.
“He has a right to appoint a clerk [priest] in every church.
“He, whom he has appointed, may govern another church, and cannot receive a higher benefice from any private bishop.
“No council can call itself general without the order of the Pope.
“No chapter, no book, can be reputed canonical without his authority.
“No one can invalidate his sentences; he can abrogate those of all other persons.
“He cannot be judged by any one.
“All persons whatsoever are forbidden to presume to condemn him who is called to the apostolical chair.
“To this chair must be brought the more important causes of all the churches.
“The Roman church is never wrong, and will never fall into error.
“Every Roman pontiff, canonically ordained, becomes holy.
“It is lawful to accuse when he permits, or when he commands.
“He may, without synod, depose and absolve bishops.
“He is no Catholic who is not united to the Romish church.
“The Pope can release the subjects of bad princes from all oaths of allegiance.”

Those who have not been educated Roman Catholics, or who have not lived in Catholic countries, will find it difficult to suppose that such pretensions as the above should ever have been entertained or submitted to: extravagant, absurd, wild, and wicked as they are, they have been acquiesced in by the court of Rome; and are, at this day, contended for, and would be enforced, in this country, had that church the power to do so. She has never resigned the rights claimed in the above declaration; and there is not a Roman Catholic who dares assert the contrary, without a dispensation from his bishop or his priest to tell a deliberate falsehood, with a view of deceiving Americans for the good of the church, This, however, they can always obtain and grant to each other, as circumstances may require.

While a Roman Catholic priest, I have often received and given such indulgences myself; and there is not a period in the Christian world, since the days of Pope Gregory, when all the powers and prerogatives, enumerated in the above Papal bill of rights, were not claimed and acted upon by Popes of Rome, down to the hour at which I write. Let us test the truth of this assertion by the unerring rule of history, although it may seem unnecessary, as no Roman Catholic will deny it; at any rate, it will not be questioned by those who have any acquaintance with the history of their own church. I am well aware that the majority of Roman Catholics in this country know nothing of the religion which they profess, and for which they are willing to fight, contend, and shed the blood of their fellow beings. I am not even hazarding an assertion, when I say there is not one of them who has read the gospels through, or who knows any more about the religion he professes, than he does about the Koran of Mohammed. He is told by the priest, “that Christ established a church on earth; that it is infallible; and that they must submit implicitly to what its popes, priests, and bishops teach, under pain of eternal damnation.” This is all the great mass of Roman Catholics know of religion; this is all they are required to learn; and hence it is that these people are unacquainted with the pretensions of the Pope, the intrigues of Jesuits, or the impositions practised upon them by their bishops and priests.

But to the history of Papal pretensions. As early as the year 1066, Gregory, who was then Pope, summoned William the Conqueror, king of England, to repair to Rome, prostrate himself upon his knees, and do homage to his holiness. This William refused; but his holiness deemed it expedient to compromise the matter, though he did not yield a jot of his very modest pretensions. This humble follower of the Redeemer looked upon Sardinia and Russia as a portion of his dominions. The following extract of a letter of his, to the sovereign of Russia, is a fair sample of the insolence of this man Pope, or rather this God Pope, as his subjects considered him. “We have given you a crown to your son, who is to come and to receive it at our hands on taking an oath of allegiance to us.” He also commanded the emperor of Greece “to abdicate his crown,” and he also deposed the king of Poland. This modest Pope wrote to the different princes of Spain, “that it would be much better to give up their country to the Saracens, than not pay homage to the See of Rome.” He excommunicated Philip the First of France, because he refused to “pay homage to him.” Writing to the French bishops, he says, “Separate yourselves from the communion of Philip; let the celebration of the holy mass be interdicted throughout all France; and know that, with the assistance of God, we will deliver that kingdom from such an oppressor.” This same Pope excommunicated Henry the Fourth, “because he refused to acknowledge him as his superior,” and absolved his subjects from their oath of allegiance to him: and what was the result? Henry was obliged to submit. Having repaired to the Pope’s court, he was stopped at the entrance, and before he was permitted to appear in the presence of this ruffian Pope, who was then shut up with Matilda, countess of Tuscany, one of the numerous women with whom he lived on terms of intimacy, he was compelled to undress and put on a hair shirt. The Pope then condescended to say, “that Henry should fast three days, before he could be permitted to kiss his holiness’s toe; and he would then absolve him upon promise of good behavior.”

Alexander the Third, about the year 1160, deposed Frederic First, king of Denmark; and placing his foot upon his neck, he impiously exclaimed, “Thou shalt tread upon the lion and the adder.” This practice and these pretensions to sovereign power, continued down to the days of Elizabeth; and from thence down to the present moment. Pope Pius V. excommunicated Elizabeth, and absolved her subjects from their oath of allegiance; and while doing so, addressed to himself the following words from the Psalmist: “See, I have this day set thee over the nations, and over the kingdoms, to root out and to pull down, to destroy, to build up, and to throw down.” More of this hereafter.

Such were the doctrines of the Romish church in 1558. Such were the practices of that church for centuries previous; nor is there one single instance on record of her having modified or abridged the extent or magnitude of her claims, unless when compelled to do so by coercion; and even then she did not abandon her claim, but only ceased to exercise it in obedience to the law of force. The Romish church, in this country, as I shall show, claims the same temporal powers now which she has always claimed and exercised for so many centuries. She would now depose the executive of this country, as she did Philip of France, if she dared do so. The Pope would absolve our citizens from their oath of allegiance, had he the power of carrying his dispensation info effect; and what is the duty of Americans under such circumstances? Are you to submit passively? Is it your duty to wait and witness the growth of Popery among you, to nourish and feed it with the life blood of your existence as a nation, until the monster outgrows your own strength and strangles you, to satiate its inordinate appetite? I lay it down as a sound principle in political as well as moral ethics, that if a government finds, within the limits of its jurisdiction, any sect or party, of whatever doctrine, creed, or denomination, professing principles incompatible with its permanency, or subversive of the unalienable right of self government, and worshipping God, according to the dictates of each and every man’s conscience, that sect or party should be removed beyond its limits, or at least excluded from any participation in the formation or administration of its laws.

Would it, for instance, be wise in our government to encourage the Mormons to introduce among us, as the law of the land, the ravings and prophesies of Joe Smith? Suppose that sect maintained that Joe Smith was their Lord God; that the kingdoms of this world were his; that he claimed and did actually exercise the right of dethroning kings, and was endeavoring, by every means in his power, to place himself in a position to exercise, at no-distant period, the right of deposing our presidents, state governors, and absolving our people from their oaths of allegiance. Should not that sect, as such, be instantly crushed? Should it not, at least, be forbidden to interfere, directly or indirectly, with our civil institutions? Let us suppose the prophet Joe Smith to hold the seat of his government in Europe, and that Europe was full to overflowing with Mormons; we may further suppose this great high priest to have thousands and millions of subordinate officers, sworn and bound together by oaths cemented in blood, to sustain him as their sovereign ruler, by every means which human ingenuity could devise, and at every sacrifice of truth and honor. Suppose, further, that this high priest was annually sending thousands of his subjects to this country, with no other view but to possess your fertile lands and overthrow your government, and substituting in its place that of this foreign priest and tyrant; would you permit them to land upon your shores? Would you allow them to pollute the purity of your soil? Would you allow their unclean hands to touch the altars of your liberty? Would you not first insist that they should purge themselves from the sins and slime of Mormonism, and free themselves from all further connection with this monster man, and would-be God, who impiously demanded blind obedience and unqualified homage? I could answer for you, but I will not; the history of your republic answers for you; the movements, which are now going forth from one end of your country to the other, are answering for you, in tones too solemn and too loud to be drowned by the roaring of Popish bulls. But it is much to be feared that Americans do not yet fully understand the dangers to be apprehended from the existence of Popery in the United States. It is difficult to persuade a single-hearted and single-minded republican, whose lungs were first inflated by the breath of freedom, whose first thoughts were, that all men had a natural right to worship God as they pleased—that any man could be found, so lost to reason, interest, and principle, as to desire to barter those high, privileges, which he may enjoy in this country, for oppression and blind submission to the dictates of a Pope, or even any body of men, civil or ecclesiastic; still less can an American believe, without difficulty, that he who sees the excellence and practical operation of our form of government, will try to overthrow it, by submitting to any creed, to any king or Pope, who requires from him allegiance, incompatible with that which he has already sworn to maintain. Nor, generally speaking, will men do those things.

While man believes in the moral obligations of an oath, he will not easily violate it. While he believes that there is an all-seeing Providence, to whom alone he is accountable for his actions, he will be cautious in committing offences; but once satisfy a man, that there is, within his reach, a power which can pardon his sins, even those of perjury; which can change abstract evil into good, and he will stop at nothing. While the pardon of offences is a marketable article, it never will want for a purchaser, so prone are we to the commission of crime. Let man have an adviser, in whom he is taught to place unlimited confidence, on whom he looks as the representative of his God on earth, and he soon becomes his ready tool for good or for evil. Such precisely is the position in which ninety-nine out of a hundred Roman Catholics are placed. They are told by their priests, that, as members of society, the first allegiance they owe is to the head of their church, the Pope of Rome, and the next to the government, de facto, under which they live; but these well-practised ecclesiastical impostors never forget to add, that the first allegiance, being of a spiritual character, absorbs and supersedes the latter; thus annulling, and rendering the oath of allegiance, which they take to our government, something worse than even mere mockery; and hence it is, that very few Catholics, particularly the Irish, ever read the constitution of the United States, nor do they require it to be read for them. They know not, they care not what it is. It is enough for them to believe that the oath, which they take to support it, is not obligatory. Of this they are assured by their priests. Yet strange, these very priests tell them they commit mortal sin by becoming Freemasons, or uniting themselves with that excellent and benevolent association, the Odd Fellows. And why, reader, do they do this? Why prevent them from uniting with Odd Fellows or Freemasons? Why has the Pope recently cursed all Odd Fellows? Why has he sent a bull to this country, cautioning Catholics against having any thing to do with them? Why have the Romish priests, from one end of this country to the other, echoed these curses? Did the Pope discover any bad thing in the constitution or rules of action of Freemasons or Odd Fellows? Are these institutions aiming at the overthrow of any fixed principles in morals, in religion, or in virtue? No such allegation is made. Why then do Popes and priests forbid Roman Catholics from uniting with them? It is expressly because the Pope knows nothing about those excellent institutions. It is because he is aware he can make no use of them; but let those societies beware, if they wish to keep their secrets. They should not allow any man to join them until he first swears that he is not a Roman Catholic; otherwise some Jesuits will get among them, and the next packet will convey their doings to his royal holiness the Pope.

I cannot illustrate more clearly the value which foreign Roman priests and their followers put upon an oath of allegiance to this government, than by stating a conversation which occurred between myself and a Jesuit, the Rev. Dr. De Barth, then vicar-general of the diocese of Pennsylvania, and residing in Philadelphia. It took place some years ago, and his opinion of the validity of an oath of allegiance to this government, is the same now that is held by all Papists. I will give it by way of question and answer, just as it occurred.

Question by Mr. De Barth. Do you intend becoming a citizen of the United States?

Answer. I believe not, sir. I don’t think I could conscientiously take an oath of allegiance to this government, without violating that which I have taken at my ordination.

Mr. De B. You are entirely mistaken. Any part of your oath of allegiance to this country, which may be incompatible with your first and greater allegiance to the head of your church, cannot be binding on you.

Ans. I have doubts upon that subject.

Mr. De B. What! doubt your superior, sir? This looks badly. It threatens heresy. Have you been conversing with any heretics of this country? Declare your intentions, sir, to become a citizen. Take the oath; it is necessary you should be empowered to hold real estate for the good of the church. The church must have her property out of the hands of trustees; in this country they are all heretics; we must get rid of them in St. Mary’s church.

This led me into an examination of the allegiance which I swore to the Pope at my ordination. I found that I owed him none; that I was the dupe of an early education; that I owed allegiance only to my God and the country which protected my life, my liberty, and my freedom of conscience; and without further conversation with this intriguing and debauched Jesuit—as I subsequently found him—I became a citizen of the United States as soon as possible; renouncing all allegiance, temporal and spiritual, to his holiness the Pope; and firmly resolved to induce all others, who, like myself, had been the dupes of Popish intrigue, to cut loose from them. I determined to support no civil constitution but that of the United States, and to have no one for my guidance in spiritual matters but my own conscience and the word of God.

Popish bishops and priests absolve allegiance to protestant governments.

I am aware of the difficulty there is in persuading Protestant Americans, that Roman Catholic bishops and priests teach their people to believe, that they, the priests, possess the power of absolving them, either from their oath of allegiance or any other crime. It is, however, time to speak plainly to Americans. It is time to let them know that there exists in the midst of them a body of people, amounting in number to about two millions, who believe in this doctrine, so corrupt in itself, and so well calculated to disturb the peace and harmony of society. There is not a priest or bishop in the United States who dares deny this; they act upon it every day. It is customary with the priests to confess weekly, and to forgive each other’s sins; and I am sorry to say, from my knowledge of them, since my infancy to the present moment, that there is not a more corrupt, licentious body of men in the world. But I will not be judge, accuser, and witness, in this case. I know well that Americans will take the ipse dixit of no man. They are not in the habit of lightly judging any individual or body of men, in any case. I will, therefore, lay before them the Roman Catholic doctrine on the subject of penance and confession, as taught by the council of Trent, and now believed and practised by Roman Catholics in the United States. I will only add, that I have taught these doctrines myself, when a Roman Catholic priest, and while groping my way through the darkness of Popery. There are many now living who heard and received them from me, and to whom I have no apology to make for the errors into which I led them, except that, like themselves, I was the dupe of early education. The following are some of the canons of the council of Trent concerning penance or confession.

“Whoever shall say, that those words of the Lord and Saviour: Receive the Holy Ghost; whose sins you shall forgive, they are forgiven them, and whose sins you shall retain, they are retained; are not to be understood of the power of remitting and retaining sins in the sacrament of penance, as the Catholic church has always understood, from the beginning; but shall falsely apply them against the institution of this sacrament, to the authority of preaching the gospel; let him be accursed!

“Whoever shall deny that sacramental confession has either been instituted by divine command, or is necessary to salvation; or shall say that the mode of secretly confessing to a priest alone, which the Catholic church always has observed from the beginning, and still observes, is foreign from the institution and command of Christ, and is a human invention; let him be accursed!

“Whoever shall affirm, that in the sacrament of penance, it is not necessary by divine command, for the remission of sins, to confess all and every mortal sin, of which recollection may be had, with due and diligent premeditation, including secret offences, and those which are against the two last precepts of the decalogue, and the circumstances which change the species of sin: but that this confession is useful only for the instruction and consolation of the penitent, and was anciently observed, only as a canonical satisfaction imposed upon him; or shall say, that they who endeavor to confess all their sins, wish to leave nothing for the divine mercy to pardon; or finally, that it is not proper to confess venial sins; let him be accursed!

“Whoever shall say, that the confession of all sins, such as the church observes, is impossible, and that it is a human tradition, to be abolished by the pious; or that all and every one of Christ’s faithful, of both sexes, are not bound to observe it once in the year, according to the constitution of the great Lateran council, and that for this reason, Christ’s faithful should be advised not to confess in the time of Lent; let him be accursed!

“Whoever shall say, that the sacramental absolution of the priest is not a judicial act, but a mere ministry to pronounce and declare, that sins are remitted to the person making confession, provided that he only believes that he is absolved, even though the priest should not absolve seriously, but in joke; or shall say, that the confession of a penitent is not requisite in order that the priest may absolve him; let him be accursed!

“Whoever shall say, that priests who are living in mortal sin do not possess the power of binding and loosing; or that the priests are not the only ministers of absolution, but that it was said to all and every one of Christ’s faithful: Whatsoever you shall bind upon earth, shall be bound also in heaven; and whatsoever you shall loose upon earth, shall be loosed also in heaven; and whose sins you shall forgive, they are forgiven, and whose sins you shall retain, they are retained: by virtue of which words, any one may forgive sin; public sins, by reproof only, if the offender shall acquiesce; and private sins, by voluntary confession; let him be accursed!

“Whoever shall say, that bishops have not the right of reserving cases to themselves, except such as relate to the external polity of the church, and therefore that the reservation of cases does not hinder the priest from truly absolving from reserved cases; let him be accursed!

“Whoever shall say, that the whole penalty, together with the guilt, is always remitted by God, and that the satisfaction of penitents is nothing else than the faith by which they apprehend that Christ has satisfied for them; let him be accursed!

“Whoever shall say, that satisfaction is by no means made to God, through Christ’s merits, for sins as to their temporal penalty, by punishments inflicted by him, and patiently borne, or enjoined by the priests, though not undergone voluntarily, as fastings, prayers, alms, or also other works of piety, and therefore that the best penance is nothing more than a new life; let him be accursed!

“Whoever shall say, that the satisfactions by which penitents redeem themselves from sin through Jesus Christ, are no part of the service of God, but traditions of men, obscuring the doctrine concerning grace, and the true worship of God, and the actual benefit of Christ’s death; let him be accursed!

“Whoever shall say, that the keys of the church were given only for loosing, not also for binding, and that therefore the priests, when they impose punishments upon those who confess, act against the design of the keys, and contrary to the institution of Christ; and that it is a fiction, that when by virtue of the keys the eternal penalty has been removed, the temporal punishment may still often remain to be suffered; let him tie accursed!”

I must be permitted here to remind Americans, that all Roman Catholics are taught to believe, and distinctly to understand, that whatever they confess to their priests, is not to be revealed; nor is the individual, who confesses, permitted to reveal whatever the priest says or does to him or her, except to another priest. For instance, should a priest insult or attempt to seduce a woman, and succeed in doing so, she dare not reveal it under pain of damnation, except to another priest in confession, who is bound also to secrecy; and thus, priests, bishops, popes, and all females of that denomination, may be guilty of licentiousness,—the bare mention of which would pollute the pages of this or any other work,—with impunity. The priests can first pardon the woman, and then themselves, according to the doctrines of the infallible church of Rome. This is not all. It is not enough that the sanction of the church should be given to these enormities; but priests also claim the right of concealing, from the civil authorities, any knowledge which they may have of crimes against the state as well as the power of forgiving them. The following is the language of the church upon that subject. Attend to it, fellow citizens, and tremble at the dangers that threaten the destruction of your republic, from the introduction of Popery among you.

“Although the life or salvation of a man, or the ruin of the state, should depend upon it, what is discovered in confession cannot be revealed. The secret of the seal—confession—is more binding than the obligation of an oath.” If a confessor is asked, what he knows of a fact communicated to him, he must answer that he does not know it; and, if necessary, confirm it by an oath; and “this is no perjury,” says the Popish church, “because he knows it not as man, but as GOD.” There is Popery for you, in its naked beauty! If a man wishes to murder, or to rob you, he may go to his priest, apprize him of his intention, confess to him that he will assuredly murder and rob you, or that he has done so already, and yet this priest may be your next door neighbor, and he will not make it known; and why, reader? Because he knows it as God, and as God he tells the murderer to come to him and he will forgive him. It is not at all impossible but the day may come when this country may be at war with Europe. We can easily fancy the despots of Europe forming another holy alliance, for the laudable purpose of suppressing democracy. France, Austria, Spain, Italy, and a large portion of Germany and Switzerland, together with the holy see, would necessarily constitute that holy junto; and if so, and war were declared by them against this country, what would be the consequence? Inevitable ruin; certain defeat; not caused by foes abroad, but by foes within, leagued by the most solemn ties, and bound by the most fearful oaths to sacrifice our country, and all we value, for the advancement of the Roman church.

That there is a foe in the midst of us, capable of doing so, no man acquainted with the doctrines and statistics of the Roman Catholic church in this country can deny.

It has now:—Dioceses, 21; apostolic vicarate, 1; number of bishops, 17; bishops elect, 8; priests, 634; churches, 611; other stations, 461; ecclesiastical seminaries, 19; clerical students, 261; literary institutions for young men, 16; female academies, 48; elementary schools, passim, throughout most of the dioceses; periodicals, 15; population, 1,300,-000. Late accounts carry the population up to 2,000,000.

The increase of the Romish church, in this country, since 1836, amounts to 12 bishops, 293 priests, 772 churches and other stations, 1,400,000 individuals, and other things in proportion.

Should the said church go on increasing for the next thirty years as she has done for the last eight years, the Papists would be a majority of the population of the United States, and the Pope our supreme temporal ruler.

I have stated to you before what the doctrines of these two millions are in relation to the power of the Pope; and I repeat it now, and most solemnly assure you, that there is not a Roman Catholic in Europe or the United States who does not believe that the Pope has as good a right to govern this country as he has to govern Italy; and that he is, and of right ought to be, our king. Pope Gregory VII. has declared, “that the Pope alone ought to wear the tokens of imperial dignity, and that all princes ought to kiss his feet.” There is not a Roman Catholic clergyman, whether bishop or priest, who does not believe that it is the duty of our president, our governors, and magistrates, to do the same.

Bellarmine, one of the best authorities among Catholic writers, says, “The supremacy of the Pope over all persons and things is the main substance of Christianity.” Mark that, fellow-citizens! That is the belief of Bishop Hughes, of New York; that is the belief of Bishop Fenwick, of Boston, and of every other Roman Catholic bishop in the United States, as I will soon show.

Pope Boniface VIII. says, “It is necessary to salvation that all Christians be subject to the Pope.” Bzovius, an orthodox Roman Catholic writer, whose authority no bishop or priest will venture to question, says of the Pope—”He is judge in heaven, and in all earthly jurisdiction supreme; he is the arbiter of the world.” Moscovius, another eminent Popish writer, informs us that “God’s tribunal and the Pope’s tribunal are the same.” Pope Paul IV., in one of his bulls, published in the year 1557, declares, that “all Protestants, be they kings or subjects, are cursed;” and this doctrine is an integral portion of the law of the Roman Catholic church, as may be seen in the fifth book of the decretals of the council of Trent. This is not all. We find in the forty-third canon of the council of Lateran, that “all bishops and priests are forbidden from taking any oath of allegiance,” except to the Pope.

We find in another part of the decrees of the council of Lateran, held under Pope Innocent III., the following denunciation:—”All magistrates who interpose against priests in any criminal case, whether it be for murder or high treason, let him be excommunicated.” Bear that in mind, American Protestants! If a priest murder one of you, if he commit high treason against your government, your magistrates dare not interfere, under pain of being damned. So says the infallible Roman church; and so will she act, should she ever acquire the power of doing so, in this country.

It is said by Lessius, an eminent Jesuit writer, and professor of divinity in the Roman Catholic college of Louvaine, who wrote about the year 1620, and whose authority no Roman Catholic dare doubt, under pain of eternal damnation, that “the Pope can annul and cancel every possible obligation arising from an oath.” This he taught to his students in the college of Louvaine. This same doctrine has been taught in the college of Maynooth, Ireland, where I was educated myself. It is taught there at the present day. See the works of De La Hogue.

Judge you, Americans, what safety there is for your republic, while you support and sustain among you a sect numbering two millions, who are sworn to uphold such doctrines as the foregoing. The very domestics in your houses are spies for the priests. Nothing transpires under your own roofs which is not immediately known to the bishop or priest to whom your servants confess. But you may say, “The confessor will not reveal it.” Here you are partly right, and partly, mistaken; and it is proper to explain the course adopted by priests in such matters as confession.

If it be the interest of the church, that what is confessed should be made public, the priest tells the party to make it known to him, “out of the confessional,” and then he uses it to suit his own views; perhaps for the destruction of the reputation, or fortune, of the very man, or family, employing domestic. But it may be replied that Roman Catholics are good-natured people; that they are generous and industrious. Admitted: I will even go further; there is not a people in the world moreso. Nature has done much for them, especially those of them who are natives of Ireland; but the lack of a correct education has corrupted their hearts and imbittered their feelings; they are not to be trusted with the care or management of the animals of Protestant families.

It is not generally known, nor perhaps suspected by Protestant parents, who employ Roman Catholic domestics, in nursing and taking care of their children, that these nurses are in the habit of taking their children privately to the houses of the priests, and bishops, and there getting them baptized according to the Roman Catholic ritual: I know this as a fact, within my own knowledge. When I officiated as a Roman Catholic priest, in Philadelphia, I baptized hundreds, I may say thousands of Protestant children, without the knowledge or consent of their parents, brought to me secretly by their Roman Catholic nurses; and I should have continued to do so till this day, had not the Lord in his mercy, been pleased to visit me, and show me the wiles, treachery, infamy, corruption, and intrigue of the church, of which the circumstance of birth and education caused me to be a member. It was usual with me in Philadelphia, in St. Margaret church, of which I was pastor, to have services every morning at seven o’clock; and often when I returned home, between eight and eleven, have I found three, four, and sometimes six and eight children, whose parents were Protestants, waiting for me, in the arms of their Roman Catholic nurses to be baptized. This is a common practice in every Protestant country, where there are Roman Catholic priests; but as far as my experience goes, it prevails to a greater extent in the United States than elsewhere; and 1 should not be in the least surprised, if at this time, in the city of Boston, nearly all the infants, nursed by Roman Catholic women, are baptized by their priests and bishops. Roman Catholic women are unwilling to come in contact, even with heretic infants. They believe them damned, unless baptized by a Romish priest. There is another fact, indirectly connected with this subject, which is not generally known. It is believed by Roman Catholics, that all mothers, after their confinement, are to be churched by some Romish priest or bishop. This churching is performed by the repetition of a few prayers, in Latin, a sprinkling of holy water, and the woman who does not submit to this mummery, is believed by any Roman Catholic nurse whom she may employ, to be eternally damned, together with her child. They go so far as to say, that the very ground upon which the unchurched mother walks is accursed; that the very house in which she lives is accursed; and that all she says and does is accursed.

So firmly have the Romish priests and bishops fastened this belief upon the minds of their dupes, that at this moment in Ireland, and I may venture to say in this city of Boston, no Catholic woman will leave her bed after confinement, without being churched, lest the ground on which she walks may be accursed. Until this ceremony is performed, none of her Catholic neighbors will hold any intercourse with her. How then can Protestant mothers expect otherwise, than that Catholic nurses will have their children baptized by priests! or what security can they have that they will not, under the direction of priests, try to turn the minds of their children from the contemplation of truth, and pure gospel light, to the foul sources of Popery and superstition! Look to this, American mothers.

It may not be amiss in this connection, to lay before American Protestants, the doctrine of the Romish church upon baptism; and, lest I may be accused of setting down aught in malice, I shall do so in the words of the council of Trent.

Canons of the Council of Trent concerning Baptism.

“1. Whoever shall say that the baptism of John, had the same virtue as the baptism of Christ; let him be accursed!

“2. Whoever shall say that true and natural water is not absolutely necessary for baptism, and therefore wrests those words of our Lord Jesus Christ, as though they had been a kind of metaphor: ‘Except a man be born of water, and the Holy Spirit;’ let him be accursed!

“3. Whoever shall say that in the Roman church, which is the mother and mistress of all churches, the doctrine concerning the sacrament of baptism is not true; let him be accursed!

“4. Whoever shall say that the baptism which is also given by heretics, in the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, with the intention of doing what the church does, is not true baptism; let him be accursed!

[Here is another of those rules, by which the holy Romish church leaves herself room to impose upon the public. Can any man believe, can any one even suppose a case, where a heretic acts, or intends to act, according to the intention of the church of Rome; The very act of heresy was against that church and her doctrines; and the truth is, if the church would speak honestly, or her priests and bishops do so for her, all who are not baptized in the Romish church, and who are baptized, are eternally damned. So thinks, and so teaches, the Popish church.]

“5. Whoever shall say that baptism is optional, that is, not necessary to salvation; let him be accursed!

“6. Whoever shall say that a baptized person cannot, even if he would, lose grace, how much soever he may sin, unless he is unwilling to believe; let him be accursed!

“7. Whoever shall say that baptized persons, by baptism itself, become debtors to preserve faith alone, and not the whole law of Christ; let him be accursed!

“8. Whoever shall say that baptized persons are free from all precepts of holy church, which are either written or traditional, so that they are not bound to observe them, unless they choose to submit themselves to them of their own accord; let him be accursed!

“9. Whoever shall say that men are so to be recalled to the memory of the baptism which they have received, that they may regard all the vows which are made after baptism as null and void, by virtue of the promise already made in baptism itself, as if by it they detract from the faith which they have professed, and from the baptism itself; let him be accursed!

“10. Whoever shall say that all the sins which we committed after baptism, by the mere remembrance and faith of the baptism received, are either dismissed or become venial; let him be accursed!

“11. Whoever shall say that a baptism, truly and with due ceremony conferred, is to be repeated on him who has denied the faith of Christ among infidels, when he is converted to repentance; let him be accursed!

“12. Whoever shall say that no one is to be baptized, except at that age at which Christ was baptized, or in the article of death; let him be accursed!

“13. Whoever shall say that infants, because they have not the act of faith, are not to be reckoned among believers after having received baptism, and on this account are to be re-baptized when they arrive at years of discretion; or that it is better that their baptism be omitted, than that they should be baptized in the faith only of the church, when they do not believe by their own act; let him be accursed!

“14. Whoever shall say that baptized children of this kind, when they have grown up, are to be asked whether they wish to have that ratified which their sponsors promised in their name when they were baptized; and that when they reply that they are unwilling, they are to be left to their own choice; and that they are not in the meantime to be compelled by any other punishment, to a Christian life, except that they be prohibited the enjoyment of the Eucharist, and the other sacraments, until they repent; let him be accursed!”

This last canon, as the reader perceives, explains fully why Roman Catholics are so anxious for the baptism of Protestant children by their priests. It gives them the power of compelling those children, should they deem it expedient to do so, to profess the Catholic faith, and thereby strengthening her power. They try to alienate the children from the parents; or calculating upon that natural affection with which a parent clings to a child, they hope to bring over the parent also to the Catholic faith; or, failing in this, they hope to break up those alliances of blood which nature has established, and that community of interest and feeling, which society has sanctioned, and religion and nature have blessed, between parent and child.

A true Papist will stop at nothing to advance the power of the Pope, or the interest of the holy church. Heretics, by which the reader will understand all who do not belong to the Roman Catholic church, are to be destroyed, cost what it will. Death, and the destruction of heretics, is the watchword of Popery. Down with Protestant governments, kings, presidents, governors, judges, and all other civil and religious authorities, is the war-cry in Popish countries. They desire neither to live nor die with us. They refuse to be laid down in the same common earth with us. Need this be proved to Americans? One would suppose not. Our intercourse with Roman Catholic countries is such, at present, that there can be no longer any doubt of this fact.

Our commercial transactions with Spain, Portugal, South America, Mexico, and the neighboring Island of Cuba, enables many of our people to judge for themselves, and say what is now the condition of Protestants in those countries where Popery predominates. Can a Protestant worship God in those countries, according to the dictates of his own conscience? He cannot. They are all told by their priests, that a Protestant is a thing too unclean to worship God until he is first baptised and then shrived or confessed by their priests. A Protestant cannot even carry his Bible with him, into these countries. Many of my fellow-citizens, who may see this statement, will bear testimony to its truth. When a Protestant arrives at any port in a purely Catholic country, his trunks and his person are examined; and if a bible is found in them, or about him, it is taken from him. The ministers of his religion dare not accompany him, or if he does, his lips are sealed, under pain of a lingering death. Should sickness lay its heavy hand upon him, there is no minister to attend him, no Bible allowed him, from which he may quench his thirst for the waters of life. Should death visit him, there is no one to close the eyes of the lonely Protestant stranger. A good Roman Catholic would not touch the accursed heretic, and when dead he is not allowed the rights of Christian interment; he must be cast by the wayside, as suitable food for the hog, the dog, and the buzzard. How many a worthy American have I seen myself, in Cuba, cast away when dead, as you would a carrion, not even a coffin to cover him; and why all this? Because he was a heretic; because he did not believe in the supremacy of the Pope, and the infallibility of the Romish church; and yet those inhuman wretches, those libels upon religion and humanity, come among us, ask you for lands on which to build churches and pulpits, from which they curse you and your children; become citizens of your republic, inmates in your families, with smiles on their faces and curses in their hearts for you. Let not this language be deemed exaggeration. I have heard it, I have witnessed it, I have seen it. And yet Americans, heedlessly fancying themselves and their institutions secure, refuse these, their sworn enemies, and foes of their religion, nothing they ask for. Such is the listlessness and apathy of our people upon this subject, that, as far as I am acquainted, no appeal has ever been made to our government, to ask even for a modification of those barbarities, with which our Protestant citizens are treated, in Roman Catholic countries; nor has there been any effort made to alter our free constitution, so as to enable us to retaliate upon those Popish monsters, and obtain from the bloodthirsty cowards, at the point of the bayonet, those common privileges, which are almost among the necessary appurtenances of humanity, and which even a Pagan would scarcely deny to a fellow-being.

I hold it as undeniable, that even as Protestants, we are, at least by implication, entitled by our treaties of alliance with Popish countries, to far different treatment from that which we receive; and had the question been considered by our people, either in their primary meetings, or through their representatives, they would have long since, insisted upon due protection and respect for the natural rights of their citizens abroad. These natural rights can neither be sold nor exchanged; their free exercise is guaranteed by implication in every treaty we make with foreign nations, and cannot be violated by them without giving just cause of war.

Let political casuists say what they please, there is no principle better established in political ethics, than that all international treaties of amity and commerce, should be formed, and if formed, should be kept, upon principles of justice and reciprocity. The same national amity and courtesy, which our Protestant country extends to Popish nations and their people, should be extended by them to us By national friendship and comity, is not, I apprehend, and should not, be meant or understood, the privilege of selling a bale of cotton here or a bag of coffee there. It includes the free exercise of the rights of the parties thereto, so far, at least, as they are not incompatible with each other, or with the general principles of natural or national law. The Spaniard, the Portuguese, the Italian, the Mexican, or Cuban, may worship his God, the Virgin Mary, or any saint he pleases, and no American will disturb him; no American will forbid him. If he dies, his priests may have him buried where he will. This is as it should be. Man has a natural right to worship God; it is a right implanted in his very nature. As well may we say to a man, thou shalt not breathe the air of our country, as say, thou shalt not worship the God that gave thee birth; and as well also may we say, thou shalt not worship that God except according to the mode which we prescribe, as forbid him doing so at all. The natural right of worshipping God, or a first cause, implies the right of doing so according to the dictates of each man’s conscience, provided, in doing it, we interfere with none of those laws, which civilized nations should reverence. This is the principle on which we act with Popish countries and people, and upon the principle of reciprocal justice, we ought to demand similar treatment from them.

We have friendly treaties with these people. Friendly, forsooth! Can that man or that nation be friendly, who forbids us to read our Bibles within their territories, or to bury our dead among their dead, or to worship God according to the usages of our forefathers, or the dictates of our own conscience? Such treaties should rather be termed treaties for the abrogation of natural rights of Americans within Popish dominions. We enjoy no rights there; and if we have any by implication, under our treaties, they are impiously wrested from us by a wicked rabble of priests and bishops, distinguished only for their ignorance, rapacity, and licentiousness.

I solemnly call upon every American citizen, who reveres his God, respects his fellow-citizens, or values the happiness of his country, to submit no longer to Popish insolence abroad, and to allow them no rights in this country, which they are not willing to reciprocate. If our existing treaties of amity with Popish powers are not sufficient to protest us in the free exercise of our religion, when among them, let us break them, let us tear them asunder, and scatter them as chaff before the wind. They were never binding upon us. They were made in violation of natural rights, which God alone could give, and man cannot take away. Call upon your government to protect you; choose no man as your representative who will allow Popery to flourish in this free soil, and witness the religion of your forefathers trampled upon, with impunity, by Papists in a neighboring country; and if you cannot obtain your rights by law, you will show the world that you have, at least, moral and physical courage enough to redress your wrongs.

Let not Papists, who, at the distance of a few days’ sail from your ports, would deny your brother the rights of Christian interment, or the consolation of dying with his Bible in his hand, dare call upon your aid, to propagate a religion, which inculcates principles worse and more dangerous than were ever practised in Pagan lands.

Much sympathy is felt and expressed, particularly in this state of Massachusetts, where I write for some of her colored population, because it is deemed necessary, in slave states, to prevent them from commingling with their slaves, lest they may excite them to dissatisfaction with their condition, and ultimately to insurrection. It is deemed a matter of such magnitude that Massachusetts, in the plenitude of its sympathy, felt herself called upon to send an ambassador to South Carolina, to protect her citizens, and demand redress for this supposed outrage upon her rights. It is not my intention to enter into the merits or demerits of the question at issue between the states of Massachusetts and South Carolina. I will merely state, that the former consists in this, viz: by a law of the state of South Carolina, every free person of color, entering that state, is liable to be imprisoned till he leaves the state. This is done by South Carolina and some other slave states, as a necessary measure of precaution; but the prisoner is kindly treated; at least, we hear nothing to the contrary; no such complaint is made by Massachusetts. The prisoner is allowed the free exercise of his religion; his friends may visit him almost at any hour; his spiritual instructor is never denied access to him; he may have his Bible with him, or any other books he may think proper. But this will not satisfy the sympathizing people of Massachusetts. They call public meetings of their citizens; threaten to dissolve the union; and declare they will raise a sufficient military force to invade South Carolina, and redress this outrage upon a citizen’s rights, at the point of the bayonet.

Man is truly a strange being, and various indeed are the currents of his sympathies, but still more various and unaccountable are the causes which often set them in motion. It is comparatively but seldom, that a colored citizen of the North goes to slave states; but if there should be the least infraction of his civil rights, the whole North flies into a passion; and yet this very people of the North can see the citizens of their own country, kindred, and blood, in a neighboring Popish port of Havana, for instance, deprived of all their rights, both conventional and natural, without a murmur. Not a complaint is heard in New England, from the son, whose father is confined in the dungeons of Cuba, not because he is suspected of any intention to create insurrection, but simply because he refused to kneel to some wooden image, which a parcel of debauched priests are lugging about the streets; or because he expresses his belief that such processions and mummeries are worse than Pagan idolatry.

The American Protestant, who will dare worship his God publicly, or even in private, within the walls of his own house, unless with closed doors, and without the knowledge of the Popish spies of the Inquisition, is liable to imprisonment, from which, in all probability, he is never to be released. If a Bible be found in his house, it is burned, and he and his family are cast into jail. This is the case in every country where the Popish church has power enough to make its religion that of the state; and yet we have treaties of amity, with these countries. What a burlesque upon amity! what a mockery of friendly relations, with a people who deny us the exercise of the natural right which every man has, to worship God as he pleases! who compel our fathers, brothers, and our sons, to bow the knee, in idolatrous worship, to wooden images, and particles of bread, which are paraded as Gods, through the streets, in Roman Catholic countries. Friendly relations, forsooth, with a people who consider us damned, and already consigned to perdition! And yet we hear no complaint in Massachusetts, of cruelties to our citizens; nothing is said of the violation of those friendly relations, secured to us by treaty, and annually declared by our presidents, in their messages, to exist and to be maintained between our people and those Popish countries. When we hear of an American citizen in Cuba, when we hear of his natural rights being trampled under foot, by Catholic governors, bishops, and priests, no complaint is made of a violation of friendly alliance; no meeting is called to express sympathy for the individual sufferer, or indignation against the treacherous government of Popery; no act of our legislature has been passed, making appropriations to send ambassadors to these neighboring nations, for injuries done to our citizens; and yet it is a well-known fact, that where one colored citizen of New England is imprisoned, for a few days, in South Carolina, there are a thousand of our enterprising seamen and merchants, confined in the dungeons of Spain, Italy, Portugal, Mexico, and Cuba, at our very door. How long will these outrages be tolerated? A Popish captain comes here; the hands before the mast are Papists; the ship may have her chaplain, or may have as many little gods, and saints, indulgences, scapulas, beads, and rosaries, as they please; they may land, captain, crew, saints, and all, and no one molests them; but if an American ship arrives at the very port from which the other sailed, her captain and crew are forbidden even to carry their Bible on shore; but should the ship have a Protestant chaplain, and that chaplain venture on shore, with his congregation of sailors—all American freemen—he dare not take his Bible with him, or hold religious worship on this Popish soil; and should this captain, chaplain, or any of the crew die, he is not allowed Christian burial, unless he can buy the privilege from, profligate priests, at an enormous sacrifice of money, and after certain purifications effected by holy water, and smoking, which they call incense. This is what our government calls friendly relations.

How long shall we be amused by the executive messages, annually informing us of receiving “assurances of friendship from Popish countries?” Let the people take this subject into their own hands; let them have no alliance, no treaty, no commerce with a people, who will deny them the right of worshipping God peaceably and respectfully, or who will refuse them the right of burying their dead decently and with due solemnity. The treaties which are made with Papists begin, on their part, with the most solemn avowal of good faith, in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. They assure us of their friendly sentiments towards us under this solemn and awful sanction; but no sooner is this promise made—no sooner have they pledged their honor, their faith, and all that is holy, to support it—than they disregard all those obligations, feeling and believing that they are already dispensed with by their church, which teaches them to hold no faith with heretics. The priests, however, and bishops, more crafty than the mass of their people, plead state necessity for withholding from us privileges which we give them. This is a shallow pretext, and worthy only of the source from which it comes. Can any case be supposed, or any necessity arise, to violate the eternal principles of right and wrong, of justice and truth? Are moral and national obligations anything more than mere dead letters and leaden rules, which can be bent by hands strong enough to do so, and to suit their own purposes and designs?

Suppose a man in private life—suppose further that man to be a Papist—he enters into a treaty of alliance and friendship with a Protestant; he calls God the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost to witness that he will fulfil his engagement; we can easily fancy the Protestant, within the jurisdiction of that Papist, reading his Bible, without interfering or any way molesting the individual within whose jurisdiction he is. Let us imagine this Protestant seized by the Papist, thrown into prison by him, while alive, and if dead, thrown away as food for the birds of prey. Would you call this fulfilling the obligations of friendship or friendly alliance? Would the Protestant ever enter into such a treaty of alliance again? Would not every Protestant who witnessed this transaction look upon the Papist who committed it, even though he be but a private individual, as a bad man, with whom no further intercourse ought to be had? Assuredly, he would. But let it be borne in mind, that actions do not change their nature; immutable principles are always the same; they do not change with the paucity or number of actors; what is bad in an individual will be wrong in a nation, and in every individual of that nation. The only difference is, that an act of perfidy and bad faith in a nation is, if possible, worse in itself, and infinitely more mischievous, than if committed by an individual.

Our political sophists may deny this, and gloss over the conduct of Popish governments towards our citizens while among them; but they cannot long hide from our people that the eternal laws of truth cannot be violated; nor can their meaning be frittered away by the technicalities of treaties. Truth, whether moral or political, is like the suu of heaven; it is but one—it is the same every where. It is sometimes clouded, it is true, but these clouds are momentary; they pass away, and it shines again in its native brilliancy. The day is fast coming, and I trust it has even arrived, when Americans will see, that by a treaty of amity is not meant the right of shipping our commodities to Popish countries, and receiving theirs in exchange; reserving to one party the privilege of denying to the other a right dearer to him than all earthly considerations; and which is guarantied to him by the eternal laws of God, while the other party is under no restraint as to the full and free enjoyment of those natural rights. And here, I beg leave to say to our legislators, that Protestant Americans, upon due reflection, will not long give their assent to any treaty, nor form an alliance with any country, which shall deny them the free exercise of their religion.

The American, who will enter into an alliance with the Pope, or a Popish country, explicitly agrees to deny his God, and forswear the religion of his forefathers. He virtually consents that the party with which he makes the agreement shall be privileged to curse and damn him, his country, his religion, and his rights. This needs no proof. Look around you, and see your citizens in Mexico denying their God by submitting to Popish laws, which forbid their worship according to the dictates of their conscience. Were your puritan forefathers to witness this, would they not exclaim, “Shame upon our degenerate sons, who will barter their religion and their birthright for the petty advantages of commerce!” No wonder that Popish priests and Popish presses should call Americans cowards and the sons of cowards. Who but a coward, and what but a nation of cowards, would surrender that liberty of conscience which their forefathers purchased at the price of blood? This Americans do by assenting to a treaty with any country which does not guarantee to them the right of worshipping God without hindrance. Americans will not forget, though they cannot too often be reminded of the fact, that those countries where their feelings are thus outraged are, de facto, governed by the Pope and his vicegerents, whose actions for centuries back have proved them to have been no other than conspirators against the improvement and happiness of the human race. What were the means by which they conducted their governments? The very same that they are now in every Roman Catholic country, all over the globe; craft, dissimulation, oppression, extortion, and above all, fire, faggot, and the sword. There is not an article of their faith, nor a sacrament of their church, which is not enforced by curses, as I shall show in the sequel. These vicegerents of the humble Redeemer have the insolence to ape the very thunders of heaven. History informs us, that their robes have been crimsoned in blood. Their images of saints, some of which I have seen in Mexico, made of solid gold, and many of them six feet high and well-proportioned, were wrung from the poor.

Many of those countries, which they now possess, and where God and nature have scattered plenty, have been made barren by Popish avarice and the licentiousness of its priests. The fields, which laughed with plenty, they have watered with hunger and distress. They found the world gay with flowers, and with roses: they dyed it with blood. They and their doctrines acted upon it like the blast of an east wind. Popery, since the eighth century in particular, has been what a pestilence or conflagration is to a city.

Come with me, in imagination, to Italy, and judge for yourselves. Pass on with me, to Spain, Portugal, South America, and you will sec that I am not exaggerating. You will find that I have only told truth, but not the whole truth. No tongue can tell it. We have no language to express it. I will give you a few instances of the fruits of Popery in the neighboring island of Cuba. What I am about stating has come under my own observation; and is, besides, a matter of record, and accessible to many. The natives of Cuba pay fifteen millions per annum to her most Christian Majesty, the queen of Spain. They support an army of sixteen thousand men, every one of whom is a native of old Spain, kept there for the sole purpose of extorting this enormous annual tribute. The number of priests there is immense. They, too, must be supported at the point of the bayonet. These priests are known to be the most profligate vagabonds in creation. And why, it will naturally be asked, should such men be tolerated? Why supply them with money to gamble at the faro table, at cock-fights and bull-fights? The reason is plain; they act as spies for the Pope, who, in reality, manages the government of old Spain, and contrives to draw, from that already impoverished and distracted country, the last dollar of a people whom God has endowed with every virtue, and a capacity of cultivating them, had not the curse of Popery fallen upon them.

Life in Roman Catholic Countries

Such is the avarice of the Popish church and Popish tyrants, that, if a farmer in Cuba kills even a beef for his own use, he must pay the government ten per cent, upon its value. When I was in Cuba, the farmer must pay ten and a half dollars duty upon every barrel of flour imported into the island; when he might raise, in the field, before his own door, the finest wheat in the world, if the government would let him. Such are but a few of the blessings of Popish governments. Do Americans desire this republic reduced to such a state of vassalage as this? or will you profit by these lessons, which experience is daily teaching you? Wherever you turn your eyes, and see Popery in the ascendant, you will find it the Pandora’s box, out of which every curse has issued, without even leaving hope behind. It should, therefore, be suppressed on its appearance in any country. It should be the duty of every good man to extirpate it, and sweep it, if possible, from the face of the globe. It is nothing better than a political machine, cunningly devised, for the propagation of despotism. It is the masterpiece of satanic wickedness. Execrated and exploded be this infernal machine! and thanks forever be to that God, who has shown me its intricacies, in time to save me from becoming what, I know of my own knowledge, Roman Catholic priests are—hypocrites, infidels, and licentious debauchees, under the mask of sanctity and holiness. Their religion is supported by curses, as I have before stated, and will now prove from the doctrines of their own church. The reader has already been told, that the Popish church maintains the doctrines that a belief in seven sacraments is necessary to salvation. These sacraments are designated as follows: Baptism, Confirmation, Eucharist, Penance, Extreme Unction, Holy Orders, and Matrimony. And she enforces this by curses. I have already enumerated the curses with which she enforces her belief in baptism. The next sacrament is Confirmation, enforced by the following eloquent curses, pronounced by the infallible council of Trent:!!!!!

“1. Whoever shall say that the confirmation of baptized persons is a needless ceremony, and not rather a true and proper sacrament: or that anciently it was nothing else than a kind of catechizing, by-which the youth expressed the reason of their faith before the church; let him be accursed!

“2. Whoever shall say that they do despite to the Holy Spirit who attributes any virtue to the holy chrism of confirmation; let him be accursed!

“3. Whoever shall say, the ordinary minister of holy confirmation is not the bishop alone, but any mere priest whatsoever; let him be accursed!”

The next sacrament is the Eucharist. The following is the doctrine of the Romish church in relation to this:!!!!!

Decree of the Council of Florence for the Instruction of the Armenians,

“The third is the sacrament of the Eucharist, the matter of which is wheaten bread, and wine from the vine; with which, before the consecration, a very small quantity of water should be mixed. But water is thus mixed, since it is believed that the Lord himself instituted this sacrament in wine, mixed with water: besides, because this agrees with the representation of our Lords passion: because it is recorded that blood and water flowed forth from the side of Christ: and also because this is proper to signify the effect of this sacrament, which is the union of Christian people with Christ: for water signifies the people, according to Rev. xvii. 15. And he said to me, the waters, which thou sawest, where the harlot sitteth, are peoples, and nations, and tongues.

“The form of this sacrament are the words of the Saviour, by which this sacrament is performed: for the priest, speaking in the person of Christ, performs this sacrament: for, by virtue of the words themselves, the substance of the bread is converted into the body, and the substance of the wine into the blood, of Christ; yet so that Christ is contained entire under the form of bread, and entire under the form of wine: Christ is entire also under every part of the consecrated host, and of the consecrated wine, after a separation has been made. The effect of this sacrament, which it produces in the soul of a worthy partaker, is the union of the person to Christ,” &c.

Canons of the Council of Trent, concerning the Most Holy Sacrament of the Eucharist.

“1. Whoever shall deny that, in the sacrament of the most holy Eucharist are contained truly, really, and substantially, the body and blood, together with the soul and divinity, of our Lord Jesus Christ, and therefore the entire Christ, but shall say that he is in it only as in a sign, or figure, or virtue, let him be accursed!

“2 Whoever shall say that in the most holy sacrament of the Eucharist, the substance of bread and wine remains together with the body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, and shall deny that wonderful and singular conversion of the whole substance of the bread into the body, and of the whole substance of the wine into the blood, only the forms of bread and wine remaining, which conversion indeed the Catholic church most aptly calls tran-substantiation; let him be accursed!

“3 Whoever shall deny that in the adorable sacrament of the Eucharist, the entire Christ is contained under each kind, and under the single parts of each kind, when a separation is made; let him be accursed!

“4. Whoever shall say that the body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ are not present in the admirable Eucharist so soon as the consecration is performed, but only in the use when it is received, and neither before nor after, and that the true body of our Lord does not remain in the hosts, or consecrated morsels, which are reserved or left after the communion; let him be accursed!

“5. Whoever shall say either that remission of sins is the principal fruit of the most holy Eucharist, or that no other effects proceed from it; let him be accursed!

“6. Whoever shall affirm that in the holy sacrament of the Eucharist, Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, is not to be adored, even with the external worship of latria, and therefore that the Eucharist is to be honored neither with peculiar festive celebration, nor to be solemnly carried about in processions according to the laudable and universal rite and custom of the church, or that it is not to be held up publicly before the people that it may be adored, and that its worshippers are idolaters; let him be accursed!

“7. Whoever shall say that it is not lawful that the holy Eucharist be reserved in the sacristy, but that it must necessarily be distributed to those who are present immediately after the consecration; that it is not proper that it be carried in procession to the sick; let him be accursed!

“8. Whoever shall say that Christ, as exhibited in the Eucharist, is eaten only spiritually, and not also sacramentally and really; let him be accursed.

“9. Whoever shall deny that each and every one of Christ’s faithful, of both sexes, when they have attained to years of discretion, are obliged, least once every year, at Easter, to commune according to the precept of holy mother church; let him be accursed!

“10. Whoever shall say that it is not lawful in the officiating priest to administer the communion to himself; let him be accursed!

“11. Whoever shall affirm that faith alone is sufficient preparation for taking the sacrament of the most holy Eucharist; let him be accursed And lest so great a sacrament be taken unworthily and therefore to death and condemnation, the sacred holy synod doth decree and declare, that sacrimental confession must necessarily precede in the case of those whom conscience accuses of mortal sin, if a confessor is at hand, however contrite they may suppose themselves to be. But if any one shall presume to teach, preach, or pertinacious assert, or in publicly disputing, to defend the contrary, let him by this very act be excommunicated.”

Canons of the same Council concerning the Communion of Children, and in both Kinds.

“1. Whoever shall say that each and every of of Christ’s faithful ought to take both kinds of the most holy sacrament of the Eucharist, by the command of God, or because necessary to salvation let him be accursed!

“2. Whoever shall say that the holy Catholic church has not been induced, by just causes and reasons, to administer the communion to the laity, and also to the clergy not officiating, only under the form of bread; or that she has erred in this; Let him be accursed!

“3. Whoever shall deny that the whole and entire Christ, the fountain and author of all graces, is received under the one form of bread, because, as some falsely assert, he is not received under both kinds, according to the institution of Christ; let him be accursed!

“4 Whoever shall say that the communion of the Eucharist is necessary for little children before they have attained to years of discretion; let him be accursed!” &c.

The next in order is Extreme Unction,

Canons of the Council of Trent concerning Extreme Unction.

“1. Whoever shall say that extreme unction is not truly and properly a sacrament instituted by Christ our Lord, and promulgated by the blessed apostle James, but only a rite received from, the fathers, or human invention; let turn be accursed!

“2. Whoever shall say that the sacred anointing of the sick does not confer grace, nor remit sins, nor raise up the sick, but that it has now ceased, as if the gift of healing existed only in past ages; let him be accursed!

“3. Whoever shall say that the ceremony of extreme unction in the practice which the holy Roman church observes, are repugnant to the meaning of the blessed apostle James, and that, therefore, they are to be changed; let him be accursed!”

The sixth sacrament is that of Orders.

Canons of the Council of Trent concerning Orders

“1. Whoever shall say that in the New Testament, there is not a visible and external priesthood: or that there is not any power of consecrating and offering the true body and blood of the Lord, and of remitting and retaining sins: but only the office and naked ministry of preaching the gospel; or that they who do not preach are surely not priests; Let him be accursed!

“2. Whoever shall say that besides the priesthood there are not other orders in the Catholic church, both greater and inferior, by which as by certain steps, the priesthood may be attained; let him be accursed!

“3. Whoever shall say that orders, or sacred ordination, is not truly and properly a sacrament instituted by Christ the Lord; or that it is a certain human invention, devised by men ignorant of ecclesiastical things, or that it is only a certain ceremony of choosing the ministers of the word of God and of the sacraments; let him be accursed!

“4. Whoever shall say that by sacred ordination the Holy Spirit is not given, and that therefore the bishops say in vain, Receive the Holy Ghost: or that by it character is not impressed: or that he who has once been a priest may again become a layman; let him be accursed!

“5. Whoever shall say that the sacred unction which the church uses in holy ordination is not only not required, but is contemptible and pernicious; likewise also the other ceremonies of orders; let him be accursed!

“6. Whoever shall say that in the Catholic church there is not a hierarchy instituted by divine appointment, which consists of bishops, priests, and ministers; let him be accursed!

“7. Whoever shall say that bishops are not superior to priests, or that they have not the power of confirming and ordaining; or that which they have is common to them with the priests; or that orders conferred by them without the consent or call of the people or the secular power, are null and void; or that they who have been neither duly ordained nor sent by ecclesiastical and canonical power, but come from some other source, are lawful ministers of the word and sacraments; let him be accursed!

“8. Whoever shall say that the bishops, who are appointed by the authority of the Roman pontiff, are not lawful and true bishops, but a human invention; let him be accursed!”

Canons of the Council of Trent concerning Marriage.

1. Whoever shall say that marriage is not truly and properly one of the seven sacraments of the evangelical laws instituted by Christ the Lord, but that it is invented by men in the church and does not confer grace; let him be accursed!

“2. Whoever shall say that it is lawful for Christians to Have several wives at once, and that this is forbidden by no divine law; let him be accursed!

“3. Whoever shall say that only those degrees of relationship and affinity, which are expressed in Leviticus, can hinder marriage from being contracted, and annul the contract; and that the church cannot dispense in any of them, or appoint that more may hinder and annul; let him be accursed!

“4. Whoever shall say that the Church could not constitute impediments annulling marriage, or that in constituting them, she has erred; let him be accursed!

“5. Whoever shall say that the bond of marriage may be dissolved on account of heresy, or mutual dislike, or voluntary absence from the husband or wife; let him be accursed!

“6. Whoever shall say that a marriage solemnized, but not consummated, is not annulled by the solemn profession of a religious order by one of the parties; let him be accursed!

“7. Whoever shall say that the church errs, when she has taught and teaches that according to the evangelical and apostolical doctrine, the bond of marriage cannot be dissolved on account of the adultery of one or the other of the parties, and that neither of them, not even the innocent party who has given no cause for the adultery, may contract another marriage, whilst the party is living, and that he commits adultery, who marries another after putting away his adulterous wife, or she, who marries another, after putting away her adulterous husband; let him be accursed!

“8. Whoever shall say that the church is in error when, for many reasons, she decrees that a separation may be made between married persons, as to the bed, or as to intercourse, either for a certain, or an uncertain time; let him be accursed.

“9. Whoever shall say that the clergy, constituted in sacred order, or regulars, who have solemnly professed chastity, may contract marriage, and that the contract is valid, notwithstanding ecclesiastical law, or vow, and that to maintain the opposite, is nothing else than to condemn marriage; and that all may contract marriage, who do not think that they have the gift of chastity, even though they have vowed it; let him be accursed: as God does not deny this to those who seek it aright, nor does he suffer us to be tempted above what we are able to bear.

“10. Whoever shall say that the married state is to be preferred to a state of virginity, or celibacy, and that it is not better and more blessed to remain in virginity, or celibacy, than to be joined in marriage; let him be accursed!

“11. Whoever shall affirm that the prohibition of the solemnization of marriage, at certain times of the year, is a tyrannical superstition, borrowed from the superstitions of the Pagans, or shall condemn the benedictions, and other ceremonies, which the church uses at those times; let him be accursed! u 12. Whoever shall affirm that matrimonial causes do not belong to the ecclesiastical judges; let him be accursed!”

The atrocity of the above doctrines, is evident to every reflecting mind. Protestants can now see for themselves, whether they can safely hold any communion with them, or have any confidence in Roman Catholics. There is not a Protestant Christian in the United States, nor in the world, who is not publicly and solemnly denounced, as an accursed being, by the Roman Catholic church, and by each and every one of its members; but in addition to those curses, which I have enumerated, there is another more solemn; one which is annually pronounced against them, by the Pope of Rome, and by every bishop and priest in this country. It is known by the title of Bulla in cena Domini. The curse contained in this bull, is pronounced annually at Rome, by the Pope, on Thursday before Good Friday. It includes every living being who is not a Roman Catholic. All our president, congress, governors, magistrates, municipal authorities, officers of our navy and army, all our Protestant clergymen, whether Unitarians, Presbyterians, Episcopalians, Baptists, or Methodists; and upon all these, without distinction, the Pope of Rome, dressed in his royal robes, invokes the curse of Heaven, once at least every year. Every priest in the Roman church is bound to do the same. It was a part of my own duty, and one which I never failed to discharge, until I protested against the doctrines of the Romish church. The Popish priests never deemed it prudent to pronounce this curse publicly?-in the United States, but while I was among them, we never omitted to do so privately, on the morning of Thursday before Good Friday. It commences with the following words on the part of the Pope:!!!!!

“We, therefore, following the ancient custom of our predecessors, of holy memory, do firstly—excommunicate and curse, in the name of Almighty God, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, and by the authority of St. Peter and St. Paul, and by our own authority, all Heretics, Hussites, Wiekliffites, Lutherans. Calvinists, Huguenots, Anabaptists, Trinitarians, and all apostates from the faith, and all who read their books,” &c, &c. This curse includes every soul in the United States, who is not a Roman Catholic. Will you, Americans give these men and their doctrines footing among you? Will they longer dare to curse you and your children with impunity?

In the 6th section of the above bull, the Pope and his priests curse all civil powers, who impose taxes without the consent of the Roman court.

In the 12th section, they curse all who maltreat cardinals, bishops, or priests. You are, therefore, to take heed and not quarrel with priests, though they insult your wives, or debauch your families. In the 15th section, all are cursed, who take away jurisdiction from the court of Rome, and prefer leaving pauses of difference between them and priests, to our civil tribunals.

In the 17th section, all are cursed, who in any case appeal to civil tribunals, when the difficulty is between Romish priests and citizens.

In the 18th section, the Pope curses all who take away church property.

In the 19th section, the Pope curses all who, without express license from him, impose taxes on priests, monasteries, nunneries, or churches. Our legislature is sitting while I write. Take heed, gentlemen, lest you tax the Roman Catholic bishop Fenwick, or any of his priests. Be sure you do not tax his real estate, his nunneries, or other property. If you do, you are doubly damned.

In the 20th section, the church curses all judges, and magistrates, who shall sit in judgment on a bishop or priest, without license from the holy see.

In the 22d section, this bull is declared to be binding forever, and it is brought to a conclusion by a solemn assurance that if any priest shall violate it, he shall incur the wrath of Almighty God, and of St. Peter and Paul.

I would again ask Americans whether Roman Catholic priests, or bishop, or the two millions of followers which they have in this country, are any longer to be trusted. I tell Americans, and I proclaim it to the world, that they are spies upon our republic; they are the sworn foes of our laws, of our principles, and of our government; and they are united by the most fearful oath never to rest while our religious liberty lasts, and to use every means which ingenuity can devise, and treachery and perjury accomplish, to effect its overthrow, and substitute in its place, the religion of the Pope; a religion, if such a name can be given to a most infamous system of policy, which for sixteen hundred years has deluged Europe in blood.

I make these assertions, not at random, not upon hearsay, not upon the authority of Protestant writers, but upon that of Roman Catholic theologians, and upon my own personal knowledge. I solemnly declare it to be my deliberate opinion, that it is the duty of all civil governments on the face of the earth, to unite in excluding, from their territories, all Roman Catholic priests and bishops, as their deadly enemies, and the sworn transgressors of all national law; and for us in this country to countenance them, while they have any connection with the Pope of Rome, or profess to owe him any allegiance, is nothing short of a species of insanity. The bull of which I have spoken, is taught in every Roman Catholic college in the United States. The students in those institutions are educated in the belief that their church, which is infallible, requires of them to be unfaithful to this heretical government, and not only that, but to betray it, whenever the interest of the church demands it.

Every Irish Roman Catholic priest, who comes to this country, is instructed by his bishop, to pull down, if possible, the standard of heresy, which he is told he will find waving over the United States, and erect in its place that of the Pope, which he swears to defend.

These are the principles of priests and their followers, who are coming amongst you in thousands; whom you have encouraged for the last fifty years, until at last, you have emboldened them, by your mistaken sensibility and mock philanthropy, to say and proclaim to the universe, Americans shan’t rule us. This was their motto, during the last presidential election; a motto devised and blessed by those turbulent demagogues and pensioned agents of the Pope, in New York. But they are not the only Papists who have proclaimed that Americans shall not rule them. The same has been done in Philadelphia and Boston! These men are at the bottom of all the riots, tumults, and popular commotions, which have occurred in this country for several years back. Witness the disturbances in Philadelphia, in 1821 and 1822, by an Irish bishop, in trying to get possession, in the name of the Pope, of church property, estimated to be worth over a million of dollars. (I shall refer to this hereafter.) Witness the riots in the same city last May, where several Americans have been sacrificed to the fury of a Popish mob. Witness the proceeding in this city of Boston, on the occasion of a nun having made her escape from the convent in Charlestown, to avoid, I have no doubt, what delicacy forbade her to mention. Other causes were assigned for her escape, and some were weak enough to deem them sufficient; but from my own knowledge of convents, there can be no doubt of the real cause of the escape, of the virtuous young lady, of whom mention is made.

Here is another instance of the morbid and mistaken sensibility of many of our people. A certain number of Popish agents have applied to our legislature to build a jail, which they call a convent, in our very midst. To this jail, they attach a school, for the education of young ladies, and for this ostensible purpose, numbers of older ones are kept in the jail or convent, by the Pope’s agents.

The young ladies, who are sent to this school, are treated with kindness and attention; every thing is done to please, to flatter them, and even to cultivate their minds. The interior of the jail or nunnery is depicted in the most delightful colors. The happiness of the inmates is said to be equal to the saints in paradise. No opportunity is lost to impress on the minds of their pupils, the temporal as well as eternal beatitudes of this convent, until, finally, the young minds of the scholars become perfectly enchanted, and, in the full glow of their youthful imagination, they determine to become nuns. This step, too, they are taught to take with apparent caution; they must serve a noviciate, go through all the ceremony of wearing a white veil; the old nuns representing to them the happiness they are about to enjoy, when they are about to assume the black veil. But when this is done, the poor innocent victims soon feel the horrors of their condition. They are confined to solitary cells, to which no one has access but the priests, and thus, in our very midst, a free born American citizen is seduced from her parents, from her guardians, and fellow-citizens, and no one is permitted to go and ask her freely how she likes her condition. She is confined there with more severity, and watched more closely, than any female in a Turkish Seraglio; and as we all recollect, a few years ago, a Popish bishop, with his priests, and some thousands of their subjects, viz., Irish Papists, threatened to sack the city of Boston, because the people deemed it necessary to pull down that synagogue of satan, the Charlestown nunnery. I am not an advocate of mobs or riots: I would observe the law of the land, and see it enforced at every risk; but there is a point at which no man would support even the civil law.

There are laws founded upon necessity, and the eternal laws of morality, which have a paramount claim upon one. Allegiance. Suppose some hoary-headed profligate should obtain a charter to build a house on Mount Benedict; suppose further, he attaches a school to it, to be governed by the faded victims of his former dissipation, with a view of making money for himself; suppose he and they had the address to gather around them some of the most innocent, lovely, and respectable females in the country; let us even suppose that ninety-nine in a hundred of those young ladies left that school with unblemished reputation and high accomplishments; and we had that evidence that only one in a hundred fell victims to the designs of the founders of this corrupt institution: who would hesitate to determine what should be done with this institution, or this nunnery, as Roman Catholic priests would call it? An answer is not necessary. But suppose the hoary-headed gentleman should apply to the legislature to rebuild it, would they do so? There was a time when their acquaintance with Popery might have induced them to say aye, if such a resolution were introduced; but now that they have seen Popery in its native colors, withered should be the tongue of him who would advance such a proposition; and paralyzed should be the arm of the American who would support it. But it may be replied, that the Roman Catholic church is different now from what it was in ancient times; that it has essentially changed in its doctrine and in its discipline.

Others may say that Protestants, too, have been intolerant, and guilty of many cruelties, in the propagation of their religion. This is freely admitted: but there is this wide difference between the two religions. The Popish creed inculcates persecution and utter extermination of all who do not believe in its doctrines; while on the contrary, the creed of the latter has never, and does not now, inculcate any other doctrine, than Jesus Christ, and him crucified. In plain English, the Romish church curses all who differ from her; while the Protestant church blesses all, though they may be in error, and sincerely prays for their conversion. The spirit of the latter breathes nothing but love, joy, peace, and good will to mankind; that of the former, malice, hatred, ill will, and persecution. This has been her uniform theory from the middle of the third century; and as I will now show you, from the lips of her own divines, and cannonized saints, her members have never ceased to reduce it to practice. Cyril, who is to this day invoked, and prayed to as a saint, taught and practised the above Romish doctrine. He was bishop of Alexandria, in the year four hundred and twelve. There is not a Roman Catholic, who is not taught to pray to him; and, of course, they can have no objection to my giving him as authority. Whatever St. Cyril believed, is believed by Papists now. Whatever he did was right, and according to sound doctrine consequently as Holy Mother, the church, never errs, and never can err, it must be right now. Let us see what this saint has done and believed, in his time. Socrates, a native of Constantinople, gives the following account of a portion of the life of St. Cyril, and other bishops of Alexandria. I take it from his ecclesiastical history.

The bishops of Alexandria had begun, says Socrates, to exceed the limits of ecclesiastical power, and to intermeddle with civil affairs, imitating, thereby, the bishop of Rome, whose sacred authority had, long since, been changed into dominion and empire.

The governors of Alexandria, looking upon the increase of the Romish episcopal power as a diminution of the civil, watched the bishops, in order to restrain them within the limits of the spiritual, and prevent their encroaching on the temporal jurisdiction. But Cyril, from the very beginning of his episcopacy, bade defiance to civil power, acting in such manner as showed but too plainly that he would be kept within no bounds. Soon after his installation, he caused, by his own authority, the churches, which the Novitians were allowed to have in Alexandria, to be shut up, seized on the sacred utensils, and plundering the house of their bishop, Theapemptus, drove him out of the city, stripped of every thing he possessed. Not long after this, Cyril put himself at the head of a Christian mob, and, without the knowledge of the governor, took possession of the Jewish synagogue, drove the Jews out of Alexandria, pillaged their houses, and allowed the Christians—all Papists—who were concerned with him in the riot, to appropriate to themselves all their effects. This the governor highly resented, and not only rebuked Cyril very severely, for thus encroaching on his jurisdiction, and usurping a power that did not belong to him, but wrote to the emperor, complaining of him for snatching the sword of justice from him, to put it into the hands of the undeserving multitude.

This occasioned a misunderstanding, or rather an avowed enmity between St. Cyril and the governor. With the saint sided the clergy, the greater part of the mob, and the monks; with the governor, the soldiery and the better class of citizens As the two parties were strangely animated against each other, there happened daily skirmishes in the streets of Alexandria. The friends of the governor, generally speaking, made their party good, having the soldiery on their side. But one day, as the governor was going out in his chariot, attended by his guards, he found himself, very unexpectedly, surrounded by no fewer than five hundred monks. The monks were, in those days, the standing army of the bishops, but are now of the Pope’s alone. The monks in the service of St. Cyril, having surrounded the governor’s chariot, dispersed the small guard that attended it, fell upon him, dangerously wounded him, and determined to put an end to the quarrel between him and St. Cyril, by taking his life.

The citizens, alarmed at his danger, flew to his rescue, put the cowardly monks to flight, and having seized on the monk by whom the governor was wounded, delivered him into his hands. The governor, to deter others, caused the monk to be put to death. But St. Cyril, partly to reward the zeal which the monk had exerted in attempting to assassinate his antagonist, caused him to be honored as a holy martyr. The partizans of St. Cyril, enraged at the death of the monk, and under the advice of this Romish saint, determined to revenge it; and the person they singled out among the friends of the governor to wreak their rage and revenge on, was one who, of all the inhabitants of Alexandria, deserved it the least. This was the famous and celebrated Hypatia, the wonder of her age for beauty, for virtue, and knowledge. She kept a public school of philosophy in Alexandria; where she was born, and her reputation was so great, that not only disciples flocked from all parts to hear her, but the greatest philosophers used to consult her as an oracle, with respect to the most abstruse points of astronomy, geometry, and the Platonic philosophy, which she was particularly well versed in. Though she was very beautiful, and freely conversed with men of all ranks, yet they were so awed by her known virtue and modesty, that none ever presumed to show, in her presence, the least symptom of passion. The governor entertained the highest opinion of her abilities, often consulted her, and in all perplexed cases governed himself by her advice. As she was the person in Alexandria whom he most valued, St. Cyril and his friends, to wound him the more effectually, entered into a conspiracy to destroy this beautiful and innocent lady.

This barbarous resolution being taken, as she was one day returning home in her chariot, a band of the dregs of the people, encouraged and headed by one of St. Cyril’s priests, attacked her in her chariot, pulled her out of it, and throwing her on the ground, dragged her to the great church called Cæsareum; there they stripped, her naked, and with sharp tiles, either brought with them or found there, continued cutting, tearing, and mangling her flesh, till nature, yielding to pain, she expired under their hands. Her death did not satisfy their rage and fury. They tore her body in pieces, dragged her mangled limbs through all the streets of Alexandria, and then gathering them together, burned them. Such was the end of the famous Hypatia, the most learned person of the age she lived in; but she was not a Roman Catholic. Can you, Americans, believe that this very Cyril is now a saint in the Roman Catholic church; that he is daily prayed to, honored, and worshipped by Papists? Can you believe that the Catholics whom you employ in your houses, the nuns to whom you intrust the education of your children, daily invoke the intercession of this murderous Cyril?

And think you, fellow-citizens, that the spirit of the Popish bishop, Cyril, has died with him, or that the church, which approved of his conduct, would refuse to sanction a similar act at this day? If you do, you are mistaken. Was the conduct of Cyril ever censured by the church? Were the murders and atrocities which he committed, and caused to be committed, even disapproved by the holy mother? If they were, I would ask at what council was it done? Where and when was such a council held? Who was the presiding Pope? The fact is, so far from incurring the displeasure of the Romish church, this notorious Popish murderer of Jews and heretics was canonized and sainted; and similar distinctions would be now awarded to him who would commit similar crimes, if his holiness the Pope deemed it prudent to have such crimes committed.

We saw an instance of the spirit which actuated Cyril, some years ago, in this city, when, in the case of the Ursuline Convent, to which I have already referred, every Papist within fifty miles of Boston, who was able to bear arms, volunteered his aid to his bishop, in taking vengeance upon our citizens, merely because they would not sanction among them the existence of a house, called a nunnery, and used as a jail, for the confinement of some of our most virtuous females, against their will. Had Miss Reed, who escaped from that den of profligacy, been caught by her Popish pursuers, and without the knowledge of our citizens, what would have been her fate? She might not have been torn to pieces, as Hypatia was, but her torments would not have been less cruel. She would have been kept upon her bare knees, perhaps ten hours in the twenty-four, for months.

She would be obliged to pray to the same St. Cyril, and a string of such vagabonds, for the remission of her sins. She would be compelled to kiss the ground and lick it with her tongue, at stated intervals, and bread and water her diet, until the zeal of her holy confessors was perfectly satisfied. And if those who aided her escape were detected, what would have been their fate? Thanks to our republican government, they could not be punished in this country; but had they committed the deed under a purely Catholic government, the infallible church would consign them to the inquisition, and have broken them upon the rack.

This is the church, and her members are the men, whom you are countenancing amongst you. The Romish church never surrendered the right which she once claimed of destroying heretics. She only suspends it for the moment, until her strength and numbers shall enable her to enforce it. But there are some who will not believe this, especially when Catholic priests and bishops deny it. Many Protestants, who are natives of this country, and unacquainted with Roman Catholic doctrines, will not believe it. Many, even, of our Protestant clergymen will scarcely believe it; such is the craft and consummate falsehood of priests and bishops, that I have never met with one Protestant who entertained the most remote idea that keeping no faith with heretics, and persecuting them to death, formed any portion of the doctrine of the church of Rome.

This is owing to the fact of their being born in a free country, at a distance from the seat of Romish power, and their having little access and no acquaintance with the standard works of Popery.

Many, even, of the native born Americans, who have become Roman Catholics, know little or nothing of the doctrines of the church into which they have permitted themselves to be seduced. I will hazard the assertion, that there are not ten lay members amongst them, in the United States, who have read the works of Belarmine, the canons, or decrees of the various councils that have been held in the Popish church, or even the corpus juris canonici, containing the decrees of the council of Trent.

If the writings of De La Hogue, used in the college of Maynooth, Ireland, or the works of Antoine or Den, taught in that college when I was a student there, were thoroughly read, and the doctrines contained in those standard works of Popery understood, there is not a moral man living who would not shun the church of Rome, as a thing too unclean, too impure, too licentious, too wicked, too corrupt, and of too persecuting a character to be allowed to exist at all. This their priests well know; and, having recently discovered that a few copies of Den’s “Theology” had found their way into this country, they have the unblushing effrontery to deny that his work was ever approved of by the church, or was ever received as such in any college in Ireland. I studied in the college of Maynooth, and have read speculative theology under Dr. De La Hogue, and moral theology under Dr. Antoine, in the same class with several priests now in this country, and among other works which we read in that class was the “Moral Theology” of the Rev Peter Den; especially his treatise de Peccatis.

I have the pleasure of an acquaintance with some native Americans who are become Roman Catholics. They are men of honor, moral worth, and possess highly cultivated minds. They were religious men; and deeming a connection with some church to be necessary, and seeing nothing of the Romish church but its seductive and imposing ceremonies, they united themselves with it, or, if they happened to hesitate in joining it, and deemed it necessary to consult with Catholic priests and bishops, these crafty Jesuits soon furnished them with Catholic works manufactured for such occasions, and unobjectionable to the most pious Christian; taking good care, at the same time, to keep out of their way such works as I have alluded to, from which they may learn that there is no religion in the Popish church, and that it is no more than a political machine, devised for the suppression of republicanism, knowledge, and the liberties of man.

Let us pass over the time which intervened between the fourth and twelfth centuries. The history of the Popes and the Romish church, during that period, is replete with crimes committed by Popes, and atrocities sanctioned by the church, the bare mention of which humanity shudders The very earth is almost saturated with the blood which Popish despots caused to be shed under the mask of religion, but, in reality, for the advancement of their own temporal power.

Crusade against the Albigenses

I will now show that the spirit of Cyril had not died with him. During the reign of Pope Innocent III., that holy pontiff discovered that there was, in the province of Narbonne and in several other provinces of the south of France, a religious sect, called the Albigenses, who presumed to differ from the Romish church, and had the audacity to believe that the Bible was the only rule of faith. They rejected the external rites of the Romish church, except baptism and the Lord’s supper.

They had no faith in images, indulgences, and other such semi-pagan mummeries. Auricular confession and the forgiveness of sins by man they rejected as impious. They looked upon nunneries as places of sin, instituted by priests, as a sort of substitute for the marriage of the clergy. They demolished such of them as were in existence among them, and declared the marriage of the clergy as lawful and honorable. They scouted at the idea of the temporal jurisdiction of the Pope over the nations of the earth, and looked upon him as emphatically the Man of Sin.

These crimes, of course, were not long overlooked by the infallible church! They were heresies. These people were heretics, and the holy mother, in the plenitude of her affection for her strayed children, determined that they should be exterminated. But how was this to be done? The holy father, Pope Innocent III., was not long in determining. He sent two spies amongst them, of the names of Guy and Regnier. These were Monks, whose hands were already stained with blood. They were empowered by the Pope, to use their own discretion in checking the heresy of the Albigenses by fire, sword, faggot, or the inquisition, which employed all those means upon such occasions.

The Albigenses however, were so numerous their lives so pure, so chaste and correct, that this was not easily accomplished; and his holiness had to preach a crusade against them, and published a bull addressed to all the authorities of southern France, declaring them accursed and excommunicated, and giving absolution to all who should murder them and take possession of their property. Here are the words of the bull, “According to the canonical sanctions of the holy fathers, no faith ought to be kept with those who do not keep faith with God, or are separated from the communion of the faithful”—Papists. “We release, by our apostolical authority, all those who deem themselves bound to them by any oath, either of alliance or fealty; we permit every Catholic man to seize their persons, to take their lands, and keep them for the purpose of extirpating heresy.”

Here, Americans, is a specimen of true, genuine Popery, as Innocent Expresses it, “sanctioned by the canons and holy fathers of the Romish church.” People of New England, what think you of it? Bear in mind that this is not the act of a few fanatics; it is not the belief of a few zealots. If it were, it would be wrong to charge it to the Romish church. All denominations have had among them fanatics; but the extravagances of a few individuals are not chargeable to the body to which they might have belonged. Even our New England Presbyterian forefathers had among them persecutors; but who, in his sound mind, could charge this to the Presbyterian church? There is nothing in their creed or doctrines which sanctions the persecution of those who differ from them and there the Romish church differs from all others. The persecution and destruction of heretics, and the confiscation of their property, is an integral part of the Roman Catholic faith, and the watchword of Papists.

The crusade against these unfortunate Albigen-ses commenced its march about the year 1209. Indulgences were offered to all who would unite in the war, and history informs as that the Pope and his vassals in the church raised an army of between three and five thousand men, who were to serve for forty days; at the termination of which, the Pope, in one of his heavenly transports, saw that “every one of the sect of the Albigerises should be massacred.” To this army his holiness caused to be added, by an offer of indulgences, multitudes of peasants, with scythes and clubs, who were to be under the command of monks, and whose peculiar duty it was, to slaughter the wives and children of these heretics, while their husbands and fathers were engaged in the field with their adversaries. Horrible! Yet this is a true picture of what has been, and what will be in this country, at some future day, should Popery gain the ascendancy.

It is much to be lamented that the Christian League, as it is termed, had not looked to this, in place of going abroad in search of objects worthy of their philanthropy. They seem to me to have acted like a man who, while his own house is in a blaze, runs out to see if there be any of his neighbors’ houses on fire, and leaves his own to smoulder into ruins. Assuredly, such a man would not be deemed prudent, nor should he even be considered sane.

Far be it from me to think or speak disrespectfully of the pious and reverend gentlemen who compose that league; but their solicitude for the welfare of a foreign country and a foreign people appears to me strange, when all their charities are much more needed at home. They desire the suppression of Popery, especially in Italy, where it is kept alive by Austrian bayonets and Popish bulls, and where it will live until those bayonets are broken and those bulls are burned. They can no more suppress Popery in Italy, than they could confine a fire with a flaxen band.

The continuance of Popery depends upon this country alone. Extinguish it in the United States, and it dies every where. The old world is sick of it; it has cursed it long enough. It is for us alone to say whether it shall live or die. Americans alone can sound the death knell of Popery; and, if this Christian League will unite their energies and bring them all to bear, in excluding Popery from the United States, they will be conferring a blessing, not only upon this, but upon the old world.

But to return to our subject. Cruel, beyond measure, were the sufferings of the Albigenses, a few instances of which I beg to lay before my readers, as specimens of Popish charity and their mode of fulfilling that holy commandment, “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.” When the Pope’s army arrived at a place called Beziers, the citizens were, of course, alarmed. The Pope’s legate sent many messengers among them, advising them to give up such heretics, with their wives and children, as continued obstinate among them. They replied in the following words—”Rather than be base enough to do what is required of us, and abandon our religious principles, we will eat our children first, and our wives will die with us.” On receiving this answer, the Pope’s army, or rather incarnate devils, rushed upon them so suddenly, and in such numbers, that they had to surrender, after little or no resistance.

There were many among them who were not heretics, but, seeing the injustice done to their fellow-citizens, and knowing the purity of their lives, united with them in resisting oppression. Some of the most merciful of the Pope’s army, entertaining scruples as to what should be done to those who were not heretics and happened to fall into their hands, deemed it a duty which they owed to holy mother, to consult the Pope’s legate upon this occasion; and what, Christian reader, think you was the reply of this representative of the Roman Catholic church? What was the answer of this imbodiment of Popery? It was what it would be this day, under similar circumstances.—”Kill them all; the Lord will know his own!” At this answer, the bells rung, by order of this legate. and never ceased to toll, until fifteen thousand were butchered upon the spot, according to the account given by the legate himself; although a contemporary historian, named Bernard Itier, and much better authority than this blood-thirsty legate, informs us that thirty-eight thousand were slaughtered in cold blood.

During this time, Pope Innocent and the infallible church were not idle in other parts of France. Wherever heresy existed, or heretical blood was to be shed, there were to be found the representatives of the holy church, until not a vestige of the Protestant doctrines of the Albigenses was to be seen. Nearly all its ministers and its followers suffered the most cruel deaths, and their church was drowned in the blood of its defenders. But the man of sin being still apprehensive that some vestige of Protestantism might remain, or that the life of some unfortunate member of the Albigenses might have escaped, the Popish murderers established, in those countries, that accursed tribunal, the Inquisition; some of whose members appeared in the guise and occupation of farmers, to act as spies among that class of people; others as merchants, others as mechanics, &c. To these were added female Jesuits, some of whom were shop-keepers, milliners, servant-maids, &c.; and, suitably educated, whenever necessary, were ready to act their parts well.

Thus no man was safe. No family, no lady, was safe. They dreaded the very air they breathed. They knew not when the officers of the inquisition would call them from their homes, their children, their husbands, and their wives, to be cast into the dungeon of the inquisition, without knowing their offence, or who accused them.

This was Popery in the twelfth century; this was Popery in the fourth century; and this is Popery in the nineteenth century. Americans, are-you aware that there are Jesuit nuns now in this country? Are you aware of the reasons why they are so anxious to get Protestant rather than Catholic scholars into their schools? The reason is this; they are in this country spies upon your actions. Your thoughts, your designs, your influence, the probable amount of your wealth, and your political opinions, are known to your children. These Jesuit nuns worm themselves into your confidence; the young hearts of their pupils are soon laid bare to these artful hypocrites; and before you scarcely notice the absence of your children, your domestic secrets are known to some Popish agent, who makes such use of them as the holy church may direct. This is done daily. I make this statement of my own knowledge, and I warn you, if you value your domestic happiness, or the peace and harmony of your children, never permit one of them, male or female, to enter a school kept by nuns or Jesuits.

From these observations, the reader must have seen that Popery, in its teachings and actions, is, and has been, the same always. What, then, becomes of the assertions, so frequently made by Roman Catholic priests and bishops, that the doctrines of the church, in relation to heretics, have been relaxed? Certain it is, at all events, that there has been no mitigation in the treatment of heretics down to the thirteenth century. Let us come down a little farther, and see if any had taken place during the thirteenth century. We discover none whatever.

It was during this century, that the “Greater Excommunication,” as it is called, was pronounced by the Pope, and the whole church, against all who should interfere with the clergy in the exercise of their temporal or spiritual rights. The curse was pronounced, by every parish priest, throughout the Papal world, four times a year,—-Christmas, Easter, Pentecost, and All-Hallows day. The curse is in the following words, and is now repeated on the same days, by the Pope and all the priests and bishops of the Romish church, not publicly,—that they dare not do,—but in private. “Let them be accursed, eating and drinking, walking and sitting, speaking, and holding their peace, waking and sleeping, rowing and riding, laughing and weeping, in house and in field, in water and on land, in all places; cursed be their heads and their thoughts, their eyes and their ears, their tongues and their lips, their teeth and their throats, their shoulders and their breasts, their feet and their legs their thighs and their inward parts; let them remain accursed, from the sole of their foot to the crown of their heads; and just as this candle (the curser has a lighted candle in his hand, which he extinguishes) is deprived of us present light, so let them be deprived of their souls in hell.”

Such is the curse which the Pope pronounced against all heretics in the thirteenth century! and however surprised you may be, a similar one is pronounced once a year against all Protestants. There are many Americans who cannot believe that such a curse as the above, has ever been pronounced against a fellow-being. I have conversed with some intelligent Protestants in this city, who doubted whether such an anathema was ever uttered, and seemed struck with horror, as well as surprise, when I informed them that it was pronounced against myself in Philadelphia in presence of, at least, three thousand people. The reader must know, by this, that I am a heretic, and look upon the introduction of Popery into the United States, as the greatest evil which Providence has permitted to fall upon us. Arise, fellow-citizens, in the fulness of your power,—every Protestant in this country is a heretic, as well as myself. We are all annually cursed and damned by a set of Popish agents, bishops, and priests; men who, from my own personal acquaintance with them, I know to be unworthy of your friendship or your support; who walk your streets with apparent sanctimoniousness, but whose lives in private are such as delicacy forbids me to mention.

These men, under pretence of being democrats are attacking your liberties with the club of Hercules. They are acquiring gigantic force. You have recently witnessed the truth of this assertion; they fancied they had strength enough to cut you down as the legate of Pope Innocent did the Albigenses in the twelfth century. They bid defiance to reason, argument, and the lew of your land; and it grieves me to see every thing yielding to their power, as chaff before the wind. But Providence interposed, and these miserable dupes of Romish priests received a check, which, if followed up, will have a salutary effect in future. But, I pray you, be on your guard; watch the movements of Papists among you: have no confidence in them; have as little as possible to do with them. Trust them in nothing which may either directly or indirectly involve their religion. I most solemnly appeal to our national and state legislatures, to exclude them from every office of honor, profit, or trust, while they have any connection whatever, spiritual or temporal, with the Pope of Rome. Believe them not, when they tell you that their allegiance to the Pope is only spiritual. I understand what they mean by spiritual allegiance.

From what has been stated, it is clear that no modification had taken place in Popish pretensions during the thirteenth century, neither had the church relaxed one iota in her persecutions of heretics. On the contrary, her cruelties increased-the declarations of Popish priests to the contrary notwithstanding.

Let us now see what has been the conduct of the Popish church towards heretics, from the latter end of the thirteenth century to the conclusion of the fourteenth.

How was the illustrious John Wickliffe, professor of divinity in Oxford, treated by the church of Rome, during the reign of Boniface IX. But let us first see what the crimes of Wickliffe were, for which he had been so severely punished by the holy Roman church. The illustrious and good Wickliffe, the founder of the Reformation, whose very name every Christian venerates, maintained, 1st, That the Scriptures contain all truths necessary to salvation; 2d, That in the Scriptures only, is to be found, a perfect rule of Christian practice; 3d, He denied the authority of the Pope in temporal matters; 4th, He maintained that the Pope was the Man of Sin, the son of perdition, to which St. Paul alluded, “sitting as God in the temple of God.” As soon as the opinions of Wickliffe were ascertained, Gregory XL, the ruling Pope, addressed a Bull to the primate of England, ordering him to have Wickliffe arrested and imprisoned, until he received further instructions.

The popularity of Wickliffe was such, that this step was considered dangerous; and we find that nothing further was done to this eminently pious man, than banishing him from the university of Oxford into private life, where he died in peace, and went to his grave with the blessings of the good and the virtuous. But this did not satisfy the Pope, nor the infallible church. O, no. The holy mother never forgives a heretic, dead or alive. As soon as Wickliffe departed this life, in the sixty-first year of his age, the church and Papists exhibited the wildest symptoms of joy. One of their writers, in giving an account of his death, uses the following language: “On the day of St. Thomas, the martyr, that limb of the devil, enemy of the church, deceiver of the people, idol of heretics, mirror of hypocrites, author of schism, sower of hatred, and inventor of lies, John Wickliffe, was, by the immediate judgment of God, suddenly struck with a palsy, which seized all the members of his body, when he was ready to vomit forth his blasphemies against the blessed St. Thomas, in a sermon which he had prepared to preach that day!”

But holy mother was not yet satisfied. She had not the felicity of hanging Wickliffe; her ears were not delighted with his groans upon the rack; she did not hear his flesh hissing amid the flames of the faggot, nor his bones breaking upon the wheel; she must, however, have all the revenge left to satiate her malice. Thirty years after the death of Wickliffe, the infallible council of Constance, at which the Pope presided, passed an order that the body and bones of John Wickliffe, if they might be known and discerned from the bodies of faithful people—Papists—should be taken from the ground and thrown far away from the burial of any church, according to the canon laws and decrees.

This decree was not put in execution for thirteen years afterwards. His grave was then opened and his body disinterred with great solemnity, and in the presence of the Catholic bishop of Lincoln, it was publicly burned, and the ashes thrown into a neighboring rivulet. But the indignities offered to Wickliffe, while living, and after his death, were not sufficient to appease the malice of Papists. Blood, and blood alone, could satiate their thirst for revenge. His followers were hunted up and mercilessly put to death. Among the first of his followers, who suffered, was Lord Cobham, a nobleman, distinguished for his valor, devotion to his country, and true piety. His character was without blemish, and his morals and patriotism undoubted; but he was a heretic; he was among the followers of Wickliffe; he believed in the Holy Scriptures. This was crime enough, and for this he was excommunicated. Cobham appealed to the Pope, but the appeal was refused: he was cited again; he was offered absolution, if he would sue for it, and submit to the Popish church. This he refused; the consequence was, he was thrown into prison, from which he escaped and was not retaken for nearly four years, he was, however, finally captured after a most heroic resistance.

He might have escaped again, being an overmatch for his captor, had not a pious Roman Catholic woman, while he was nobly defending himself, taken up a stool, and with a desperate blow, broken both his legs. In this condition he was recommitted to prison until he was sentenced to death for his heresy. The sentence was, “that he should be drawn from his place of confinement through the city of London, to Temple Bar, there to be hanged, and burned hanging.” The historian Bale gives a most affecting account of his execution.

“On the day appointed,” says Bale, “he was brought out of the Tower with his arms bound behind him, having a very cheerful countenance. Then he was laid upon a hurdle as though he had been a most heinous traitor to the crown, and so drawn forth into St. Giles’s field, where they had set up a new gallows. When he arrived at the place of execution, and taken from the hurdle, he fell down devoutly on his knees, and prayed God to forgive his enemies. Then he stood up and beheld the multitude, exhorting them, in the most godly manner, to follow the laws of God, written in the Scriptures, and to beware of such teachers as they see contrary to Christ, in their conversation and living, with many other special councils. Then was he hanged up there, by the middle, in chains of iron, and so consumed alive in the fire, praising the name of the Lord, so long as life lasted. In the end he commended his soul into the hands of God, and so, most Christianly, departed home, his body being resolved to ashes.”

Thus was a nobleman, and a noble Christian, most barbarously put to death for believing that the Bible contained God’s truth; and therein differing from the Roman church, which teaches that the traditions of the fathers, and dreams of monks, are of equal authority.

Followers of Wickliffe,—and there are many of you in this country, who are an honor to his name,—have you ever reflected that there are nearly two millions of Papists in these United States, who entertain the same belief that the murderers of Cobham did; who believe that you are all excommunicated, as he was, and who, if they had the power, would consign yourselves, your wives, and children, to the same fate? and who are taught by their church, that, in so doing, they would be serving God? Romish priests may deny this. They do well. Otherwise, an indignant populace would tear them to pieces, or at least banish them from this land of freedom.

But I tell the priest or bishop, who dares deny it, that they are liars,—wilful and deliberate liars. I too have been a priest, and I solemnly declare to the world, and to my fellow-citizens of the United States in particular, that to keep no faith with heretics, but to destroy them, is one of the most solemn duties of a Catholic; and I go further, and state to you, that if a bishop or priest denies this, upon oath, you are not to believe him; his church requires from him to keep no faith with heretics, but to destroy and extirpate them. It allows him also to deny, under oath, the existence of such an obligation.

Do you, followers of Wickliffe, require any proof of this? It is a serious charge, and should not be lightly made. I therefore refer you to the letters of Martin II., who was Pope in the-year 1417, and considered one of the best Popes the Romish church ever had. This Pope, in one of his letters to the Duke of Lithuania, makes use of the following strong and emphatic language. “Be assured, thou sinnest mortally, if thou keep thy faith with heretics.” St. Thomas Aquinas teaches the same doctrine. Innocent VIII., who was Pope in 1484, declares “that all persons who are bound by any con-tract whatever to heretics are at liberty to break it, even though they had sworn an oath to fulfil it.” You here see, that I have done no injustice to Roman Catholics, in putting you on your guard against them, and charging them with a willingness to destroy yourselves, your wives and children, as heretics, had they power and opportunity of doing so. I am supported by the authority of Pope Martin V., and Pope Innocent VIII.; and though in your estimation, those blood-thirsty vagabonds may give no weight to my testimony, still it cannot fail to be highly satisfactory to Papists. Some of the Catholics may tell you, that the followers of Wickliffe were a seditious people; that they threatened to overthrow the civil institutions of the country; that all law and order were set at defiance by them; and that this was the cause of their persecution. This is false in fact—it is historically false.

If the followers of Wickliffe, or Lollards, as they were called, were disturbers of the peace; if their lives were seditious, disorderly, and rebellious, why were they not indicted, under some statute of the realm, made and provided to take cognizance of such crimes? Why were they not even accused of such crimes? Was the meek, mild, and learned John Wickliffe, accused or indicted for disturbing the peace? Was it for disturbing the peace, that his venerable bones were disinterred thirty years after being deposited in the cold grave? Was it for disturbing the peace, and for riotous proceedings, his bones were subsequently burned, and their ashes thrown into the next river? Was it for disturbing the peace, the learned and brave Cobham was hung in iron chains, by the middle.

No such accusation has ever been brought against these great and good men, or against thousands who suffered with them. They were accused only of heresy. Papists were their accusers; Papists were their judges; and Papists were their executioners.

But the malice of those blood-thirsty Catholics was not even then satiated. It is as fresh now, as it was then. Papists are not content, that hundreds of years ago, Wickliffe and his followers should be persecuted, and the greater portion of them massacred and burned. Their memories, also, are objects of Popish hatred, even to this day on which I write. They represent them as enemies of the human race. As despisers of chastity and morality. You will probably see these charges advanced against them in the Popish presses throughout the United States. But recollect, Americans, that age does not improve the piety of Papists. The older holy mother gets, the harder becomes her heart, and the more bitter her virulence. I might satisfy you, if necessary, on the testimony of the most respectable Protestant writers, that there lived not in the world, a people more simple, more pious, or virtuous than the Waldenses, or Wickliffites. It may be said of them, with truth, “qualis pater tales filii.” But I will not refer to Protestant authority; knavish, lying, Popish priests may question it! I refer you, for the character of this persecuted people, to an early Popish historian, Florimond—. History of Heresy, book vii. ch. 7.

“They”—the Waldenses—says this writer, “have nothing in their mouths but Christ the Saviour—they know nothing else than Jesus Christ. These people read the Bible continually, in such a manner that they know all the books of it by heart.” Horrid people these Wickliffites must be, to read the Bible until they know it by heart! And as these Bible-reading and Bible-loving people now constitute a vast majority of our citizens, I call upon them to rise in the full force of their moral power, and ward off from themselves and their children, the curse of Popery, or the fate of Wickliffe and his followers will assuredly be theirs. Many of you, Americans, are followers of Wickliffe. You believe as he believed! You live as he lived! You love peace as he loved it. Do you wish to continue as you are now? Or will you permit a flood of vile priests, monks, and nuns, to overrun your country, and seduce your children from the paths of virtue, in which your own example and the perusal of their Bibles have taught them to walk?

I now call your attention to the belief and practice of the Romish church in the fifteenth century, and you will find that heresy and heretics were still persecuted by her. Witness the conduct of Pope Innocent VIII. toward the Vaudois. He sent one of his Jesuit legates amongst them, with instructions to prevail on Louis XII. to extirpate them from his dominions, without even hearing any deputies which they might send him. The answer of Louis did him much credit—”Though I were at war with a Turk or the devil, I would hear what he had to say for himself.” They accordingly made their defence; and, upon this, the good King Louis sent commissioners to examine the state of things among them. The following was their report, as history informs us: “Having made a strict inquiry into their mode of living, we cannot discover the least shadow of the crimes imputed to them. On the contrary, it appears that they piously observe the Sabbath, baptize their children after the manner of the primitive church, and are thoroughly instructed in the doctrine of the apostles’ creed, and in the law of God.” On hearing this report, the king exclaimed, in a passion, addressing himself to the Pope’s legate—”By the holy mother of God, these heretics, whom you and the Pope urge me to destroy, are better men than you or myself.” He, however, soon departed this life, and every man acquainted with history knows what their sufferings were from the time of his death down to the days of Cromwell, who, whatever his faults may have been, fired with indignation at the barbarities committed by the Romish church, interposed in behalf of those persecuted people, and called upon Protestant princes and sovereigns to aid him in protecting them.

I will not burden the reader with a history of the sufferings of these people. It is familiar even to our schoolboys. I must, however, repeat the fact, that they were persecuted for no other reason than because they believed the Bible contained all the truths necessary to salvation, and because they did not believe in all the mummeries of Popery. Will Catholic bishops and priests still continue to assert that their church does not teach them to persecute heretics, and to hold no faith with them? Will they continue to assert, that the Pope of Rome does not claim temporal as well as spiritual jurisdiction over the kingdoms of the earth? or if they do, are we compelled to listen to them?

There is scarcely any one who does not recollect the conduct of the holy see, as it is nicknamed, towards Queen Elizabeth, on her ascension to the throne of England. The queen sent a messenger to the court of Rome, to inform the Pope of the event. This was an act of state courtesy; but his holiness had the insolence to reply to the messenger who represented his sovereign: “Tell your mistress that England was held in fief of the apostolic see; that she could not succeed, being illegitimate; nor could she contradict the declarations made in that matter by his predecessors, Clement VII. and Paul III. Tell your mistress,” said this insolent ecclesiastic, “that it was great boldness in her to assume the crown without my consent, for which, in reason, she deserves no favor at my hands; yet if she will renounce her pretensions and refer herself wholly to me, I would show a fatherly affection to her, and do every thing for her that could consist with the dignity of the Roman see.”

Fellow-citizens, do you want any other proof to satisfy you that the Pope of Rome claims universal jurisdiction over kings, queens, nations, kingdoms, and all mankind? It is only about three hundred years since this occurred; and is there evidence on record that the Pope has resigned the prerogative of universal dominion which he then claimed? You may laugh at the idea of his claiming it over this country; but, mark what I tell you, some successor of the present Pope will not only claim, but exercise it in less than half the time that has elapsed since the days of Elizabeth. Other objects may divert your attention from this subject; you may sleep on in fancied security, but your sleep may be fatal.

“America,” as a talented writer (Giustiniani) expresses it, “is the promised land, the land of the Jesuits’ operations. To obtain the ascendency, they have no need of a mercenary Swiss guard, or the assistance of the holy alliance, but a majority of votes, which can easily be obtained by an importation of Roman Catholics from Ireland, Bavaria, and Austria. Rome, viewed at a distance, is a colossus; near at hand, its grandeur diminishes, its charm is lost. But the Jesuits are every where the same—cunning, immoral, and sneaking intriguers, until they have obtained the ascendency. Rome feels her weakness at home; she knows herself to be a mere political institution, dressed in the garment of Christianity. She takes good care to uphold that holy militia, the Jesuits, in order to appear what she is not. It is a strife for existence. I am not a politician,” says this writer, “but knowing the active spirit of Jesuitism, and the indifference of the generality of Protestants, I have no doubt whatever, that in ten years the Jesuits will have a mighty influence over the ballot-box, and in twenty they will direct it according to their own pleasure. Now they fawn, in ten years they will menace, and in twenty command.”

In this city they not only “fawn,” but they have proceeded to “menace.” Some of the knowing ones among the Catholics now boast that they have the power to govern this city, and they intend to exercise it. This is no idle threat. Even now, though they are actually less in numerical strength in the aggregate, than the Protestants, and pay far less for the support of our free schools, they, nevertheless, have succeeded in depriving Protestant children of the privilege of using the Bible for a school-book, as they have been wont to do. Protestants may sleep on if they will, but they may be assured that they are sleeping on the sides of a burning volcano, and that ere long they will be awakened, but too late, we fear, by the angry thunders of the upheaving fires within, which shall scathe and desolate the fair heritage they now enjoy.

I entreat you, fellow-citizens, never to forget the solemn declaration of the father of your country: “Against the insidious wiles of foreign influence, (I conjure you to believe me, fellow-citizens,) the jealousy of a free people ought to be constantly awake; since history and experience prove, that foreign influence is one of the most baneful foes of a republican government.” This is the warning of the immortal Washington, and should not pass unheeded. To the same effect spoke other revolutionary patriots. Jefferson says, “I hope we may find some means in future of shielding ourselves from foreign influence, political, commercial, or in whatever form it may be attempted. I can scarcely withhold myself from joining in the wish of Silas Deane—that there were an ocean of fire between this and the old world.” And Madison said, “Foreign influence is truly a Grecian horse to the republic. We cannot be too careful to exclude its entrance.”

The cruelty of Papists, the intrigue and craft of Popes, the hypocrisy of Jesuits, the dynasties which they have overthrown, the devastations and carnage which they had occasioned, for centuries back, were matters of historical notoriety, and were well known to our pure-minded and clear-headed forefathers. They dreaded similar occurrences in this happy republic, which they have bequeathed to us as their trustees, to be handed down to posterity; and hence arose their warnings to be on our guard against all foreign interference with our institutions or our country.

Ponder upon those warnings, and let each and every Protestant in the Union pledge himself to guard our liberties, as the apple of his eye. I speak from experience. I am myself a foreigner by birth, though a resident of this country for thirty years. My life has been a checkered one. Born a Roman Catholic in the south of Ireland, educated a Roman Catholic priest, officiating in that capacity for some years, here, as well as in my native country, and for many years a member of the bar in South Carolina and Georgia, I could not fail to acquire a correct knowledge of the doctrines and practices of the Romish church. The result of my experience is, that the doctrines of the Roman Catholic church are fatal to the morals of any people; at variance with sound national policy and pure religion. It is a rank and poisonous weed, which will flourish even in the soil of liberty. Would that I could eradicate it! Would that you would enable me to tear up this Upas, which is spreading its poison, from one end of our land to the other! Would that you could aid me in muzzling those Popish bloodhounds, who are freely coursing over our eastern mountains and western valleys! Already have they scented blood, and I warn you to be on your guard or they will scent more.

I am no sectarian; I am not the tool of any party, either in church or state. I have never asked the countenance or support of any religious denomination, nor has any ever been tendered to me. I have stood alone in my opposition to that hydra-headed monster, Popery. There is no abuse which I have not received; no calumny which has not been heaped upon me; no crime which they have not accused me of; no scurrilous epithet which they have not applied to me. All this I have met single-handed; but I would bear it again, rather than submit to the iniquitous doctrines of Popery. I would bear it again, rather than submit, as native Americans have done, and are doing, to be publicly denounced, as cowards and sons of cowards and pirates.

But, fellow-citizens, they do not consider you cowards and pirates alone; they will, by-and-by, apply to you a term, which you will better deserve. It is sweet, it is a euphonious name, and I trust you will bear it with as much Christian philanthropy, as you have that of cowards, and pirates—Fools. It is the only ignominious term, in the English language, which they have not applied to myself, and I assure my fellow-citizens, natives of this country, that if you are willing to be governed by the Pope of Rome, and his priests, and bishops, I shall never question your paramount claim to this preeminent distinction. Can you bear the following opprobrious language applied to you by the Jesuit, now the Boston Pilot, the organ of the bishop of that city. “How in the name of conscience,” says this Popish organ, “can a man have the impudence to find fault with honest emigrants, whose own fathers were emigrant pirates?” You are also complimented by the Literary and Catholic Sentinel, another Popish press, in Philadelphia. That blessed organ of Popery, the Sentinel, in its comments upon a sermon delivered by that eloquent Presbyterian divine, McCalla, thus eulogizes New England. He, Mr. McCalla, knew the character of his New England audience, that their minds were warped by fanaticism, darkened by bigotry, and vitiated by the abhorred, and atrocious principles inculcated by the vile and sanguinary wretches, called the Pilgrim Fathers. He well knew that the mental capacity of the generality of his hearers were chained down by ignorance.

Very flattering this, especially to Bostonians, and their puritan fathers. Their fathers were sanguinary wretches, if we believe Papists, and the people of Boston are an ignorant set of boobies. You, Americans, may bear all this; you know not the designs of Popery, but I do; and while I have liberty to write, I will write for liberty, and in opposition to Popery. Truth may be unpalatable to Papists, but it is my duty to record it.

Among the instructions which I received from my bishop in Ireland, when he sent me out to this country as a Catholic priest, was one to which I beg to call your attention. The same is given to every priest in the United States. “Let it be your first duty to extirpate heretics, but be cautious as to the manner of doing it. Do nothing without consulting the bishop of the diocese, in which you may be located; and if there be no bishop there, advise with the metropolitan bishop. He has his instructions from Rome, and he understands the character of the people. Be sure not to permit the members of our holy church, who may be under your charge, to read the Bible. It is the source of all heresies. Whenever you see an opportunity of building a church, make it known to your bishop. Let the land be purchased for the Pope, and his successors in office. Never yield or give up the divine right, which the head of the church has, by virtue of the Keys, to the government of North America, as well as every other country. The confessional will enable you to know the people by degrees; with the aid of that holy tribunal, and our bishops, who are guided by the spirit of God, we may expect, at no distant day, to bring over North America to the bosom of our holy church.”

This needs some explanation. By extirpating heresy, he meant the conversion of heretics to the Romish church, without violence, if possible, if not, by such means as the Romish church has adopted in all ages. You have already seen what these means were—I need not now repeat them; but you shall see them more plainly, when I lay before you, as I intend to do hereafter; the ways and means which the church has adopted, to bring over the Huguenots from the darkness of Protestant error, to the glorious light of Popish truth.

The Bible, as you are aware, is a forbidden book in the Romish church. I remember when acting as Popish priest, in Philadelphia, having ventured to suggest to the very Rev. Mr. De Barth, then acting as vicar-general of that diocese, the advantages of educating the poor, and circulating the Bible among them. He scouted at the idea, as heretical, and lodged a written complaint against me, before the archbishop of Baltimore, then Romish metropolitan. I was reprimanded verbally, through the aforesaid De Barth. He was too crafty to send it in writing; the Papists were not then strong enough to forbid, openly, the reading of the Bible. It was then too soon to seal up the fountain of eternal life in this free country. The most sympathizing Protestants could scarcely believe then, that in less than thirty years, Papists would not only dare forbid it to be read, by their own people, and in their own schools, but cast it out of Protestant schools, as they did the other day in New York. What are we coming to, Americans? Your ancestors have come to this country, with no recommendations but holy lives; with no fortune but their pious hearts and strong arms; with no treasure but the word of God.

Will you now permit Papists to cast those Bibles out of your schools, to burn them on the public streets, as they have done in the state of New York, under the inspection of Popish priests, as proved on the oath of several respectable witnesses? That priest, however, did no more than every priest and bishop would do, did he deem it expedient; and here, fellow-citizens, let me assure you, that same power which authorizes that priest, or any other priest, to burn your Bibles, also authorizes him to burn every heretic or Protestant in the country.

The same power which authorizes them to officiate as priests, empowers them to destroy heretics, whenever it is expedient; and is ready to absolve them from the commission of this foul deed. Saint Thomas Aquinas, in his second book, chapter the 3d, page 58, says: “Heretics, may justly be killed.” But you will answer, there is no danger of this. They can never acquire the power to enact any laws in this country which would sanction such a doctrine. How sadly mistaken you are! How lamentably unacquainted with the secret springs or machinery of Popery! I regret that circumstances oblige me so often to introduce my own name, but it cannot be well avoided, for the purpose of explaining certain Popish transactions in the United States. While I was a Romish priest in Philadelphia, and soon after my difference with the archbishop of Baltimore, in relation to the introduction of the Bible, a consultation was held between the Popish priests in the diocese of Philadelphia, and it was secretly resolved by them, that the best mode of checking Hogan’s heresy, as they were pleased to term my advocating the reading of the Bible, was to take possession of the church in which I officiated, in the name of the Pope. They accordingly wrote to his holiness, humbly praying this man-god to send them out a bishop, and to give him, and his successors in office, a lease of St. Mary’s church, in Philadelphia, and all the appurtenances thereunto belonging. Accordingly his royal holiness the Pope sent them a bishop with the aforesaid lease. I was immediately ordered out of the church; and having refused to depart, unless the trustees thought proper to remove me, this emissary of the Pope, only a few days or weeks in this country, had me indited and imprisoned for disturbing public worship, or in other words, officiating in St. Mary’s church, even with the full and undivided consent of the trustees.

But the bishop’s legal right was questioned; the case was brought before the supreme court of Pennsylvania, Chief Justice Tighlman presiding. I was discharged from bail and custody, and the rights of the trustees, under their charter from the state, sustained. But the priests and bishops were not content with this decision. They put their heads once more together, and fancied that they discovered another mode by which they could rob the people of their rights, and defeat the intentions of the donors of the property of St. Mary’s church; and what was their plan, think you, fellow-citizens?

The bishop called a meeting of all the priests and leading Catholics in the diocese. Every lay member was ordered to bring with him a hickory stick. The meeting was held in the church of St. Joseph; and at the hour of twelve at night, the Romish bishop of the diocese of Pennsylvania, an Irishman, not more than a few months in the country, attended in his pontificals, told the multitude who were there assembled to lay down their sticks in one pile, in order that he might bless them for their use. This was done as a matter of course.

The bishop said mass, sprinkled holy water upon the sticks, blessed them, and this done, the whole party bound themselves by a solemn vow never to cease until they elected a legislature in Pennsylvania that would annul the charter of St. Mary’s church; and, as an American citizen, I blush to state the fact, they succeeded. The charter was annulled by an act of the legislature, and property, worth over a million of dollars, would have passed into the hands of the Pope and his agents, were there not a provision in the constitution of that state empowering the supreme court to decide upon the constitutionality of the acts of the legislature.

We brought the question of the constitutionality of the act, which annulled the charter, before the court, Justice Tighlman still presiding. The court decided in the negative, otherwise the trustees and myself would have been defeated; I should have been fined and imprisoned, and they ousted out of their trust.

This, I believe, was the first attempt the Pope has made to establish his temporal power in this country; and it is a source of consolation to me, dearer almost than existence itself, to be the first to meet this holy bull. If I have not strangled him, and trampled him to death, I have, at least, the comfort of seeing his horn so blunted, that his bellowings have been, ever since, comparatively harmless. But there seems a recuperative power in the beast. He is again attempting to plant his foot upon our soil, and establish his temporal power amongst us; and how is he trying to accomplish this, fellow-citizens? The Papists have united themselves together as a body, headed by their priests, and resolved to carry, through the ballot box, what they cannot otherwise accomplish, at least for the present. Popish priests have all become politicians; they publicly preach peace, good order, and obedience to the “powers that be,” but they tell the people in the confessional, to disregard those instructions, and stop at nothing which may promote the interests of the church.

They have now, what they call “religious newspapers,” under the supervision of their bishops, but in which, not a word of pure religion, or Christian charity, is to be found. They are political presses, whose object is to overthrow our laws, our government, and introduce, in their stead, anarchy and confusion. These people—and here I allude to Irish Catholics and their priests in particular—have no regard for the obligations of an oath. Let the priest only tell them that it is for the good of the church, and they will stop at no crime; no, not even at murder; and they are daily becoming more audacious in consequence of the support which they receive from unprincipled politicians, and the morbid indifference of Protestants.

I have shown you, in a former page, that the increase of Catholics, in this country, will soon give them a majority of voters: and who, think you, will they vote for? A Protestant is it? Any man distinguished for virtue, and for love of republican principles? Assuredly not.

Will they select such a man as the virtuous and pious Frelinghuysen, of New Jersey? Will they choose such a man as the upright and honorable Archer, of Virginia? Will they cast their votes for such a man as the honest John C. Calhoun, of South Carolina; than whom, whatever may be his politics, there is not a greater or a better man of the age.

I might name hundreds, equally good and great men, who are disqualified, by their virtues, from receiving the votes of Popish vassals. None but mercenary demagogues, such as the Pope’s tool, Daniel O’Connell, who generously sacrifices five thousand pounds a year to obtain fifty-six thousand, the sum which he received last year in order to ameliorate the condition of the poor Irish. Give the power, and they will elect such a political desperado as this restless O’Connell, a Jesuit by education, an intriguer by nature, and as great a coward as ever drew breath. This is the champion, and his followers—the Irish—are the people, who call Americans cowards, and their “pilgrim fathers,” pirates and sanguinary wretches. These are the men, with Daniel O’Connell at their head, numbering nine millions of the “bravest men in the world,” who have been for centuries, and are now, on their knees, begging favors from the British government. Americans, too, once asked for favors, or rather their just rights, from that government, but not having obtained them, they drew their swords, threw away their scabbards, and, though the whole population of the United States did not, at that time, amount to two and a half millions, they fought for their rights, and they won them. Yet these Popish braggarts, but wretched slaves, call you cowards, and your fathers pirates. How long will you suffer this?

We know, from history, that Popery and liberty cannot coexist in the same country. A Popish government has never advanced human happiness. It never promotes any object truly great or philanthropic. How deplorable would it be, did this country fall a prey to those who are trying to establish it amongst us. The truth is, Popish glory, the trappings of its court, have been always the silly objects of the Roman church, while the mass of her people has ever been left in the recesses of want, obscurity, and ignorance.

Americans, at present, seem sunk in a sort of political lethargy; and this is taken advantage of, by foreign priests and Jesuits; but I would tell those disturbers of our peace, not to trust too much to this apparent sluggishness; a calm often precedes a storm: the continued insolence, abuses, and threats of Papists, may arouse our young lion, and, if I mistake not—although, appearances are at present against it—his holiness and his minions, who are trying to set up a power in this country unknown to our constitution, and not enumerated in our bill of rights, may have occasion to tremble.

To effect this, however, without the shedding of blood, it is necessary—indispensably necessary—that no Papist should hold office, or even vote, until he ceases to have any connection, or hold any alliance with the Pope, who is a foreign potentate, as well as head of the church. Let them come amongst us, if they will, but let it be with healing on their wings, and not to disturb our peace and tranquillity. Let them prove themselves the friends of liberty, religion, and mankind, and Americans will receive them with open arms, admit them to a full participation in all their own privileges, and extend to them the hand of friendship; but never let this be done, until they forswear expressly and without mental reservation, all allegiance, of whatever kind, and under whatever name, to the Pope of Rome, who is a foreign potentate, and acknowledged as such by the powers of Europe. When a Papist refuses to do this, trust him not. I repeat it, trust him not, Americans. He is a spy amongst you, a traitor to your country, and the sworn enemy of your religion and your liberties.

This, however, they do not. They come amongst you with different motives and far different characters. Though I know them well, it would be impossible for me to express to you the designs which mark their entrance into this country. They cross the Atlantic, under instructions from their priests, and bring nothing with them but their bigotry, intolerance, and ignorance. Their tastes, their passions, and their native hatred of Protestants are wafted over to us, and are already corrupting the morals of our people. In their native country they feel, or pretend to feel, oppressed by British laws and British government. They are taught by their priests to despise their government, at home; that its laws are all penal, and that there is no crime in evading them.

There is not an Irish Catholic, who leaves that country, but feels it his duty to resist the laws of Protestant England, and evade, by perjury or otherwise, their execution. “In no country in the world,” says a modern writer, “are the rights of property so recklessly violated: amongst no people on the face of the earth are the obligations of an oath, or the discharge of the moral duties, so utterly disregarded. Any man, the greatest culprit, can find persons to prove an alibi; the most atrocious assassin has but to seek protection, to obtain it. And why is this so? Because the religious instruction of the people has been totally neglected; because their priests have become politicians; because their bishops, pitchforked from the potatoe-basket to the palace, have become drunk with the incense offered to their vanity; and the patronage granted in return for their unprincipled support, instead of checking the misconduct of the subordinates, stimulate them to still further violence, and stop at nothing which can forward their objects. Because the opinions of the people are formed on the statements and advice of mendicant agitators, who have but one object in view—their own aggrandizement. Because a rabid and revolutionary press, concealing its ultimate designs under the motive of affording protection to the weak, seeks to overthrow all law and order, pandering to the worst passions of an ignorant and ferocious populace.”

Irish priests and Irish bishops complain of poverty and grievances at home. They complain that men of property leave their homes and spend their incomes abroad; but as this writer, to whom I have alluded expresses it, “What encouragement do they give to such as return from their residences abroad?” Allow me, fellow-citizens, to give you an instance of the treatment which Protestants of fortune receive from Irish Roman priests, when they do return to reside upon their estates in Ireland. I quote from the same author:!!!!!

“The Marquis of Waterford, a sportsman boundless in his charities, frank and cordial in his manners, not obnoxious on account of his politics, and admitted on all hands to be one of the best landlords in Ireland, comes to reside, and spend his eighty thousand sterling per annum, in the country. He gets up a splendid establishment in the county of Tipperary; and how is he treated? His hounds and horses were twice poisoned. There are scarcely any Protestants in the county of Tipperary. His offices were fired, and his servants, with difficulty, saved their lives. Compelled to abandon Tipperary—that sink of Popish iniquity, every nook and corner of which I am acquainted with—this generous and fine-hearted young nobleman retires to his family mansion, in Waterford; and how is he received there? I will not tell you; let his parish priest tell the story. ‘Men of Portlan,’ says this holy Romish priest, addressing the tenants and neighbors of the Marquis of Waterford, ‘you were the leading men who put down Beresford, in ’26 (the marquis’s father); I call on you now, having put down one set of tyrants, to put down another set of tyrants, the marquis himself.'”

Many of the Romish priests, which we have in this country, are from that very county of Tipperary, and thousands of the poor Irish amongst us have had their education, such as it is, from such worthy apostolic successors as the parish priest of the Marquis of Waterford.

Such are the people to whom you are yielding the destinies of this happy republic, by allowing them to vote at your elections, or to hold any office of honor or trust, while they have any connection with the head of their church, the Pope of Rome. Let the reader pass on from Popish Tipperary to Protestant Ulster, and he will see that the crimes of the Irish, and the miseries which many of them suffer, are to be attributed almost solely to their religion and their priests.

Mr. Kohl, a fair and very impartial writer, at least, upon Ireland, and who is often quoted by the great agitator, O’Connell, says,—in passing from that part of the country, where the majority of the inhabitants profess the Roman Catholic religion to that in which the great bulk of the population are Protestants or Presbyterians,—”On the other side of these miserable hills, whose inhabitants are years before they can afford to get the holes mended in their potatoe kettles, (the most important article of furniture in an Irish cabin,) the territory of Leinster and that of Munster begins. The coach rattled over the boundary line, and all at once we seemed to have entered a new world. I am not in the slightest degree exaggerating when I say, that everything was as suddenly changed as if by an enchanter’s wand. The dirty cabins by the road side were succeeded by neat, pretty cottages; well cultivated fields and shady trees met the eye on every side. At first I could scarcely believe my own eyes, and thought the change must be merely local, caused by particular management of that particular state, but the improvement lasted, and continued to show me that I was among a totally different people, the Scottish settlers, and the industrious Presbyterians.”

We see, in this country, the same difference of character and habits, between the Irish Protestants and the Irish Catholics. The Irish Protestant, wherever you find him, laboring on his loom in the north of Ireland, working in a factory in New England, keeping a shop in New York, or cultivating a plantation in Carolina, values his home and integrity, as pearls of great price. He is generally temperate, frugal, and industrious. We seldom, or never, hear him accused of disturbing the peace, or fraudulently voting at elections; on the whole, he arrives amongst us a worthy man, and, in time, becomes a useful citizen; and to what is this owing? It is owing to his education. He has been taught the Bible in his youth; from this he learned to love his God, above all things, and his neighbor as himself.

But how is it with the Roman Catholic, who comes amongst you? Scarce does he land on your shores, when he becomes more turbulent, more noisy, and more presumptuous, than when he left his native bogs. As soon as he confesses to his priest, he hurrahs for democracy, by which he means anarchy, confusion, and the downfall of heretics. He must vote; if he cannot do so fairly, his priest tells him how to evade the obligations of an oath. He will swear to support a constitution, which he never read, and never was read to him; he goes again to the confessional, and leaves that sacred tribunal with an oath upon his lips, that “Americans shall not rule him.” He soon hears the words, “Pilgrim Fathers;” he goes to his priest, and asks what these words mean; he is told that they were vile wretches, pirates, who came to this country many years ago, and whose sons were all cowards, and thus we see that, as far as it is in their power, they are trying to reduce this country, and its native inhabitants, to a level with that in which their vile religion—Popery—-has placed themselves. If we could cast our eyes over the history of the world, we should be struck with horror at the fatal consequences of Popery.

Wherever its followers have had an ascendency, or wherever they have it now, they appear to be conspirators against the happiness of the human race. What were the means by which Popish kings, emperors, and princes, conducted their governments—with the advice and consent, of the Pope of Rome, the vicegerent of heaven? Craft, extortion, fire, and sword. What are the means by which those governments, which at this day are under the Pope and his priests, are conducted?

The Pope apes the very thunders of heaven

The Pope apes the very thunders of heaven, and such are the “imitative powers” of his priests and bishops, that they are equally as destructive as the original. I have alluded to the contrast between the Catholic and Protestant people of Ireland. The one prosperous and happy; the other poor, miserable, and degraded. Heaven’s vicegerent, as the bishops call the Pope, and the Papists call the bishops, seldom bestow a thought upon their subjects, except to gull and inveigle them for the aggrandizement of their church; and we now see Ireland, one of the fairest countries upon earth, a country over which God has scattered plenty, and to which nature is peculiarly bountiful, reduced to want by insolent, haughty bishops, and vile, profligate priests.

That beautiful land which nature taught to smile with abundance, they have watered with tears, and with blood, all the result of Popery; and this has been its effect everywhere. It operates like the east wind, causing blasting, barrenness, and desolation, wherever it goes, and nothing but the herculean arm of this young and vigorous republic can check its progress among ourselves.

But I may be told that nothing is to be dreaded in this country from Papists; that they have neither numbers, nor means, to accomplish their designs upon our institutions. Let us see whether this is so. I have stated, in a former page, the number of bishops, priests, seminaries, and Papists, in this country. I have also shown you, to a demonstration, that if the number of emigrant Papists should continue to increase for the next thirty years, as they have for the last eight, they will be a majority of the population of the United States, and the Pope our supreme temporal ruler.

Permit me, now, to give you some idea of what their means are, at least such portion of them as they derive from Europe, and you can judge for yourselves what they are in the United States. I will give you the amount sent from Europe, during the years 1841, 1842, and 1843. I quote from their own books and receipts.

With such an amount of funds annually, from abroad, in the hands of a body of men, who understand how to manage and appropriate them, perhaps better than any other association in the world, with the majority of the population of these United States, and having but one single object in view, namely, the supremacy of their Pope and their church; what have Americans not to fear? They will avail themselves of a corrupt state of representation; they will procure a majority in your national legislature, and then, I say, woe be to your liberties.

Your school-houses, which now ring, at stated hours, with the praises and glories of God on high, wherein children are given to drink of the waters of life, will be converted into monk-houses, and lying-in-hospitals; prayers to God will no longer be heard in them; vagabond saints and wooden images will be the only objects of adoration; ignorance and vice will take the place of intelligence and virtue; idleness will take the place of industry; and the free American who, heretofore, was taught to walk erect before God and man, will shrivel and dwindle into a thing fit only to crouch before a tyrant Pope, and become a hewer of wood and drawer of water, for lazy and gluttonous priests, who, for centuries, have been trying to extinguish the light of reason and science, and who, even at the present moment, aye, at our very doors, are trying to abolish some of the finest productions of genius.

Witness the prohibition, recently, in France, of the publication of the Wandering Jew. Witness the prohibition of its circulation in Cuba; and why is it prohibited? Because it exposes some of the trickery of Jesuitism—because it lays bare some of the intrigues of that hellish association—and because holy mother church knows full well, that no honest or honorable man could see her in her native deformity, without a shudder of disgust—because she knows that herself and her priests are but whited sepulchres, filled not with dead men’s bones, but with the living fires of despotism, avarice, lust, and treachery—because she knows that Eugene Sue, who has written the Wandering Jew, is a Roman Catholic, well acquainted with the practices of Jesuits, sanctioned by the church. A continuation of the Wandering Jew, and its circulation, might show the world, even if there were no better authority, that monasteries and nunneries, under the control of Jesuits, were but vast Sodoms and prisons, full of crime and pollution.

Eugene Sue could, and I believe would, show the world, if his health had not failed him, that Roman Catholic priests and bishops, though forbidden, under pain of excommunication, to marry, were allowed to keep concubines. I refer the reader to the memoirs of the Romish bishop, Scipio de Ricci, for the truth of this assertion. I also refer you to another valuable work, Binnii Concillia, first volume, page 737. You will find the same in a work called Corpus Juris Canonici, page 47, to be had in the Philadelphia Library. You will find the same permission sanctioned by the council of Toledo, at which Pope Leo presided. The only restriction put upon the licentiousness of priests, by the council of Toledo, was to forbid them from “keeping more than one concubine at a time, at least in public.”

Cardinal Campeggio expressly says, “that a priest who marries commits a more grievous sin than if he kept many concubines.” St. Bernard, who died about the beginning of the twelfth century, and who must have been a very charitable man, as all Catholics now pray to him, tells the world that “bishops and priests commit acts in secret, which it would be scandalous to express.”

Pope John XII., was convicted by a general council, of fornication, murder, adultery, and incest, but these were not sufficient to depose him. He still believed in holy mother, the church, and his own infallibility. There is not an individual who reads these statements, and is at all acquainted with history, who does not know that Pope Paul III., who convened the council of Trent, had made large sums of money from licenses given to houses of ill fame in that city.

The holy church to this day, in the city of Mexico, to my own knowledge, receives large sums from the same sources, and these are supported principally by monks, friars and priests. No wonder, then, that the publication of the Wandering Jew should be prevented in Catholic countries. The writer, Mr. Sue, is a man of the world, he has read the book of nature with as much attention as he has those in his library. He is a well-read historian, and possesses an admirable faculty of communicating his ideas. He clothes them with a simplicity and beauty, almost peculiar to himself. The man that could depict Rodin, the sanctimonious Jesuit, in his true character, as Mr. Sue has done, must necessarily be silenced in a Catholic country. It must not be known that Jesuits may come among us in the garb of merchants, or in any other disguise which they may please to assume; no intimation must be given, that the poisoned cup, the assassin’s dagger, the desperate sea-captain, or the valiant soldier, could be concealed under a Jesuit’s cowl, or that he may throw off that cowl, at his pleasure, and exchange it for a pea-jacket, a dancing pump, the violin, the fencing foil, or even the costume of a barber, or tamer of wild beasts.

It will not answer the purposes of the holy church, that a man should live and write, who is capable of raising the curtain which hides its do-signs, and conceals the instruments, which she has ever used, and is now using, for the destruction of liberty. Such a man is the author of the Wandering Jew.

No man can look at the picture which he has drawn of Ignatius Morok, without recognizing, in its every feature, those of a Jesuit and a villain. He travelled about, in the assumed character of a “tamer of wild beasts,” but in reality, he was a Jesuit missionary, and sent by that order, with full power to accomplish, by any means within his power, one of the most infamous acts of fraud that over was committed by man.

He was accompanied, (as the reader of Eugene Sue will find,) by a lay Jesuit, named Karl, and I cannot give my readers a better idea of Jesuitism, as it ever has been, and is now, than by requesting of them to observe the course adopted by those two villains in accomplishing the object of their errand. Look at their treatment of the honest and faithful Dagobert. Look at the cruelties which they inflicted on the two innocent orphans, committed to his charge. See the schemes, by which they have made even the wife of Dagobert subservient to their designs. See the arts by which Jesuit priests crept into families, under various disguises, sowing amongst them discord, hatred, and domestic strife. They have put the father against the son, and the son against the father; husband against wife, and wife against husband; brother against sister, and sister against brother. See how they have contrived to filch from the poor and almost starving, the last sou they possessed, to have masses said for the repose of the souls of those who were actually living, to the knowledge of the priest, though represented by him at the confessional, to have been long since dead!

See how one of those vagabond Jesuits, in the assumed character of a physician, aided by one of the sisters of that order, Madam de St. Dizier, imposed upon the heiress, Mademoiselle de Cardoville. He offered his services to accompany her to visit a friend of hers, but had a private understanding with a lay Jesuit in the ‘disguise of a hack-driver, to take them to a lunatic asylum, where he deposited the heiress. I will not quote from the “Wandering Jew,” it would be depriving my readers of much pleasure; but I would recommend the perusal of it, in order to become acquainted with some of the prominent features of Jesuitism. The work appears as a romance, but it contains many sad and serious facts. It is a compendium of Jesuitism, and should be looked upon as a warning to the citizens of this new world. Americans will scarcely believe that we have any such Jesuits in this country, as are described in the Wandering Jew. I tell them they are mistaken; we have them in every state in the Union, but especially in New York, Maryland, District of Columbia, Pennsylvania, and Massachusetts. I speak from my own knowledge.

“Bred in the harem, all its ways I know.”

A word to those who have daughters, and fortunes to give them; and also to those young ladies, who have fortunes in their own right.

Jesuits will leave nothing undone, to form acquaintance with the children of such as are supposed to be wealthy. The Catholic bishops of the United States, in their annual and semiannual despatches to Rome, boast that they are peculiarly fortunate in gaining converts from such families, and I trust a word of caution from me will not prove useless.

The mode which Jesuits have adopted, in approaching such families, are various: but the most general, and hitherto the most successful is, to induce their children to go to their colleges and schools. In these, every male and female teacher is to bend the minds of their scholars towards Popery, and to report progress twice a week to their superiors. But when parents do not send their children to Jesuit schools, the next expedient is to get Roman Catholic servants into the family, who are instructed in the confessional by the priests how to proceed, especially with their young daughters, in prepossessing their minds in favor of the Romish church, and the great beatitudes of a single life.

I have known cases myself, where it was not deemed prudent to go so far as to say one word in favor of the Catholic church, or of a single life. The young ladies may be engaged, and their young hearts pledged. A different course must now be pursued, and the Popish domestic has her instructions accordingly. She must find out to whom the lady is, or is likely to be, engaged; and it must be broken off, not abruptly—that is not the way Jesuits do things—it is to be done gradually. Their young minds must be poisoned, but the poison must be given in small quantities, until finally it produces the desired effect; and then the happiness and the glories of a nun’s life are to be the theme of conversation, more or less, according to the instructions received in the confessional.

It is not long since I met with a Protestant friend of mine, and in the course of conversation, some allusion was made to the subject of nunneries. He observed that their schools were excellent; that his daughter had just finished her education there, and had returned home in perfect ecstacy with her school, with the lady abbess who presided over it, and with all the nuns by whom she had been educated. “It is said,” observed this gentleman to me, “that nuns try to tamper with the religious opinions of their pupils, and endeavor to make ‘nuns of them,’ but there is no truth in this; they never interfered with my daughter’s religious opinions, nor did they insinuate to her the most remote idea of taking the veil, or becoming a nun.”

I made no reply—courtesy forbade it. I might easily have answered my friend, but I feared the answer, which truth compelled me to give, would hurt his feelings. I might have said to him, Sir, your daughter had not a dollar in her own right, neither had you one to give her, and you must know that Jesuits seldom covet penniless applicants for the black or white veil You should have also known that, although your daughter may have seemed very beautiful in your eyes, she was probably devoid of those external charms which would attract the libidinous eye of a Jesuit. When ladies are taken into a convent by Jesuits, they must be possessed of something more than ordinary attractions. These reverend Jesuits, having the liberty of choosing, are rather fastidious. Verbum sat.

Truly, and from my heart, I pity the female, who risks herself in the school of Jesuit nuns. She hazards all that is dear to her. Though she may leave it, single-minded and innocent as she entered,—as I believe they all do who do not become nuns,—still the peril of going there at all is eminently hazardous and dangerous. But woe be to those who become nuns. I have been chaplain to one of those nunneries; and I assure my readers, on the honor of a man, who is entirely disinterested, and whose circumstances place him in an independent position, who wants neither favors nor patronage from any individual, that the very air we breathe, or the very ground upon which we walk, is not made more obedient or more subservient to our use, than a nun, who takes the black veil, is to the use of Popish priests and Jesuits.

The internal economy and abominations of a convent are horrible in the extreme. I dare not mention them, otherwise my book would, and ought to be, thrown out of every respectable house in the city. I will only call my reader’s attention to the fact, that, in all Catholic countries, nunneries have foundling hospitals attached to them. This any man can see who goes to France, Spain, Portugal, or Mexico.

It will be seen, even in this country, that they have their private burying places and secret vaults. It is not more than five or six years, since a number of Jesuits, in Baltimore, petitioned the legislature of Maryland for leave to run a subterraneous passage from one of their chapels to a nunnery, distant only about five hundred yards. The object of the petitioners was too plain. It was the most daring outrage ever offered any deliberative body of men; but, much to the credit of the legislature of Maryland, they rejected the petition with undisguised marks of indignant scorn.

These statements will be rather unpalatable to Jesuits, but my only regret is, that decency forbids a full development of the crimes committed, with perfect impunity, in Popish convents. In New York, every effort seems to be making, by the present legislature of that state, to suppress immorality. A bill is now before that body, making adultery a penitentiary offence; yet Popish priests are building nunneries there, and if Roman Catholic ladies think it proper to hold a fair to collect money for the building of those nunneries, these very New Yorkers will contribute their money freely; and thus, this ill-placed liberality, which Americans bestow, not only there but elsewhere, becomes the cause of evils which they seem desirous to crush.

How is it with us in Massachusetts? Look at our statute book, and if we are to judge from that, of the utter detestation with which our people look upon immorality of every kind, we deserve to be considered paragons of propriety. Should there be amongst us a house, even of equivocal fame, our guardians of the night and civil officers are allowed to demand entrance into it at any hour, and if refused, they may use force. Yet we have convents amongst us, nunneries and nuns too. Poor helpless females are confined in them, but not an officer in the state will presume to enter. If admission is asked, it may or may not be given by the mother abbess or one of the reverend bullies of the institution; but no force must be used. The poor imprisoned victims, whether content or not with her station, must bear it without a groan or a murmur.

This should not be in any civilized country; and I will venture the assertion, that it could not continue one hour, at least among the moral and charitable people of Boston, were they not utterly unacquainted with the iniquities of the Romish church.

This fully explains the opposition to the circulation of the Wandering Jew by the infallible church.

I have given the reader but a faint view of the persecutions of Popery, down to the close of the fifteenth century, and revolting as they are, there is no record to be found from which we can even infer, that the church has ever altered her doctrine or practice, on the subject of exterminating heretics, namely, all who are not Roman Catholics. If there were any such record, it could not have escaped my notice. Some Pope or some council would, long since, have given it to the world.

I was, as has been stated, born a Roman Catholic, and educated a priest in that church. I solemnly declare to you, fellow-citizens of my adopted country, that nothing has been more forcibly impressed upon my mind, by my teachers, when a boy—by the priest to whom I confessed when young—by the professors under whom I read Popish theology—or by the bishop who ordained me, and with whom I lived subsequently as chaplain—than the obligation I was under of extirpating heresy, by argument, if possible; and, if not, by any other means, even to the shedding of blood. And there is not now, in this country, an Irish priest nor an Irish Roman Catholic, and true son of the church, who does not believe that, if he could collect all the heretics in the United States, and form them into one pile, he would be serving God in applying a torch to it. And, incredible as it may appear to you, their church teaches them that, in doing so, they would be serving you.

The doctrine is taught now, as it was in past by their priests, that the body must be destroyed, for the good of the soul. “It is a benefit.” say the pious Popish priests, “to heretics to be killed; the fewer will be his sins, and the shorter will be his hell!” You naturally shudder at this doctrine, but it is not many years since Leo XII. in one of his bulls of jubilee, or indulgence to the faithful, announces publicly, and without shame, or sorrow, proclaims to Catholics, his beloved subjects, that in order to obtain the indulgence granted by that bull of jubilee, there are two conditions, without which, they can derive no benefit from it, namely, the exaltation of the holy mother church, and the extirpation of heresy. This “blessed bull” was published in 1825, and directed to the archbishop of Baltimore, and all other Popish bishops in the United States, to be made such use of as their lordships may think proper!

Will you believe it, Americans, that this doctrine is taught, this very day, in the college of Maynooth, Ireland. You will find it in De LaHogue’s Tract. Theolog. ch. viii. p. 404, of the Dublin edition. No priest or bishop will question the authority of Dr. De La Hogue. He has been professor in that college for nearly half a century. I must, however, add here, for the information of all who are unac-quainted with the doctrine of the pious frauds practised by Romish, priests, that their respective bishops, or in his absence, the vicar-general, can give any of them a dispensation to deny any truth or to tell any falsehood for the “exaltation of holy mother church.” I have received such dispensations myself, but, not having the fear of the Pope before my eyes, I took the liberty of disregarding them.

Many will ask me, Why have you not made these things known before now? There were many reasons why I suppressed them.

I knew my motives, however disinterested, might then be questioned; secondly, the public mind was not prepared for the developments which I have made. Thirdly, my love of peace and quietness induced me to withdraw to a part of the country, distant from the scene of my controversy, hoping that the miscreant priests and bishops of the Romish church would permit me to pursue my new profession of the law, without interruption. But in this, as I ought to have known, I was disappointed. Although I have not, since I left Philadelphia, until very recently, even replied to the calumnies which vagabond Irish priests who infest this country, and the still greater vagabond bishops who govern them, together with the tools which they keep in their employment, have heaped upon me; still they have, in the true spirit of their vocation, never ceased to pursue me with their vengeance.

No sooner had I abjured the Pope, disregarded his-bulls, and thereby become a heretic, than they had me burnt in effigy! But much more gratified would they be, had they my person in the place of the effigy. I still remained unmoved. Soon after this, Bishop England, of Charleston, South Carolina, established a press, called the “Catholic Miscellany,” whose columns teemed, for months,—almost for years,—with the grossest and vilest abuse against me; yet while this restless demagogue, who is now in his grave, was spewing forth his filthy abuse, I was prospering in my profession, and partially recovering my health, which I thought was radically destroyed by the persecutions I suffered in Philadelphia; and thus, while the Pope in Rome, and the Romish bishops and priests of this country, were cursing me, Heaven was blessing my efforts and gaining me the confidence of the virtuous and good, whom I had the pleasure of meeting in my intercourse with the world.

Strange indeed are the practices of Papists! Previous to my heresy in Philadelphia, there was not in that city a more popular man—not another more respected; I may almost say, that there was no man, of any pursuit or calling, whose friendship was more courted. Yet the moment I committed the unpardonable sin of differing with the Pope of Rome, every one of his faithful children, not only there but throughout the world, was bound by his oath of allegiance to persecute me in every possible way.

Never forget, Americans, that the same oath of allegiance, which binds them to persecute me, is also binding on them to persecute and destroy you. Some of you will say, this cannot be. A church, numbering among her priests such men as Massillon, Fenelon, Chevereux, and Taylor of Boston, cannot entertain, much less command, a spirit of persecution. True, as far as we can judge, these were godly men. They would be an honor to any religion. But in the Popish church, they were like stars that strayed from their homes, and losing their way, fell, by accident, upon the dark firmament of sin and Popery; but even there, their native light could not be obscured; on the contrary, the darker the clouds around them, the more beautiful and brilliant did their light appear. Poor Taylor,—”Peace be to thy memory,—we have been friends together.” Methinks I can, even now, feel the warm pressure of thy hand, see the charities of thy soul beaming in thy speaking eye and gentle countenance, yet thou too had been considered almost a heretic in the city of New York, and would have been denounced as such by the rude and vulgar bishop of that diocese, had not the amiable Chevereux interfered.

Often have I regretted that this Mr. Taylor, who was my classmate, and companion of my youth, had not, in addition to his private virtues, more fortitude and decision of character. He was the Erasmus of his day, in the United States. He was born and educated a gentleman; so was the amiable but timid Erasmus. He was educated a Roman Catholic; so was Erasmus. He was a chaste and elegant classical scholar; so was Erasmus. Taylor, knowing full well the corruptions of the Romish church, went from New York to Rome, about the year 1822, in order to induce the Pope to modify such of its doctrines as were objectionable in this country. But he wanted courage, and hastily retreated back, lest he should be consigned to the inquisition. Erasmus, too, wanted courage, a quality as necessary for a reformer as it is to a general in storming a city and hence it is; that those two amiable men, similar in character and disposition, though living in ages widely apart, have lived ostensibly members of a church, whose doctrines they loathed from the very bottom of their souls.

This might have been the temper, the character, and the cause, why such men as Massillon and Fenelon have lived and died Roman Catholics. They felt, probably, as Erasmus did, when he said, “It is dangerous to speak, and dangerous to be silent.” “I fear,” said he, in another place, “that if a tumult arose, I should be like Peter in his fall.” It is not at all strange, that such men as we have spoken of, should have contented themselves with having inculcated virtue, and denounced vice. There were such men in all ages, and, as a modern writer expresses it, “in all great religious movements there are undecided characters.” But let it be borne in mind, that even great and good as they seemed to be, and eloquent and pious as they appeared, still they are only exceptions in the great body of the advocates of Popery.

No wonder Americans look back to those lights in the dark and bloody wilderness of Popery. It is refreshing to see them. They are green spots in the deserts made barren and desolate, by Popish iniquities; and long may their memories shine in unclouded lustre.

It is pleasant to the historian, who is wearied and disgusted with contemplating the past and present horrors of Popery, to turn for a moment from the frightful spectacle, and rest in devout contemplation on the lives of those comparatively excellent men. How mistaken are those would-be philanthropists, who, at the present time, teach Americans to infer, that, because those were good and holy men, possessing a pious and forgiving spirit, it follows that the Papist church, her bishops and priests, entertain a similar spirit. This is equivalent to telling them that all history, past and present, is false, a mere romance, the dream of madmen. It is equivalent to telling them that the very history and records of the lives of Fenelon, and Massillon, &c., were entitled to no credit. Who can read, and not see that Rome has spilt oceans of blood to enforce her cruel creed! Who can read, and not see that she has squandered treasures enough to relieve the poor of civilized Europe, in establishing and keeping up a despotism inimical to man and hateful to God!

The Papists, even in this country, do not deny that they intend to eradicate heresy, and to use every means which their church considers legitimate to effect that purpose. This the priests preach from their pulpits; this they tell you to your beards. They admit their determination to bring these United States, if possible, under the spiritual control of the court of Rome. They use the word spiritual, in utter contempt of your understanding, to deceive you, and while using it, they laugh at your credulity. Popish spiritual control, spiritual allegiance! It is almost incredible that any body of men should have the impudence to come forward, in the nineteenth century, and talk of spiritual allegiance to his royal holiness the King of Rome.

They admit their determination to possess this country, and have the modesty to ask you to give them lands and churches, and means to accomplish their object, and effectuate your destruction. Their next step will be to quarter upon you an army of friars, Jesuits, or monks, who will carry at the point of the bayonet what is left undone by duplicity, treachery, and intrigue. This has been the fate of every country where Popery has found a resting place, and America is the only nation which, for the last three centuries, has given them such a footing. They tried what they could do in China. They succeeded in establishing several bishoprics, Jesuit convents, nunneries, monk-houses and churches, among the peaceable and quiet Chinese; but happening to differ among themselves on the subject of their respective temporal rights, they, as in duty bound, referred their differences to the Pope. This movement came to the ears of the emperor of China, whom they had so long and so successfully deceived by the cant words, spiritual allegiance to the Pope. The parties were summoned before his commissioner to ascertain what was meant by spiritual allegiance. They tried to explain it, but all their ingenuity, all their subtilty, could not satisfy the commissioner that spiritual allegiance meant anything else than what it fairly expressed, and as soon as he found that it meant, in the eyes of the Pope and the Romish church, things real and tangible, such as real estate, the conveying it from the rightful owner under the laws of the land, to another under the laws of the Pope, who lived in Rome, he satisfied himself, that the spiritual supremacy of the Pope meant, among other things, the power to govern the kingdoms of the earth; to give away, and take them away, to whom and from whom, his royal holiness pleased. The emperor instantly issued an order, directing that every Roman Catholic bishop, priest, friar, Jesuit, monk, and nun, within his empire, should quit, within a given time, on pain of losing their heads. Many of them disobeyed the order and were executed, and their churches levelled to the ground.

The Chinese had no objection to Papists worshipping God, according to the dictates of their own conscience; but as soon as it was discovered that they owed spiritual allegiance to a foreign power, they deemed it prudent to remove them from the country. But the Chinese are barbarians, and it seems reserved for this new world of ours, to interpret properly the meaning of spiritual allegiance, and in all differences, between our citizens and the agents of the Pope, as to the temporalities of the Romish church, to lay the subject before his royal holiness, and be governed by his decision.

Witness the difference between Bishop Hughes of New York, and the trustees of a Roman Catholic church in Buffalo, only a few weeks ago. Witness that in New Orleans, between the bishop and the trustees of the Roman Catholic church. All these were referred to the Pope, who decided the matter, without any respect or regard to the laws of this government. Call you this spiritual allegiance? Call you this an exercise of spiritual power, on the part of his royal holiness the Pope? Yes, you do; and it would not much surprise me, if the Papists of this very city of Boston should recommend to its legislature, to lay the difficulties between themselves and the state of South Carolina, before the Pope of Rome for adjudication.

Should the day ever arrive, when the Papists have a majority in your legislature, and a difference should occur between these states, the Pope will be called in to decide it. I am at a loss to know how, even in these days of transcendentalism, any other meaning can be given to spiritual allegiance, than that which the Roman Catholic gives it in practice. They consider the Pope, as the spiritual head of the church, has, a fortiori, a divine right to be the head and sovereign of the world. This is the sense in which Catholics understand and act upon it, and swear to support the Pope, as the supreme arbiter of the destinies of the world. The Chinese understood this. The emperor of Russia understands it at the present day; and though a Catholic himself, no priest or bishop, within his vast dominions, dare avow any allegiance, spiritual or temporal, to the king or Pope of Rome.

The holy synod of St. Petersburg, Russia, have notified the Catholic missionaries, who have incited rebellion, and interfered with the civil authorities in Georgia, to renounce their intercourse with the see of Rome, or quit the country. But Americans, in the alembic of their fertile brains, have manufactured a definition for spiritual allegiance, peculiarly their own, for which the Papists are so much obliged to them, that whenever an opportunity of knocking out the aforesaid brains occurs, they will do so. Witness in the Philadelphia riots, &c, &c, strong proofs of the spirituality of that allegiance which Catholics owe to the Pope.

Permit me to give you another evidence of the nature of that allegiance to the Pope of Rome, to which I have heretofore alluded. It is to be found in the massacre of the Huguenots, by Roman Catholics. There is no event in the history of France, with which the world is more familiar, than this. Several historians have related it with great minuteness and much elegance. To these I can add nothing of my own, and the reader is more indebted to them, for the following statement, than to myself.

Massacre of the huguenots.

This bloody massacre took place immediately after the conclusion of the treaty of St. Germain, at which the hostilities which had so long existed between the Catholics and Protestants in France, were suspended, or, as the Protestants believed, were entirely terminated. The sufferings of the Protestants, up to the conclusion of that treaty, were truly great. Their property was wasted; their beautiful chateaus were burned and levelled to the ground; their flourishing vineyards were destroyed, and they themselves were left, reduced in property and numbers; but great as were their calamities, the spirit which lived within them was not quenched. Their hearts, though oppressed, 7 were not broken. The love of God bore them up against all their trials and privations. Among those who suffered most in the Protestant cause, was the brave and pious Admiral Coligny, who, after the treaty of St. Germain, and the destruction of his beautiful estates by order of the Popish and bloody Catharine, retired to Rochelle. Even here there was no safety for him. The licentious queen, and her paramours, consisting of priests, determined on his destruction. It is said of this woman, that she occupied twelve years of her life in instructing her son Charles to swear, to blaspheme, to break his word, and to disguise his thoughts as well as face. We are told by contemporary historians, that this blessed daughter of the holy church supplied him with small animals, when a child, and a sharp sword to cut off their heads, and shed their blood by stabbing them; all this to familiarize him with the shedding of blood, and that at some future day he might indulge in the same amusement upon a larger scale, in cutting off the heads and stabbing heretics and Protestants. The persecutions of the Huguenots are known almost to all readers; few there are, who are not familiar with them. The illustrious characters, who headed the Protestant cause in those days, are known to all Protestant Americans, but none of them, perhaps, more intimately than the great Coligny, who was one of the first martyrs to that wretched Popish thing, in the shape of a woman, Catharine de Medicis, regent of France. I trust, therefore, the reader will pardon me for giving a few incidents in the life of this nobleman and martyr, during one of the regencies of this Popish queen Catharine. After the marriage of Henry of Navarre, Coligny, as we are told, suddenly retired from the banquet given upon the occasion at the Louvre. It was remarked that he seemed sad and dejected. He retired to his hotel, which he would have gladly left and returned home, but dreading that he might alarm his wife, he preferred writing to her, explaining matters as far as he could, under existing circumstances. The letter is so interesting, so affectionate, and altogether so worthy of the good man, that I cannot refrain from laying it before my readers. It was as follows:!!!!!

“My very dear and much beloved wife:

“This day, was performed the ceremony of marriage between the king’s sister and the king of Navarre. The ensuing three or four days will be spent in amusements, banquets, masks, and sham-fights. The king has assured me that, immediately afterwards, he will give me some days to hear the complaints, made in divers parts of the kingdom, touching the edict of pacification, which is violated there. It is with good reason that I attend to this matter as much as possible; for, though I have a strong wish to see you, still you would be angry with me (as I think) if I were remiss in such an affair, and harm came of it from my neglect to do my duty. At any rate, this delay will not retard my departure from this place so long but that I shall have leave to quit it next week. If I had regard to myself alone, I had much rather be with you than stay longer here, for reasons which I will tell you. But we ought to consider the public welfare as far more important than our private benefit. I have some other things to tell you, as soon as I shall have the means to see you—which I desire, day and night. As for the news that I have to tell you, they are these: This day, at four in the afternoon, the bells were rung, when the mass of the bride was chanted. The king of Navarre walked about the while in an open place near the church, with some gentlemen of our religion who had accompanied him. There are other little particulars which I omit, intending to tell you them when I see you. Whereupon I pray God, my most dear and beloved wife, to have you in his holy keeping. From Paris, this 18th of August, 1572.

“Three days back I was tormented with colic and pain in the loins. But this complaint lasted only eight or ten hours, thanks be to God, through whose goodness I am now delivered from those pains. Be assured on my part, that amidst these festivities and pastimes, I will not give offence to any one. Adieu, once more,

“Your loving husband,

“Chastillon.”

After having despatched the above letter, Coligny deemed it his duty to see the king before he left Paris. His sole object in so doing was to obtain, if possible, some concessions, or at least some guarantee for the future protection of the persecuted Protestants, of whom he was a member. The king received him well, promised him all he asked; but the king consulted the Pope’s nuncio, who was then in the city, and that holy man advised him to keep no faith with that Protestant Coligny, but on the contrary, to make all the use he could of him, in order the more effectually to accomplish the destruction of the heretical band to which he belonged. After receiving this Christian advice, the king became apparently more friendly to Coligny, and went so far as to promise him a safe escort on his way home. “If you approve of it,” said the king to Coligny, “I will send for the guard of my Arquebusiers for the greater safety of all, for fear they might unawares do you a mischief; and they shall come under officers who are known to you.” The generous and unsuspecting Christian, Coligny, accepted the offer of the guards, and twelve hundred of them were ordered into the city. There were many of the Protestants in the city, who on seeing this array of troops, felt alarmed for the safety of their friend Coligny; they whispered their fears to the brave warrior, who until then did not even dream of treachery. But now, fearing that something might be wrong, he resolved to see the queen mother. She expected this, and granted him an interview with great apparent pleasure. As soon as he commenced to suggest any fears or apprehensions of treachery, this holy daughter of the church, suddenly interrupting him, exclaiming, “Good God, sir admiral,” said she, “let us enjoy ourselves while these festivities continue. I promise you on the faith of a queen, that in four days I will make you contented, and those of your religion.” Coligny had now the word of a king, and the honor of a queen, as a guarantee for his own safety, and that of the Protestants in France. Who could any longer doubt that they were safe? Who could believe that a king would violate a solemn promise freely given? Who could question the honor of a lady and the promise of a queen? Who would venture to assert that a mother would not use her best effort to redeem the honor and plighted faith of a son, and that son a king? No one but a Roman Catholic could doubt it. Charles was a Roman Catholic king. His church taught him, that no faith was to be kept with heretics. Coligny was a heretic. Catharine, the queen mother, was a Roman Catholic; her church taught her to keep no faith with heretics, but to “destroy them, root and branch, under pain of eternal damnation.” Heritici destruendi is the doctrine of the Roman Catholic church; and accordingly, on the evening of that very day on which Coligny had an audience with the queen, these distinguished and pious children of the holy Roman Catholic church appointed an interview with the Pope’s nuncio, and after that holy man sung the Veni Creator Spiritus, (a hymn which they invariably sing, when laying any plan for the destruction of heretics,) these three worthy children of the infallible church resolved to send for the “king’s assassin,” a man named Maureval, and ordered him to assassinate Coligny. It must be observed here, that the Pope’s legate allowed Charles and his mother to keep an assassin, to cut down such thistles or tares as the devil may plant in the vineyard of the holy see. Soon after this, Coligny had occasion to go out on some business. The Popish assassin pursued him at a distance, secreted himself in a house where he knew he could deliberately shoot at him; he did so, but the wound, though severe in the extreme, did not prove mortal. Among the first who visited him were the king and his mother; and such was the apparent grief of Catharine, that she shed tears for the sufferings of the warrior. The good son of this good mother mingled his tears with hers, promising that the assassin, whoever he was, should be brought to condign punishment; but need I now tell you, Americans, that the tears of this Popish queen, for the sufferings of this Protestant, were like those of the hyena, that moans in the most piteous strains, while sucking the life-blood of its victim? Need I tell you they were like those of the crocodile, which sheds them in abundance while devouring its prey? Need I inform you that by her promises of future protection, she resembled the filthy buzzard, which spreads its wings over the body or carcass of its prey, while plunging its beak into its very entrails? And such I tell you now, as I have told you before, Americans, and shall tell you while I live, is the sympathy, and such the protection which every good mother and son of the holy Roman Catholic church would extend to you, your Protestant religion and its followers, in these United States.

We will now pass over the various meetings held by the king, his mother, queen Catharine, and the Pope’s nuncio, for the purpose of devising ways and means, not for the death of Coligny, but for the destruction of all the Protestants in France. To detail these would be a tedious undertaking; and not more tedious than revolting to the best feelings of humanity. Depravity was reduced to a science in the court of Catharine, and her son Charles. She employed even her ladies of honor for the seduction of her young nobility. They were ladies—I should say human things—selected for their beauty, and trained up by this royal mother in the Romish church, in habits of utter abandonment to seduction and lasciviousness. Young men of honor, virtue, and patriotism, were introduced to them, by Catharine, especially those who were at all suspected of being favorable to Protestantism. These maids were required to ascertain from these young noblemen who, and how many of their young friends were friendly to the cause of Protestantism, with a view of marking them for extermination, as soon as herself and the Pope’s legate should deem it expedient to do so The hour at last arrived, when the holy trio deemed it expedient to order a general massacre of the Protestants. The order was issued. The bells of the Roman Catholic churches were rung, and the royal order “Kill! kill! kill!” all, was issued by the king, and repeated by his Roman Catholic mother. I could not if I would, nor would I if I could, describe the scene that followed. Suffice it to say, that particular orders were given not to spare Admiral Coligny. Blameless as was his life, and devoted as he was to his king and government, yet he was a Protestant, and must die, and that by the hand of a Popish assassin. The holy church reserved to herself the glory of murdering this heretic. As soon as the order to murder was given, a rush was made towards the residence of Coligny. They entered his chamber, and to use the language of another, they found him sitting in an armchair, his arms folded, his eyes half upturned with angelic serenity towards heaven, looking the image of a righteous man falling asleep in the Lord. One of the murderers, a pious Catholic, called Besma, fixing his fiendish eye upon the admiral, asked him, ‘Art thou the admiral?’ pointing his sword at him at the same time. ‘I am the admiral,’ replied Coligny. ‘Young man, thou shouldst have regard for my age and infirmities;'” but the murderer plunged his sword into the Christian hero’s breast, pulled it out, and thrust it in again. Thus died this noble Protestant! Thus died the veteran Coligny, by the hands of a Popish boy! And for what? He believed in the Bible—he was a Protestant. And thus, fellow Protestants of the United States, will your posterity be sacrificed, for similar crimes, unless God in his mercy drive from your land, and mine by adoption, every vestige of the Popish religion. No sooner was Coligny put to death, than his head was cut off and presented to Queen Catharine, who sent for her perfumer, and ordered it to be embalmed and forwarded to the Pope, as a mark of her devotion to the holy see. But even this did not satisfy the queen. Her Popish bloodhounds, on hearing of Coligny’s murder, rushed through the streets to his apartments, searching every where for his mangled body, and having found it, a general cry was raised, “The admiral! the admiral!” They tied his legs and his arms together, and dragged them through the streets shouting, “Here he comes, the admiral!” One cut off his ears, another his legs, another his nose, hands, &c. They abandoned the body, to let the boys amuse themselves by inspecting it, and then tumbled it into the river. But the zealous Catharine was not satisfied yet. This good daughter of the Pope ordered the river to be dragged, until what remained of Coligny was found, and then ordered it to be hung in chains on a gibbet at a place called Mountfaçon. A contemporary writer, a Roman Catholic, speaking of this, says: “the road to Mountfaçon was a scene of incessant bustle, created by the gentlemen of Catharine’s court, who, in splendid dresses and perfumed with essences, went to insult the relics of Coligny. Catharine also went with her numerous retinue. Charles accompanied his mother. On arriving before the gallows, the courtiers turned away their heads, and held their noses on account of the stench arising from the half putrefied remains. ‘Poh!’ said Charles and his mother, to their courtiers, ‘the dead body of a heretic always smells well.’ On returning home she consulted with her confessor, who advised her, now that the devil had the heretic’s body, it would be well to have a solemn high mass for the occasion, to be said at the church of St. Germain, at which Charles and his mother attended, and a Te Deum was sung in honor of the glorious victory gained by the church, by the destruction of so many heretics.

As soon as the Pope heard this news, his holiness despatched a special messenger to France, to congratulate the king on having “caught so many heretics in one net.” So joyous and elated did his royal holiness appear, that he offered a high reward for the best engraving of the massacre; having, on one side, as a motto, “the triumph of the church;” and on the other, “the pontiff approves of the murder of coligny.” This engraving is now to be seen in the Vatican of Rome.

The number of those who were massacred on St. Bartholomew’s day is variously stated. Mazary makes it thirty thousand; others over sixty: but the Pope’s nuncio, who was on the spot during the massacre, in a letter to the Pope, tells him, “the number was so great it was impossible to estimate it.”

Recollect, American Protestants, that this massacre, and others to which I have alluded, was not the work of a few fanatics. It was the work of a nation, by their representative, the king, empowered to do so by the head of the Roman Catholic church. In vain is it for Papists to tell us that all this blood-shedding and destruction of human life was the work of a few, with which the church was neither chargeable nor accountable. Americans may believe them if they will. Let them believe. “There are none so blind as those who will not see.” If neither the testimony of history, nor a statement of facts, bearing all the necessary evidence of truth, will convince them, vain indeed are my efforts to do so. But there is no impropriety in my earnestly and solemnly appealing to Americans, and suggesting one or two questions, which they should put to any Roman Catholic who may deny that the church ever sanctioned those evil deeds of which I have spoken. Have you any record of the fact, that the church ever discountenanced the destruction of heretics? Did the Popish authorities ever deliver up those whom they knew to have murdered heretics to the civil tribunals? Were there ever any heretics murdered, as such, except by the advice, counsel, and connivance of the Popish church and her priests? If there were, in what country, in what age, and in what reign? Until these questions can be truly answered, you are not to be satisfied. But why will Americans, for a moment, entertain a doubt upon the subject? Popish historians never deny it. The actions of Papists all over the world proclaim it. The church of Rome has ever thirsted for the blood of’ heretics. She now yearns for an opportunity of shedding it again; all for the purpose of “purifying the earth of heresy.” Do you not see that her conduct, in all ages and all places where she had opportunities, confirms this? Do you not even see, that in this country, the members of that church can scarcely keep their hands off you; and so bloody are the sentiments which they inherit, that, for want of other subjects, they will sometimes shed that of each other? What would they not have done, a few weeks ago, in Philadelphia, had they the power? What in New York? What in Boston, or any where else in the United States? Do you not see, in all your intercourse with them, the ill-concealed hatred which they, bear you? If you have any charitable institutions for the support of Protestants, will they aid you? If you hold a fair for the purpose of building a church, or for any other Protestant purpose, will they attend it and purchase from you? They will not. If they do, they commit a sin against the church, and the power of absolving from that sin is reserved for the bishop of the diocese. It is a reserved case, as the church terms it. It is only by virtue of a dispensation, granted by the Pope to this country, that a Roman Catholic is even allowed to attend the funeral of a Protestant; and should he go into one of your churches, even though there was no service at the time, if he is a true son of the church, he will hasten to his priest and obtain absolution for that special crime. Yet, if they want churches built, you will furnish them with money. If they want land to build them upon, you will give it to them. Is this wise in you? You are denounced in those churches as heretics; your religion ridiculed, and yourselves laughed at. Your motives are undoubtedly good. You believe, because you do not know to the contrary, that, by your contributions, you are advancing the cause of morality. You do not reflect—and perhaps the idea never occurred to you—that there is a wide difference between the religion of a Protestant and that of a Papist. That of the Protestant teaches him to be a moral and virtuous man; whereas, that of the Papist has not the remotest connection with virtue. A Catholic need not dream of virtue, and yet be a member of that church.

The most atrocious villain, as an eminent writer expresses it, may be rigidly devout, and without any shock to public sentiment in Catholic countries, or even among Roman Catholics in the United States, Religion, as the same writer says, and as we all know, at least as many of us as have been in those countries, and who are acquainted with Catholics in this, is a passion, an excuse, a refuge, but never a check. It is called by Papists themselves refugium peccatorum. Hence it is, that priests may be drunkards, and their flocks never think the worse of them. I have known some of them, whose private rooms where they heard confessions, were sinks of debaucheries, which a regard for public decency prevents me from mentioning. I have known females, who have been seduced by them, and who afterwards regularly went to confession, under the impression which every Catholic is taught to feel, that no matter what a priest does, provided he speaks the language of the church. Don’t mind what he does, but mind what he speaks, is a proverb among the poor Irish Papists. None of them dare look me in the face and deny this, and yet these wretches talk of morals. But what think you, Protestants, of this kind of morality or of the church which does not even forbid it, and only requires to have it “concealed from heretics?” Do you desire it propagated amongst you? Do you wish your children to learn it? No virtuous daughter or decent woman should ever venture under the same roof with those men.

Paganism, in its worst stages, was a stronger check to the passions than Popery. I will give you one instance of the abominations of Popery. Papists believe in the doctrine of the real presence of Christ, in the sacrament of the Eucharist. It is the duty of every priest in that church to administer this sacrament to the dying, and for this purpose, they consecrate a number, of small wafers, made of flour and water, each of which, they pretend to believe, contains the body and blood, soul and divinity of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, or in other words, the Lord God himself. The priests carry with them, in & small box called pixis, a number of them to be given to the sick and dying. There are but few of them in the United States, in whose breeches’ pockets may not be found, at any hour of the day, at least a dozen of those gods. Can there be religion here? Can there be morality among those men or their followers? I would go further, and ask, Is there any thing in Paganism equally impious or more revolting to God or man? They know full well that such a creed cannot be sustained either by reason or Scripture, and hence it is, they want all power concentrated in the Pope of Rome, in order to extirpate their opponents, Protestant heretics. Papists understand the character of Americans, and are well aware, that if sufficiently satisfied of the existence among them, of a sect who believed in a doctrine so absurd, and so impiously profane, as that of the real bodily presence of Christ in the Eucharist, they could not countenance them. My own impression is, that if the people of Boston, where I write, knew that Catholic priests taught their followers to believe, that they (the priests) could make god’s by the dozen, carry them in their pockets, take them out when and where they pleased, and there kneel to them, in adoration, they would have them indicted under the statute against blasphemy. The Rev. Abner Kneeland was indicted because he denied the procession of the Holy Ghost, and found guilty of blasphemy. But what was his crime, when compared with that of Romish bishops and priests! It was bad enough, to be sure, in the eyes of all Christian men, and few questioned the righteousness of the verdict of his guilt. If a Pagan priest should arrive amongst us, bringing with him his gods, and worshipping them in our midst, should we sanction him? I know not that our constitution forbids such a thing, but the reverence which we have for the one true God, our love of morality and good order, would forbid it. We would accuse and indict them for blasphemy. But is their blasphemy more horrid than that of the Romish church?

The Pagan priest hews his god out of wood; the Popish priest makes his out of flour and water. The Pagan priests convey their gods in some vehicle, from place to place, and stop to worship them, wherever their inclination or devotion prompts them. The Romish priests carry theirs in their pockets, or otherwise, as occasion or love of pomp may suggest.

Where, Americans, is the difference? Which is the greater blasphemer? Which is the bolder and more reckless violator of that great commandment, “I am the Lord thy God.” “Thou shalt have none other gods before me”? You will not hesitate to decide. The Pagan may be honest in his belief; he may worship according to the light that is in him, or the knowledge that has reached him. He may never have seen the Gospel. The Day Star from on high may never have arisen over him, or illumined his path! “The morning upon the mountains” may perhaps never have gladdened his vision; he may, to us at least, be excusable, and as far as we can see, without offence before God. But is the Romish priest, who makes his god out of flour and water, and worships it, sinless? Is he not an idolater? What can be more blasphemous than to believe that a wafer, made of flour and water, can be changed, by the incantations of a Romish priest, into the God of heaven and earth!

The Popish church teaches that the flour, of which the wafer is made, loses its substance, and all its natural properties, and is changed by the words of consecration into the Almighty God; that is, it is no longer flour and water; it is changed,—not spiritually, as Protestants believe,—but actually and really becomes the body and blood, soul and divinity of Jesus Christ, such as it was when nailed to the cross, and as such they worship the wafer. If this is not idolatry, I cannot understand what idolatry is. If this is not blasphemy, I wish some New England gentleman of the ministry, or the bar, would explain it, and tell me what they mean by their statute against blasphemy.

Does blasphemy, in their estimation, mean nothing? or is it something introduced into our laws, only for the purpose of exercising the ingenuity of legal and ecclesiastical casuists? Surely, if the word has any meaning whatever, in law or morals, in church or state; if it can be enforced at all, and there is such a crime as blasphemy, it should be enforced against the Romish priest or bishop, who bows and teaches his followers to bow, in adoration, to a piece of bread and water, and thus blasphemously insult, as far as poor mortals can, the great and living God. Surely, the state authority, which would institute a criminal prosecution for blasphemy against Kneeland, because he did not believe the Holy Ghost to proceed “from the Father and the Son,” and does not prosecute for blasphemy Popish priests, who believe, and teach their followers to believe, that they can create, or rather manufacture as many gods as they please, out of flour and water, either neglects his duty, or his knowledge of it is very equivocal.

Either this is the case, or the treatment of Kneeland originated in some cruel persecution. The latter I am far from believing.

As a citizen of this state, I would ask respectfully, why proceedings, under the statute against blasphemy, are not immediately commenced against Popish priests? Is it because Kneeland was friendless and alone, that he was selected as a proper victim? and is it because Popish priests are supported by a large party, equally criminal with themselves, that they are spared? Not at all, say the sympathizers with Papery. Kneeland made a noise in his meetings; they were troublesome in the neighborhood where they were held. Be it so. I will not deny this, nor do I wish to be considered as the apologist of Kneeland, his blasphemies, or his meetings; but I would ask the prosecuting officer of the state, whether Kneeland’s meetings were more noisy than Popish repealers? Were they even half so turbulent or uproarious? Let those whose duty it is answer the question, and tell us why priests are not prosecuted for blasphemy. I contend that if there is one blasphemy under the sun more revolting than another, it is that of believing and teaching that a wafer can be changed from what God made it, into that same Almighty God, by mumbling over it a few Latin words. It makes me shudder at the weakness of man, and the unaccountable influence of early education, to think that I myself once believed in this horribly blasphemous doctrine.

The doctrine of Popish priests in adoring a wafer made of bread and water, and their mode of manufacturing the wafer into God, is not only blasphemous, but extremely ludicrous.

Has the reader ever seen a Popish priest in the act of making, or metamorphosing bread and water into flesh and blood? If he has not, it would be well, if not profane, to witness it; for never before has he seen such mountebank tricks. The priest, this great creator of flesh and blood out of flour and water, appears decked out in as many gewgaws as would adorn a Pagan priestess, and about twice as many as would be necessary for a Jewish rabbi. Amid the ringing of small bells, dazzling lights, genuflections, crossings, incense, and a variety of other such “tricks before high Heaven,” this clerical mountebank metamorphoses this wafer into God, and exhibits it to his followers, whom he calls upon to go on their knees and adore it. This horrible practice should induce our philanthropists, who are sending vast sums abroad for the conversion of the Pagan, to pause and ask themselves, whether there is, in the whole moral wilderness of Paganism, any thing worse, or half so bad, as that idolatry which we have at our own doors!

If a being from some unknown world, and to whom this world of ours was as little known as the one from which he came was to us, should, by accident or otherwise, arrive among us, and we were to take him into a Roman Catholic church during the celebration of mass, and there tell him, that the great actor in the service was making flesh and blood out of bread and water, and could actually accomplish that feat, he would unhesitatingly award to these United States the credit of having among them some of the most accomplished jugglers in the world.

What are your Eastern fire-eaters, sword-swallowers, and dervishes, to a Popish priest? Why, it would be easier to swallow a rapier, ten feet long, or a ball of fire as large as the mountain Orizaba, than to metamorphose flour and water into the “great and holy God, who created the heavens and the earth, and all that is therein.”

Let me not be accused of levity, or want of reverence to that Almighty Being, to whom I am indebted for my creation and preservation, and on whom alone, through the merits of the Saviour, my hopes of salvation are placed. My only object is, to call the attention of my fellow-citizens to the absurd and profane doctrines of Popery; and that having seen them, in their true colors, it is to be hoped they will find little favor from a thinking and reflect-ing people.

It is extremely unpleasant to my feelings, thus to expose the profanity of a religion which I once professed, and inculcated upon the minds of others; but the best atonement I can make for my unconscious offence to my God and my fellow-beings is, to acknowledge my error, and caution others against falling into the snares which an early education, received from priests and Jesuits, had precipitated me. The reader will therefore pardon me if I lay before him a few more Popish extravagances.

It is generally known, that Papists believe in the doctrines of miracles. So do I, and so do all Christians. But it is not so well known that the miracles, in which Protestants believe, differ widely from those which the Romish church teaches her followers. We believe the miracles recorded in the Holy Scriptures; to these, however, the infallible church pays little or no attention, but hands us down a catalogue of miracles, for the truth of which she herself vouches, and calls upon all to receive them as the “genuine article.” It may be edifying, and if not, it can not fail to be amusing to American Protestants, to see a specimen or two of Popish miracles. I assure the reader, they are very fair ones, to my own personal knowledge, and considered as such by every true Roman Catholic in this city of Boston as well as elsewhere.

St. Hieronymus, better known by the name Jerome, who died early in the fifth century, relates the following miracle:—”After St. Hilary was banished from France to Phrygia, he met in the wilderness a huge Bactrian camel, and having seen, in a vision, that his camelship was possessed of the devil, he exorcised him, and the devil sprang out from him, running wild through the wilderness, leaving behind him a strong smell of brimstone.” He tells us another miracle, with much gravity. “Paul the Hermit,” says this saint, “happening to die in the wilderness, his body remained unburied, until discovered by St. Anthony. The saint being alone, and not having the means of digging a grave, nor strength enough to place in it the body of the hermit, prayed to the Virgin Mary to aid him in his difficulties. The result was, two lions, of the largest species, walked up to him, licked his hands, and told him that they would dig the grave themselves with their feet, and place the body of Paul in it. They did so; and having finished their business, went on their knees, asked the saint’s blessing, and vanished in the woods.”

Palladus, who lived in the fifth century, and was greatly distinguished in the Romish church, tells us of a hyena, which, in a certain wood in Greece, killed a sheep. The next day, a pious hermit, who happened to live in the neighborhood, was surprised at seeing this hyena at the-door of his cave; and on asking it what was the matter, the hyena addressed him in the following language: “Holy father, the odor of thy sanctity reached me; I killed a sheep last night, and I came to ask your absolution.” The saint granted it, and the hyena departed in peace. We find in Butler’s Lives of the Saints, which is for sale in almost all Roman Catholic bookstores, an account of some most extraordinary miracles, for the truth of which, the infallible church pledges her veracity. For instance; when heretics cut off the head of St. Dennis, the saint took it up, put it under his arm, and marched off some miles with it. Butler relates another extraordinary miracle, and if American Protestants presume to doubt it, they may expect a bull from the Pope of Rome.

A certain lady in Wales, named Winnefride, was addressed by a young prince, named Caradoc. But she, being a nun, could not listen to his addresses. The young prince got impatient, and finally, in a fit of rage and disappointment, he pursued her in one of her walks, and cut off her head. A saint, by the name of Beuno, hearing of this outrage, went in pursuit of Caradoc, and having come up with him, he caused the earth to open and swallow him. Upon his returning where the nun’s head fell, he found that a well had opened, emitting a stream of the purest water, the drinking of which, to this day, is believed to cast out devils. When the holy St. Beuno looked at the head of the nun, he took it up and kissed it, placed it on a stump, and said mass. No sooner was the mass finished, than the beheaded nun jumped up, with her head on, as if nothing had happened.

Come forward, Americans, if you dare, and deny this miracle. The holy church vouches for its truth. St. Patrick, the great patron of Daniel O’Connell, whom his holiness the Pope calls the greatest layman living, performed some very extraordinary miracles, as we are told; among them was the following: A poor boy strayed from home, and died of starvation, or something else, and the body was nearly devoured by hogs, when St. Patrick, chancing to pass that way, discovered it in this mutilated condition. The holy saint touched it, and it instantly sprang into life, resuming its former shape and proportions. On another occasion, as we read in the Lives of the Saints, St. Patrick fed fourteen hundred people with the flesh of one cow, two wild boars, and two stags; and what is more strange than all, the same old cow was seen, on the following morning, brisk and merrily grazing on the very same field where she was killed, cooked, and eaten by the multitude.

We read of another very great miracle, which no Roman Catholic can doubt, without running the risk of being considered a heretic. St. Xavier, who is considered one of the most distinguished saints in the Romish church, had a valuable crucifix. On one of his journeys at sea, it fell overboard, much to his regret. When he arrived at his place of destination, he took a walk along shore, meditating on the power, grandeur, and infallibility of the mother of saints, and what was the first object that caught his eye? Lo, and behold, he saw a crab moving towards him, bearing in its mouth the saint’s crucifix, and continued to advance until he reverently laid it at his feet. No Roman Catholic writer, since the days of St. Xavier, questions the truth of this miracle.

The Popish biographers of St. Xavier tell us of another great miracle performed by him, the truth of which is attested by the infallible church. The devil tempted Xavier, and the “old boy” assumed the shape of a lovely female; the saint ordered her off, but she refused, and attacked him again on the same day; but the saint, unwilling to be annoyed any longer, spit in the devil’s face, and he instantly fled.

I cannot dismiss, this subject without relating a few more of those miracles which Roman Catholics believe. They may be seen in Belarmine’s Treatise on the Holy Eucharist, book iii. ch. 8. St. Anthony, of Padua, got into an argument with a heretic, concerning the doctrine of transubstantiation or the changing of bread and water, by Romish priests, into the flesh and blood of Jesus Christ. After arguing the question for a long time, the heretic proposed to St. Anthony to settle their controversy in the following manner: “I have a horse,” said the heretic, “which I will keep fasting for three days; at the expiration of that time, come with your host (an image) and I will meet you with my horse. I will pour out some grain to my horse, and you will hold the host before him; if he leave the grain, and adores the host, I shall believe.” They met, and St. Anthony addressed the horse in the following words. I translate, literally, from that illustrious writer in the Roman church, Belarmine.

“In virtue, and in the name of thy creator, whom I truly hold in my hand, I command and enjoin thee, O horse, to come, and with humility, adore him.” The horse, instanter, left his corn, advanced towards the host in the priest’s hand, and, devoutly kneeling, adored it as his God.

St. Andrew, as we read in Romish history, was a man of great eminence and sanctity. Papists pray for his intercession daily. The infallible church informs us, that he performed some very great miracles I beg to give my readers one, as a sample of the many which he performed.

The devil, armed with an axe, and accompanied by several minor devils, with clubs in their hands, made an attack upon the saint, whereupon he called upon St. John, the apostle, to rescue him. St. John lost no time in making his appearance, and summoning some holy angels to aid him, with chains in their hands, he rescued St. Andrew from these devils, and chained every one of them to the spot; whereupon, as we are informed in the Acts of the Saints, St. Andrew burst into laughter, and the devils fell to screaming and crying mercy.

In the year 1796, a work, entitled Official Memoirs, was published in Ireland, under the authority of Dr. Bray, archbishop of Cushel, and Dr. Troy, archbishop of Dublin. In this work it is stated—and to doubt the fact in Ireland, would be-heresy—that in the month of May, 1796, at Toricedi, tears were seen to flow from the eyes of a wooden image of the Virgin Mary. Impious as such doctrines are, they are now believed by Roman Catholics.

I was myself personally acquainted with archbishop Troy, and I remember, when young, that he and the priests by whom I was instructed, took much more pains in impressing upon my mind the truth of such miracles, as that of the wooden Virgin Mary, than they did the truths of the Gospel; and, in fact, every Catholic is taught to rest his salvation, almost entirely, upon the intercession of the virgin. Ninety-nine in a hundred of Irish Catholics rest all their hopes of salvation on the Virgin Mary. They adore her, they worship her, and what is worse, Popish bishops and priests teach them to do so. They even compel them to adore the virgin, though the miserable beings have the hardihood to deny it before Americans. But will they dare do it before me? When a poor, ignorant Catholic goes to confession, the usual penance imposed by the priest, for minor offences, is the repetition of the following address to the Virgin Mary, two or three times a day, for a week or more, according to the heinousness of the sin committed:!!!!!

“Holy Mary, Holy mother of God, Holy virgin of virgins, Mother of Christ, Mother of divine grace, Mother most pure, Mother most chaste, Mother undefiled, Mother untouched, Mother most amiable, Mother most admirable, Mother of our Creator, Mother of our Redeemer, Virgin most prudent, Virgin most venerable, Virgin most renowned, Virgin most powerful, Virgin most merciful, Virgin most faithful, Mirror of justice, Seat of wisdom, Cause of our joy, Spiritual vessel, Vessel of honor, Vessel of singular devo-Mystical rose, Tower of David, Tower of ivory, House of gold, Ark of the covenant, Gate of heaven, Morning star, Health of the weak, Refuge of sinners, Comfort of the afflicted, Help of Christians, Queen of angels, Queen of patriarchs, Queen of prophets, Queen of apostles, Queen of martyrs, Queen of confessors, Queen of virgins, Queen of all saints.”

The above tissue of blasphemy is daily, nay, several times in a day, repeated by Catholic priests and their penitents; and I am much mistaken, if there is upon the face of the globe, whether in Pagan, Mahometan,1 or Heathen countries or creeds, to be found any thing equally blasphemous, or more disgusting to the mind of any individual who believes in the pardon of sin through the atonement of Christ; and I hesitate not to say, that the Christian, who countenances such a doctrine, or contributes, in any way, to its propagation, denies his Saviour, and shows himself unworthy of the name he bears.

To the professed infidel I have nothing to say. To him, who mocks and scoffs at the Triune God, I will attach no blame; with him I have nothing in common, further than brotherhood of the same species; but I must appeal to the Christian, and seriously ask him, Why do you encourage such blasphemy as this address to the Virgin Mary? Why do you encourage its propagation amongst your brethren? Why do you hold communion with those who utter it? Would the primitive Christians, if they now lived, hold any communion with idolaters? Would they contribute their money to build temples for Isis and Dagon? Would they basely bend the knee to the golden calf of old? No. Sooner—much sooner—would they lay their heads upon the block. They would look upon it as a denial of their God, and a recantation of their faith in him. Would your Puritan forefathers give the right hand of fellowship to the worshippers of a wooden image? Would they give their money to a priest, to build churches, and teach his followers that they could hew out for them images of wood, possessing power to work miracles, or in other words, to change the laws of nature, which the Eternal Law-Maker alone can change or suspend?

Custom, the point of the bayonet, or even that cruel tyrant, early education, may enforce such idolatry on the Old World; but the free-born American, unbiassed by education—unawed by tyrants—has no apology. His submission to such doctrines is an unqualified surrender of his reason, his religion, and the liberties of his country.

When the star of our independence first arose, it was hailed by the Christian philosophers of the old world, as a foreshadowing of the downfall of tyranny, superstition, and idolatry. They looked upon it as fatal to the bastard Paganism, taught in the Popish church; but what must be their astonishment, if permitted at the present day to look down upon our country, and see our people practising that same Paganism, nicknamed Christianity, and asking from our government protection—a privilege which the framers of our constitution never intended should be extended to tyrants or idolaters!

Here I would stop, and never more put pen to paper, for or against Popery, did I not see many of my fellow-citizens, possessing the finest minds and precious souls, falling victims to the sophistry, ingenuity, and quibbling casuistry of Popish priests and bishops.

It is not long since I saw a letter from the Roman Catholic bishop Fenwick, of the diocese of Massachusetts, in which he informs the authorities of Rome that he is making converts from some of the first families in his diocese. This, I presume, is correct, and these are the very individuals most easily imposed upon. They know nothing of Popery. They are not aware that Papists have two sides to the picture, which they exhibit of their church. One is fair, brilliant, dazzling, and seductive. Nothing is seen in their external forms of worship but showy vestments, dazzling tights, and the appearance of great devotion. Nothing is heard but the softest and most melting strains of music. No wonder these should captivate minds which are strangers to guilt; nor is it strange that they should bring into their church those who are most guilty, in the full assurance that their guilt shall be forgiven, and their crimes effaced from the records of heaven, by only confessing them to one of their priests.

Will the heads of those respectable families, to whom Bishop Fenwick alludes, and from whom he is making so many converts, permit me to ask them, whether they have ever reflected upon what they were doing, in permitting Romish priests to come among them? I have myself been a Catholic priest, as I have more than once stated; I am without any prejudice whatever. If I know myself, I would do an injustice to no man; but I hesitate not to tell those heads of families, whether they are the parents or guardians of those converts to the Romish church, of whom mention is made, that if they have not used all their authority with which the laws of nature and of the land invests them, to prevent these conversions, they are highly culpable. If they are parents, they have become the moral assassins of their own children, and perhaps their own wives. Do any of those fathers know the questions which a Romish priest puts to those children, at confession? Do husbands know the questions which priests put to their wives, at confession? Though a married man, I would blush to mention the least of them.

Though not so fastidious as others, I cannot even think of them, much less name them, without a downcast eye and crimsoned cheek, and particularly those which are put to young and unmarried ladies.

Fathers, mothers, guardians, and husbands of these converts, fancy to yourselves the most indelicate, immodest, and libidinous questions which the most immoral and profligate mind can conceive!!!!! fancy those ideas put into plain English, and that by way of question and answer—and you will then have a faint conception of the conversation which takes place between a pampered Romish priest and your hitherto pure-minded daughters. If, after two or three of these examinations, in that sacred tribunal, they still continue virtuous, they are rare exceptions. After an experience of some years in that church, sooner—far sooner—would I see my daughters consigned to the grave, than see them go to confession to a Romish priest or bishop. One is not a whit better than the other. They mutually confess to each other.

It was not my intention, when I commenced this work, to enter into any thing like a discussion of the doctrines maintained by the Romish church. My sole object was to call the attention of American Republicans to the dangers which were to be apprehended, and would inevitably follow, from the encouragement which they are giving to Popery amongst them. I have, however, deviated a little from my first intention, in more than one instance; but I trust, not without some advantage to many of my readers. I am aware that I have exposed myself to the charge of carelessness and indifference to public opinion, in not paying more attention to the construction and order of my sentences. Did I write for fame, or the applause of this world, I would have been more careful; but, as my object is only to state facts, in language so plain that none can misunderstand it, I have no doubt the reader will pardon any defects which he may find in the language, or want of consecutiveness in the statements, which these pages contain.

I will now ask the attention of the reader, for a few moments, to the Popish doctrine of Indulgences; and I do so because priests and bishops deny that such things as indulgences are now either taught or granted to Catholics. They say from their pulpits and altars that indulgences are neither * bought nor sold by Catholics, and never were.

It is an axiom in our courts of law—and should be one in every well-regulated court of conscience—that falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus. The meaning of this axiom is, that he who tells a falsehood in one case will do so in every other. If this be true—and it is as true as that two and two make four—I pronounce all Roman Catholic priests, bishops, Popes, monks, friars, and nuns, to be the most deliberate and wilful set of liars that ever infested this or any other country, or disgraced the name of religion. I assert, and defy contradiction, that there is not a Roman Catholic church, chapel, or house of worship in any Catholic country, where indulgences are not sold. I will even go further, and say, that there is not a Roman Catholic priest in the United States, who has denied the fact, that does not sell indulgences himself; and yet these priests, and these bishops—these men of sin, falsehood, impiety, impurity, and immorality—talk of morals, and preach morals, while in their sleeves, and in their practices, they laugh at such ideas as moral obligations. Here I would appeal even to Irish Catholics who are in this country. I would ask all, or any of them, if ever they have heard mass in any Catholic chapel in Dublin, or any other city in Ireland, without hearing published from the altar, a notice in the following words, or words of similar import.

“Take notice, that there will be an indulgence on——day, in————church. Confessions will be heard on———day, to prepare those who wish to partake of the indulgence.” I have published hundreds of such notices myself; and any American, who may visit Ireland, or any Catholic country, and has the curiosity to enter any of the Romish chapels, can hear these notices read; but when he returns to the United States, he will hear the Roman priests say that “there are no indulgences sold by the Romish Church.” Beware, Americans! How long will you be the dupes of Popish priests?

Will the reader permit me to take him back a few years, and show him in what light indulgences were viewed in the 16th century, under the immediate eye of the Pope and full sanction of the infallible church!

The name Tetzel, is familiar to-every reader. He was an authorized agent for the sale of indulgences. I will give you one of his speeches, as recorded on the authority of Roman Catholic writers, and recently published in this country in D’Aubigne’s History of the Reformation.

Indulgences—says this reverend delegate of the Pope—are the most precious and sublime of God’s gifts.

Draw near, and I will give you letters duly sealed, by which even the sins you shall hereafter desire to commit shall be all forgiven you.

I would not exchange my privileges for those of St. Peter in heaven; for I have saved more souls by my indulgences, than he by his sermons.

There is no sin so great, that the indulgence cannot remit it, and even if any one should—which is impossible—ravish the holy Mother of God, let him pay, let him only pay largely, and it shall be forgiven him. The very moment the money goes into the Pope’s box, that moment even the condemned soul of the sinner flies to heaven.

Examine the history of Paganism, and you will not find in its darkest pages any thing more infamously blasphemous than the above extract, taken from a speech delivered by one of the Pope’s auctioneers for the sale of indulgences. But even this would be almost pardonable, if priests did not try to persuade Americans that those sales have long since ceased.

It is not more than twelve months since I was in the city of Principe Cuba; and I beg permission to relate to my readers what I have there personally witnessed; or, as we would express it in our most homely language, seen with my own eyes.

At an early hour in the morning, I was aroused from my slumbers by a simultaneous ringing of all the bells in the city. On looking out, I witnessed the marching of troops, firing of cannons, field-officers in their full uniforms, all the city authorities wearing their official robes, with innumerable priests and friars bustling about from one end of the city to the other. My first impression was, that a destructive fire must have broken out somewhere, or that some frightful insurrection had taken place: but, on inquiry, what think you, reader, caused this simultaneous movement of the whole population of Principe, amounting in all to about sixty thousand? “Tell it not in Gath; publish it not in the streets of Askelon:” A huge bull of indulgences had arrived from the Pope of Rome, and they turned out—troops and all—to pay it due homage, and hear it read in the cathedral of Principe.

A day was appointed for the sale of the indulgences contained in the aforesaid bull! Accompanied by a Scotch gentleman, with whom I had the pleasure of forming an acquaintance, we went, with others, to the house of the spiritual auctioneer, and I there purchased of the priest, for two dollars and fifty cents, an indulgence for any sin I might commit, except four, which I will not mention. These, I was told, could only be forgiven by the Pope, and would cost me a considerable sum of money.

Many of our citizens are in the habit of visiting Havana, and can purchase those indulgences at any sum from twelve and a half cents to five hundred dollars. Will you still listen to Popish priests, who tell you that indulgences are neither sold nor bought now in the Romish church?

From Cuba I immediately proceeded in the United States’ ship Vandalia, to Vera Cruz, and from thence to the city of Mexico. I felt desirous of ascertaining the state of Popery in that exclusively Popish country, and availed myself of every opportunity to do so. Accordingly, soon after my arrival in Mexico, I strolled into the cathedral, and saw in the centre aisle a large table, about forty feet long and four wide, covered with papers, resembling, at a distance, some of our bank checks. Curiosity induced me to examine them, and, instead of bank checks, I found checks on Heaven; or, in other words, indulgences for sins of all descriptions.

I resolved upon purchasing; but, knowing full well that Americans, though the most intelligent people in the world, but long the dupes of Roman Catholics, would scarcely believe me if I told them that I bought an indulgence in Mexico. I went back and requested of our consul there, Mr. Black, to come with me to the cathedral and witness the purchase of, and payment by me for an indulgence. Will Catholic priests tell you there is no truth in this? If they do, be not hasty in making up your minds on the question. There are two or 8* three lines of packets running from New York to Vera Cruz, and you can easily ascertain, from Mr. Black, whether I am telling truth, or whether Papists are humbugging you, as they have been for the last half century.

But why go abroad for evidence to fix upon Romish priests the indelible stigma of falsehood on the subject of indulgences? I have sold them myself, in Philadelphia and in Europe! The first year I officiated in Philadelphia as a Roman Catholic priest, I sold nearly three thousand of these indulgences, as the agent of holy mother, the infallible church; and though several years have elapsed since, many of those who bought them are still living in that city.

Some explanation is necessary here, as I cannot presume that Americans are yet acquainted with a doctrine called Pious Frauds, held and acted upon by the infallible church.

The Pope of Rome and the Propaganda, taking into consideration the savage ignorance of Americans, deemed it prudent to substitute some other name for the usual name indulgences, and something else for the usual document specifying the nature of the indulgence which was given to pious sinners in “the New World:” they thought it possible that Yankees might have the curiosity to read the written indulgences. This, said they in their wisdom, must be prevented; and here is a case where our doctrine of pious frauds comes beautifully into play. After singing the “Veni Creator spiritus”—as usual in such cases—they resolved that indulgences should be in future called Scapulas, and thus piously enable all Roman Catholic priests and bishops to swear on the Holy Evangelists that no indulgences were ever sold in the United States. This is what holy mother calls pious fraud.

All the indulgences which I sold in Philadelphia were called scapulas. They are made of small pieces of cloth, with the letters I. H. S. written on the outside, and are worn on the breast. I will give you an idea of the revenue arising from the sale of those scapulas in the United States, by stating to you the price at which I sold them.

The scapula costs the purchaser one dollar. The priest who sells it tells him that to make it thoroughly efficacious, it is necessary that he should cause some masses to be said, and the poor dupe gives one, five, ten, or twenty dollars, according to his or her means, for those masses. I may safely say, that, on an average, every scapula or indulgence sold in the United States costs at least five dollars. What think you now of the word, the honor, or the oath of a Popish priest? Are you not ashamed to be so long their dupes? Do you not blush at the reflection, that you have given so much of your money, your sympathy, and hospitality, to such arrant knaves? Sad is the reflection to me, and dark are the thoughts, that I should have ever belonged to a church, which imbodies in its doctrines all that is degrading to humanity, and reduces man, from being “little lower than the angels,” to a thing, such as a Papist priest, in full communion with the Pope, having nothing in common with his fellow-beings but the form of humanity.

The folly of uniting with the Catholic Church

You, Americans, who have thoughtlessly united yourselves with these priests in their church, come out, I beseech you, from among them. Entail not upon your children the curse of Popery. Flee from them as Lot did from Sodom. To err is the lot of man. To fall and to trip in his passage through life, is the lot of even the best of men. You have erred in joining the Romish church, but you will doubly err by continuing in membership with her. The country which gave you birth is a glorious one; it has all the advantages of nature; it is fertilized by salubrious seas, and its own beautiful lakes. There is nothing you want which the God of nature has not given, and blessed for your use. There is but one dark speck upon the horizon of your national prosperity and greatness, but that is a deep one. It is a sad one, and may be a bloody one. Popery hovers over it, like some ill-omened bird, waiting only a favorable opportunity to pounce upon its prey; or some foul exhalation, which, being checked in its soaring, turns to a fog, causing darkness and scattering disease, wherever it falls. Alas, fellow-citizens, it has already fallen amongst us, and is growing with fearful rapidity; like the more noxious weed, it loves a rich soil; it cannot fail to flourish in ours.

Take heed, Americans, lest you allow this weed to come to maturity. Eradicate it in time; let it not ripen amongst you; allow not its capsule to fill, blossom, and ripen; if you do, mark what I tell you: it will burst, scattering its noxious, sickening, and poisonous odors amid the pure breezes of that religious and political freedom, which have so long, so gracefully and sweetly played over this beloved “land of the free and home of the brave.”

If you will look around you, and visit our courts of law; if you extend your visits to your prisons, your houses of industry and reformation; if you go farther, and examine your penitentiaries, what will you find? Permit me to show you what you will behold in one single city, the city of New York. This, of itself, were there no other cause of alarm, should be sufficient to arouse your patriotism, for you must not forget that nearly all the foreigners, enumerated in the document which I here subjoin, are Roman Catholics, or reduced to their present condition while living in Catholic countries. But let the document speak for itself. It is official, and may be relied on.. It came from a committee of the Board of Aldermen of the city of New York upon the subject of alien passengers. Taking this as your data, you may be able to form some idea of what you suffer in money, in virtue, and in your morals, from the introduction of foreign Papists among you.

“The Foreign Poor in our Alms-Houses, and the Foreign Criminals in our Penitentiaries.—We hasten to lay before our readers a highly interesting document, from a committee in the Board of Aldermen, upon the subject of bonding alien passengers in New York. From the document, it appears that the bonds of nine firms in this city exhibit the enormous liabilities of $16,000,000: that of the 602 children supported by the city, at the Farm Schools, 457 are the children, (many, if not the most of them, illegitimate) of foreign parents; that of the latest-born infants at nurse, at the city’s expense, 32 are foreign, and only two American, and that of the whole number of children, 626 have foreign parentage, and 195 Amer-can; exhibiting the average of more than three foreigners to one native, and an alarming increase of the ratio of foreigners in the more recent births.’

“The whole number of inmates in our penitentiary is 1419, showing an increase of 400 since July last; of these 333 are Americans, and 1198 foreigners. The number of prisoners and paupers, to support whom we all pay taxes, is 4344, showing an increase, since July last, of nearly 1000.

“In view of these alarming facts, and remember* ing that over 60,000 immigrants were commuted and bonded here the last year, the committee make some forcible appeals to the country, which cannot be without their effect. The enormous taxation to which we are subject, in order to support foreign paupers and criminals, is a great and growing evil, which presses heavily upon industry, as well as upon the character, morals, and politics of the country.”

This is a frightful picture of things, especially in a country abounding and almost overflowing with the means of sustaining and abundantly supplying fifty times the population it contains.

Examine well the results of Popery, in a religious, moral, and political point of view, especially during the last thirty years, and you will find that there is no vice, no crime, no folly or absurdity, which time has brought into the old world, as Milton expresses it, “in its huge drag-net,” that Papists are not introducing among you; and there is no consequence which followed it there which we shall not see here, unless you are to a man “up and doing,” until this noxious weed is rooted from amongst you. I wish these unfortunate Papists no evil; far be such a sentiment from my mind. I would be their best friend; but who can befriend them, while they permit themselves to be controlled and deluded by their priests.

A Roman Catholic priest is, pro tanto, the worst enemy of man. He degrades his mind by rendering him the slave of his church. He debauches his morals, and those of his wife and children, by withholding from them the word of God. He weakens his understanding, by filling his mind with absurd traditions. He evokes, and indirectly invites, the indulgence of his worst passions, by promising him the pardon of his sins. He checks the noblest aspirations and finest charities of his soul, by instilling into it the rankest hatred and animosity towards his fellow-being, whom God has commanded him to love as he loves himself, but whom the priest tells him to curse, hate, and exterminate. In a word, he almost degrades him to a level with the beast, by teaching him to lower that holy flag, on which should be written, Glory be to God on high,—and raising above it the bloodstained flag of Popery.

This American Protestants know full well. They feel it. It is known and felt in every Protestant land; but it seems as “if some strange spirit was passing over people’s dreams.” Though found to be unsound, and even bad policy; though destructive to agricultural, commercial, and every other interest, yet we see no efforts made to arrest its advance amongst us. Neither are there any means taken, as far as the writer knows, in other Protestant countries, to suppress this religious, political, and commercial nuisance; on the contrary, we find that even in Great Britain further stimulants are being applied to Popish insolence.

Sir Robert Peel, the premier of England, has, or is about introducing a bill into parliament, with a view of making further appropriations for the Romish college of Maynooth, in Ireland; and, much to my surprise, as well I believe as to that of every man who correctly understands the spirit of Popery, he has some supporters. Even some of the British reviewers give him high praise.

“The credit to which Sir Robert Peel is entitled,” says one of the British Quarterlies, “is greatly increased by reason of the prejudices of some of his supporters; but (continues the same Quarterly) his resolution is taken and his declaration made. This should read, in my humble apprehension his resolution is taken, and his infatuation complete.”

I have been a student in that college; I know what is taught and done in that institution. I am well acquainted with all the minutiae of its business and theological transactions; and I could tell Sir Robert Peel that he either knows not what he is doing, or is a traitor to his government! Does Sir Robert know that in that college are concocted all the plans and all the measures which O’Connell is proposing, and has been pursuing during the last thirty years, for emancipation, and now for the repeal of the Union? Does he know that Maynooth is the focus from which radiate all the treasons, assassinations, and murders of Protestants, in Ireland? Is he aware that this very Maynooth is the great Popish eccaleobion, in which most of those priests who infest Ireland, and are now infesting the United States, are hatched? Does he know that Daniel O’Connell and that college are the mutual tools of each other? O’Connell, riding on the backs of the priests into power and into wealth, and they alternately mounted upon Dan, advancing the glory of the infallible church!

It is not probably known to Mr. Peel that thirty years or more have elapsed since it was secretly resolved in Maynooth that none but a Catholic should wear the British crown, and that he should receive it as a fief from the Pope of Rome. Every move and advance which O’Connell makes in remans a step gained towards this object, and upon this his ambitious eye rests with intense avarice. For this, Maynooth and its priests thirst with insatiable desire. It is not many years since O’Connell and Maynooth asked for emancipation, and they obtained it. Protestants of England were duped into the belief that Papists would now be satisfied, and unite in supporting the government; but, scarcely was this granted, when the great agitator, with the advice and consent of Maynooth, asked for—what, think you, reader? Nothing less than a dismemberment of the British government—nothing less than a repeal of the Union; or, in other words, to permit one of the most turbulent demagogues that ever lived, Daniel O’Connell, to become king of Ireland, and to receive his crown from the Pope of Rome.

This is now the avowed object of repeal; but there is another object, not yet seen nor dreamed of by those who are not Roman Catholics; and I beg the reader to keep it in his recollection. It is this. O’Connell, by agitating Ireland, and scattering firebrands throughout England, believes that he and the Catholics will ultimately succeed in dethroning the sovereign of England, and placing the crown on some Popish head. Were the college of Maynooth further endowed through the efforts or folly of Sir Robert Peel, does he believe, or can any man, acquainted with the genius of Popery believe, that this would satisfy O’Connell or the Pope’s agents in Ireland? The very reverse would be the case. It would only imbolden them still further. It would only increase their insolence; it would only add a new impetus to their treasonable demands, and give an increased momentum to their disorganizing meetings.

Should the British Government grant all O’Con-nell asks, or should parliament pass a bill for the repeal of the Union, is it to be supposed that O’Connell and the Irish bishops—the sworn allies of the king of Rome—would be satisfied? Not they. The truth is—and I wish I could impress it upon the minds of every Protestant in England as well as in this country—nothing short of the total overthrow of the government of Great Britain and the Protestant religion will content the Popish church, whose cats-paw Daniel O’Connell is. Should Providence, in his inscrutable designs, grant them this, our experiment in the science of self-government is at an end. We shall become an easy prey to any alliance which should be formed against our republican institutions. The jackals of Popery are amongst us: they have discovered us; and Popish priests, the natural enemies of free institutions and of the Protestant religion, will soon destroy our republic and our religion.

It is useless to deny the fact. It cannot be denied. It were folly to conceal it. The extirpation of heresy, or, in other words, of the Protestant religion, is the grand object which O’Connell and the Pope have now in view; and, to effect this, they have judiciously divided and advantageously posted all their forces. These forces are well officered by Jesuits and priests, men without honor, principle, or religion; whose time is spent in advancing. Popery and the grossest indulgence of their own passions. The Pope and O’Connell have, in this country, an army of nearly two millions of reckless desperadoes, who have given already strong evidences of their thirst for American Protestant blood. It is necessary to watch them well. Americans must recollect that these men receive their orders from Rome, through O’Connell, who, I sincerely believe, is this moment the worst man living, though the Pope calls him the greatest layman living. He is upon earth what the pirate is upon the seas, inimicus humani generis—the enemy of mankind. During the last thirty years he has kept the poor of Ireland in a state of poverty and excitement bordering upon madness. He has filched from them the last farthing they possessed. He has withdrawn them by thousands from their ordinary pursuits of industry: he has sown amongst them mutual hatred and a general discontent with their situations in life. But that is not all. He has pursued the poor people even to this country. He robs them here of their little earnings. They make remittances to him of hundreds and thousands of dollars; and this, while many of them, to my own knowledge, and not a hundred yards from where I write, are shivering in the cold blasts of winter,—all for their good, while O’Connell himself is feasting in Ireland, and enjoying the sports of the chase, on about three hundred thousand dollars a year.

This is not all. The great agitator, this national beggar, Daniel O’Connell, has recently discovered that there were some little glimmerings of Protestantism in France; that Louis Phillippe was neither a Don Miguel, a Ferdinand, nor a very strong advocate of Popery, opens upon him a battery of abuse. This foul-mouthed brawler was not content with sowing discord among the poor Irish, and scattering treason among the people of Great Britain, he tries what he can do with the inflammable people of France, who are now in the enjoyment of more domestic happiness and national glory than they have had for the last century. But even this is not enough; the genius of the great national beggar, fertile in schemes, treasons, rebellions, scurrility, and Popery, must cross the Atlantic and denounce Americans, who, since the declaration of their independence, have been the best and warmest friends of his poor countrymen; they have received them, employed them, giving them bread and clothing in abundance. They permitted them to bring with them their priests and their religion; they shielded and protected them in their lives and liberties. This country was to the Irish, a land flowing with milk and honey, and they might have enjoyed it, and been happy, had it not been for their accursed religion and its priests.

The great Dan saw and felt this. A stop must be put to it. The holy church saw that this state of things, would not answer her purposes. The harmony, which existed for so long a time between the hospitable and generous Americans and the forlorn Irish, must be broken, lest Papists should become Protestants and forget their allegiance to the Pope; and accordingly, the great agitator, this enemy to order, to God, and to peace, commenced denouncing Americans, as usurers and infidels, who had not even a national law of their own. He calls upon the Irish to come out from among them, and have nothing to do with them.

Soon after this, the Pope sends over some bulls making similar demands upon the Irish and all other Catholics, under pain of excommunication; and what is the result? The name of an Irishman is now a by-word, in the United States, especially if he is a Roman Catholic. It is associated with every thing that is low, vulgar, and bigoted. No longer do the Americans receive the Irish with open arms: no longer do they welcome them to their shores; nor in fact is it safe for them longer to do so. And what occasioned this? That demagogue, O’Connell, and the Pope of Rome.

Does Mr. Peel reflect, when he is moving in parliament for an additional appropriation for the college of Maynooth, in Ireland, that he is only adding fuel to the political fire, which these men are trying to enkindle, and have actually enkindled in a great part of Europe, and in the United States? Has the fact escaped his notice, that the Pope and the greatest layman living, as his royal holiness calls O’Connell, have no misunderstanding with Spain, Portugal, or any other government, strictly Popish?

They have no feeling of compassion for the degraded Italian, the ignorant and half-starved Spaniard or Portuguese, or the wretched Mexican slave. O, no! It is only for a Papist under a Protestant government, that their compassion is moved. Their condition must be ameliorated, or in plain English, these governments must be overthrown and Popery must reign supreme. Let Mr. Peel reflect upon this single fact, and he and his supporters cannot fail to see, that, in giving further aid to the Popish college of Maynooth, he is but “sowing dragons’ teeth, from which armed men will spring up.” He is only throwing an additional force into that Trojan horse, which his predecessors had introduced into unfortunate Ireland, and which Popes and priests have secretly stolen into these United States.

I know O’Connell well. I have had, in my younger days, some personal acquaintance with him; and I can tell Mr. Peel, that with the college of Maynooth to back him, he,—Mr. Peel and his party—are no match for him in craft and intrigue. All O’Connell’s plans for the extirpation of Protestanism are devised in Rome. They are submitted to the Propaganda, and from thence sent to Maynooth to be there revised and corrected. As soon as this is done, a copy is forwarded to each of the metropolitan bishops of Ireland, who return it with such observations as they deem necessary, and all things being prepared, secundum ordinem, the usual Veni, Creator is sung; the project, whatever it may be, is sanctioned; every priest in Ireland is prepared to carry it into effect; and all that now remains to be done is, to give the great beggar his secret orders. What can Peel, or his few supporters, do against such a party as this? Nothing, unless the government changes its mode of proceeding against O’Connell, Maynooth, and the Irish bishops. But it is to be feared, that this will not be done while Peel is at the head of affairs.

England, once indomitable, and always brave; England, proud of her religion and of her laws, seems recently to forget her ancient glories. She is showing the white feather; she is dallying with Popery, and singing lullabies to quiet and put asleep Daniel O’Connell and his Irish bishops, whose treason and political treachery can only be stopped, and should have been stopped long since, by consigning the greatest layman that ever lived, and a few of his right reverend advisers, to transportation for life.

Americans may think this wrong, but though I have not the least pretension to the faculty of prophesying, I think I can safely tell them, that, in less than twenty years, they will have to enact much severer laws against Roman Catholics than any which are now recorded against them on the statute book of Great Britain. It must be borne in mind, that Popery never bends, and therefore it should and must be broken. It was in this college of Maynooth, and from those bishops and priests, with whom Sir Robert Peel is dallying, I first learned that the king of England was an usurper. It was they, who first taught me that the Pope of Rome—virtute clavorum, by virtue of the keys—was the rightful sovereign of England, as well as of all the kingdoms of the earth. It was in the college of Maynooth, I was taught to keep no faith with heretics, and that it was my solemn duty to exterminate them; it was there I first learned, that any oath of allegiance, which I may take to a Protestant government, was null and void, and need not be kept.

It was at this same college of Maynooth, that nine tenths of the priests in this country received their education; and is it not deplorable to reflect, that such men as Sir Robert Peel, in England, and several equally distinguished in this country, should be so entirely blindfolded and unmindful of the interest of their respective countries, as to give any countenance, aid, or support to Popery, or Popish institutions among them? I trust, however, and fondly hope, that this imprudent, impolitic, and ill-advised scheme of Sir Robert Peel’s, will be resisted and thrown out of parliament, with such marks of disapprobation as becomes every honest Protestant and true Briton. Will those who sympathize with Popery in the United States, look back to the page of history? and if they will not take instruction from me, let them take it from the past. Let them listen to the voice of the dead, and learn a lesson from them. Let them read the history of France. Who urged on all the oppositions that have been made, from time to time, to the government and constituted authorities of that country? What were the causes, remote or immediate, of all the blood that has been shed in France for centuries back? The Pope of Rome and his agents.

It is truly to be lamented, that Napoleon had not lived longer; he might, it is true, have caused some disturbance, and hastened the fall of some of the tottering thrones of Europe. Spain, Italy, Portugal, and even Austria and Prussia, might have ceased to have kings, by divine right; but a far better order of things could not fail soon to have arisen. The Pope would have been hurled from his throne; Napoleon would have stripped from him the trappings of royalty; he would have taught him to feel, and reduce to practice the heavenly declaration of his Divine Master, which his holiness now repeats in solemn mockery, regnum meum nan est de hoc mundo. He would have confined him to his legitimate duty, in place of spending his time in dictating political despatches to foreign powers, and sending bulls of excommunication which are now become laughing-stocks to all intelligent men; he might be devoted to the advancement of true Christianity, and the world saved from those contentions and disturbances, occasioned by this man of sin and his agents.

Why will not our statesmen reflect upon these things, lest in some future contest with the powers of Europe the scales of victory may be turned against them by this man of sin, whose agents in this country, as 1 have heretofore remarked, amount to nearly two millions. The defeat or subversion of the government of Great Britain, by Popish power, is equivalent to a victory gained by it over the United States. I tell the Protestants of England and of the United States, that their respective governments are doomed to fall, if Popery gains the ascendency over either; and all those who try to foment or urge any difficulties between them, are not the friends of either, but the enemies of both. It is only by the combined efforts of Protestants, all over the world, that Popery can be crushed, and peace, and religion, and fraternal love, restored to mankind.

I have produced some facts that admit of no denial, and I put the question, confidently, to every honest and sensible Protestant in England or America, who is unwarped by prejudice or interest, whether the cause of liberty is not in danger, and likely to decline, if we any longer submit to or acquiesce in the doctrines of Popery! And I ask every reflecting American in particular, whether the influence which Popery has now in this country, is not likely to create anarchy, or even despotism amongst us, though we may preserve the forms of a free constitution!

I have alluded to the struggles in England with Popery; I have mentioned the name of that demagogue, O’Connell, because he is the agent of the Pope for both countries, and because I believe it is the mutual interest of the two to unite, and stand shoulder to shoulder in opposition to Popish intrigues, evolved in the proceedings of this selfish and dangerous man, O’Connell. The designs of O’Connell and the Irish bishops, and those of the Pope and his Jesuit agents in the United States, are proved upon testimony which admits of no denial, viz: their own admissions. O’Connell, the mouthpiece of Popery in Ireland, avows publicly that Protestant England shall not govern Irish Papists, and the Pope’s agents in the United States declare and swear, that Americans shall not rule them. How are the English and Americans to treat this common enemy? Let them go into the enemy’s armory, divest themselves of their mawkish sympathy, buckle on the very armor which their enemy wears, and adopt the mode of warfare used by them. Give the common enemy no quarters, assail them from every point, and the subjects of his holiness the Pope, either in Great Britain or the United States, will not long remain insensible to the miseries, into which the great national rent beggar has plunged them. This, however, I find cannot be easily done in the United States. The difficulty with our people is this, they would find it much easier to assume the armor used by the common enemy, than to lay down that of sympathy and hospitality, which they have heretofore worn, and thus, although a moral and religious people, their zeal is but dim and sluggish, while that of their adversaries, the Pope and his agents, burns higher and clearer every day. This must not be. God and freedom forbid it.

The political contest, which has just ended, has tended greatly, at least for the moment, to im-bolden and encourage Popery. Each party courted the Papists, and they supported him from whom they expected most favors. They laid their meshes, nets, and traps for President Polk; but I believe they have been “caught in their own traps.” That gentleman is said to be a moral and religious man, and one of the last in the world to countenance idolatry, blasphemy, or treason amongst us. But now that the contest is over, and no further avowal of distinct party principles is necessary or profitable, it is to be hoped that the good and virtuous of both parties will unite in passing such laws, as will shield our country and our people from any further Popish interference with our government or our institutions. He, who shall bring about this desirable result, and those who aid him, will merit the gratitude of their country.

In the present position of parties, much is expected from the great “American Republican” association, which has recently been formed throughout the United States. Every eye is fixed upon its movements, and the hopes of all Protestants hang upon its success. Do not disappoint us, American Republicans. You alone can save the Protestant foreigner from the persecutions of Popery, and we call upon you, by the memory of your sires, to shield us from it.

You have a great part to act; you are young; but the purity of your principles, and the justice of your cause, abundantly supply what is wanting in age. You are the mediators between two great political parties, whose extremes cannot meet, of if they did, would only tend to render their respective centres still more corrupt, by their internal powers of contamination. Neither of those parties will ever consent to be governed by the other; nor has either of them the moral courage to come forth boldly and say to Popery, Stand off, thou unclean thing. Thou hast polluted all Europe for ages past; stand aloof from us; wash thy polluted hands and bloodstained garments; until then, thou art unfit to enter the temple of our liberties. Thou art, in thy very nature, impure, and hast already diffused amongst us too much of thy deadly poison before we took the alarm. Like an infected atmosphere, thou hast silently entered the abodes of moral health; thou hast penetrated the strong holds of our freedom, without giving us any warning! Avaunt, thou scarlet LADY of Babylon! recede to the Pontine marshes, whence thou earnest, and no longer infect the pure air of freedom! The foul stains of thy corruption shall no longer be permitted to spot the pure and unsullied insignia of independence! I am aware that the sympathizers with Popery will say that such language as the above is rather harsh. They will tell us it is cruel. They will assert, in their usual mawkish style, that it was never the intention of the framers of our constitution to treat those who come amongst us with unkindness. They themselves invited the oppressed of every land, creed, and people, to our shores. They extended the hand of friendship to all, without distinction of party, sect, or religion. So they did, and so do their descendants. Any and every man is welcome to this country. Whether he comes from the banks of the Euphrates, shores of the Ganges, or bogs of Ireland, he is sure to receive from Americans a warm and hospitable reception. His person, his liberty, and his property, are protected; but there is a condition under which this reception is given, and without which it never should be granted. The recipient of all these favors is required to yield obedience to the mild and equitable laws of the United States; forswearing at the same time, all allegiance to any other king, potentate, or power whatever. This condition, so just, so reasonable, and so politic, is generally complied with by all foreigners, who land in these United States, with the exception of Roman Catholics. All others come amongst us, and either refuse at once to become citizens, or honestly incorporate themselves with us. The Papist alone refuses incorporation with Americans. He alone comes amongst us the avowed enemy of our institutions, and the sworn subject of a foreign king, the Pope of Rome. Among all the foreigners who land upon the shores of this country, none but Papists avow any hostility to its institutions. They alone would dare say, “Americans sha’n’t rule us.” On them alone have Americans just cause to look as traitors to their government, and foes to their religion; and they alone should be singled out as just objects of fear and jealousy.

I have, in the preceding pages, traced the origin of the Papal temporal power to its proper source; and endeavored to follow the course of its turbid and muddy stream, through many of its sinuosities and canonical—if I may use such a term—gyrations, down to the middle of the 16th century. I freely admit that I have made many “short cuts” and have been obliged to pass unnoticed several of its acute angles. Were I to proceed “pari passu” with its course, taking all its bearings and accompanying them with the necessary observations, it would require a volume at least ten times as large as that which I now respectfully present to the public. I shall, however, if Providence leaves me health, continue the subject of Popery as it was and as it is. I will dissect the Body Papal, so that every American, who honors me with the perusal of my observations, will see its inmost structure. I have studied its anatomy; I understand all its minutiæ; and if any can view the skeleton without horror and shame for having so long contributed to feast and fatten the monster, it shall not be my fault. The performance of this operation will be, in every point of view, extremely unpleasant. Whichever way I look, the prospect must be disagreeable. Behind, I can only see an object in which I once felt an interest, and with which I was unfortunately connected: and before, nothing is to be seen but further persecutions and calumnies. But, most what it may, it shall not be said of me by friend or foe, that I have shrunk from the performance of a duty which I owe to the cause of morality, and to my adopted country.

I have merely touched upon the persecuting and treacherous spirit of the Popish church. The profligacy of its priests are scarcely noticed by me as yet. Its idolatries and blasphemies are barely alluded to. Indulgences, miracles, and the iniquities committed in nunneries, are scarcely glanced at. The twilight view, which I have given of these subjects, is only intended for a better observation of them, under the full light of some mid-day sun.

Before I conclude this volume, permit me to give you a brief view of Popery as it is at this very day on which I write. I have a double object in doing this. First, what I am about stating has perhaps escaped the notice of many of my fellow-citizens; and secondly, it will confirm one of the most serious charges which I have made against Papists; and thirdly it will prove to a demonstration, that Roman Catholic priests and bishops, who surround us and live amongst us, are a set of barefaced liars, whose entire disregard for truth fits them for no other society than that of brigands and felons.

The reader will bear in mind that Roman Catholics are the loudest advocates of religious freedom. He will also not forget that I have charged them with being its most inveterate enemies. The Papists and myself are now fairly at issue.

Either they are right and I am wrong, or vice versa. I have sustained my accusation against them by proofs derived from their own general councils, and from their uniform practice for centuries back. Still, these Catholics will say and assert publicly, in their pulpits, and at their meetings religious and political, that they were always and are now the advocates of religious toleration. Let the past for a moment be forgotten. I presume no one will question what the practices of the Romish church have been in relation to religious toleration in former times. Let us rather see what it is now among our neighbors in Madeira; and as all Roman Catholics are a unit in faith and practice, we may judge from what we see in Madeira, of what may be seen, and if not seen, is felt, in the United States. I submit the following letter to my readers. It is from one of the most respectable men in Madeira.

“Religious Persecution in Madeira. We have just had a sort of miniature civil war. Dr. Rally, who has been converting the natives, is the original cause of it. He converted the woman they sentenced to death here not long since. Having been imprisoned for some time, the doctor was at last liberated, and resumed his habit of preaching to the people in his house; and it was not generally known, until within a short time, that he had made several hundred converts. On ascertaining this fact, the Governor, Don Oliva de Correa, at the request of the priests of the established church, who feared that the people might throw off their allegiance to the Roman Catholic church, appointed a country police to prevent the Protestants from assembling together. On Sunday week, the converts of St. Antonia de Sierra, while engaged in prayer, were assailed by the police, who broke in the door, knocked down the person who was officiating in the service, broke the benches, and dispersed the people, except four or five whom they took prisoners, and then proceeded to town. After going two miles, the police were overtaken by the populace, armed with pitchforks, rusty muskets, hoes, &c.

“The police were overpowered, and after being ducked in the river by the mob, they were tied together by the hands and feet and left on the road; the Protestants returning to the mountains with their rescued comrades. One of the police officers, who escaped from the mob, made his way to town and alarmed the government. Three hundred and fifty soldiers were immediately ordered out; the police were released from their confinement on the road-side, and the army marched to the villages of the ‘Rallyites.’ The dwellings were fired indiscriminately; several aged women, who could not fly to the mountains, were put to the torture, to make them reveal the places of concealment of the ‘heretics.’ The Catholic army then proceeded up the mountain to massacre the Protestants; but in passing the foot of the hill they were assailed by the Protestants above, who threw down stones and rocks upon them, killing eight soldiers and wounded forty others severely. As soon as the troops could be gathered after their fright and alarm, they opened a deadly fire upon the Protestants, chasing them five miles over the country, taking eighty or ninety prisoners, and killing and wounding several of the unfortunate wretches.

“The army marched their prisoners down to the sea-coast, to Machico, where they were put on board the Diana fifty gun frigate, and taken thence to Punchal. The vessel of war, Don Pedro, was left at anchor on Machico to awe the country, but another, the Vouga, which had been despatched to Lisbon with official accounts of the battle, ran aground and had to return for repairs. The Don Pedro will therefore go to Lisbon. The captives will be sent to Lisbon, I suppose for trial, some time next week. Dr. Rally, the cause of the disturbance, remains at his house unmolested, which is singular. I don’t think they will let him be quiet long. The Yorktown, American sloop-of-war, was here the other day. We have had a beautiful winter so far. About four hundred people have come here this year for the benefit of their health.”

The above letter was received in New York a few weeks ago, and needs no comment. If any Papist doubts it, he can easily write to Madeira and ascertain its truth or falsehood. Until then he has no reason to be surprised if American Protestants shall refuse to hold any connection or communion with them.

There is one feature in the letter to which I would call the attention of the reader. It shows not only the persecuting spirit of Popery, but the uniformity and consistency of their mode of operation. Go back to the former persecutions of the Popish church against the followers of Wickliffe and the Huguenots. The Wickliffites had to fly to the mountains for shelter; but they were hotly pursued and cut down by the swords of their fiendish persecutors. They were massacred and butchered, even in the fissures and caves of their native rocks and mountains. The Protestants in Madeira, only a few weeks ago, had to fly to the mountains from a bloodthirsty, Popish soldiery, headed by their priests and monks. There, at our very doors, and in a country with which we have treaties of friendship and alliance, American Protestants are butchered and slaughtered by Popish savages, under the mask of religion; and when the news of this transaction reached our own shores, what action has been taken upon the subject? Was there any indignation meeting called? Were there any resolutions passed? Were there any ambassadors appointed in New England or elsewhere to ascertain the cause of this bloody tragedy? Did our government demand any explanation from the authorities at Madeira? The writer is not aware of any. Our government is too much occupied with affairs of more importance, viz., Who shall be Secretary of State, who shall be Secretary of War, &c. The interest of morality seems a matter of minor importance with the “powers that be.” The blood of our Protestant fellow-citizens, the cries of their widows and orphans cannot reach the eye or ear of our grave law-makers. The question with them seems, not what our country may become, by the treachery and persecutions of Popery, which are witnessed along the whole line and circumference of our own coast—a question of far more importance to them seems to be, Who shall hold the fattest office, or whether Massachusetts or South Carolina is in the right on the subject of the imprisonment of a few citizens, belonging to the former, by the latter: while they witness all around, and in the very midst of them, Popish priests and bishops persecuting their fellow-citizens abroad, and gnawing at their very vitals at home. Fatal delusion this on the part of our government and people!

I have accused the Romish church and her priests of treachery, prevarication, and fraud, in all their dealings with Protestants. Their guilt has been established by proofs and evidences such as they cannot deny, viz., the canons of their church and their own admission. There is not a people in the world more anxious for correct information on all subjects than Americans; and it is, therefore, the more singular that they should be so indifferent to the all-important subject of Popery.

This, however, may be accounted for, in some measure. The moral monstrosities—if I may use such language—of Popery, are such, that it requires something more than ordinary faith to believe them, and a greater power of vision than generally falls to the lot of man, even to look at them. There are objects on which the human eye cannot rest without blinking, and upon which nothing but force or fear can induce it to fix its gaze for any length of time. It will always gladly turn from them, and rest upon something else. This may account for the fact that my adopted countrymen and fellow Protestants pay so little attention to the subject of Popery, or the hideous crimes and revolting deeds which it has ever taught, and its priests have ever practised.

I cannot otherwise account for the apparent indifference and unconcern of our government and people on the subject of our relations with Catholic countries, and the encouragement given to Popish emissaries in the United States. I have myself seen so much of Popery, that my mind shrinks from the further contemplation of its iniquities. I can assure my Protestant friends, that nothing but an inherent love of liberty, and a desire, as far as in my power, to ward off that blow which I see Popery treacherously aiming at Protestants and the Protestant religion in the United States, could ever have induced me to publish these pages; and, although I feel that I have already drawn too heavily on the indulgence of my readers, I cannot dismiss the subject without laying before them another evidence of Popish treachery, which occurred only a few weeks ago, on the island of Tahiti.

It seems that in 1822, or thereabouts, an individual, named M. Moerenhout, representing himself a native of Belgium, arrived in Valparaiso, and obtained a situation as clerk from Mr. Duester, the Dutch consul in that city. After some time, he gains the confidence of his employer, on whom, together with two more merchants, he prevailed to charter a vessel and send a cargo by her to the Society Islands, with himself as supercargo. They did so accordingly in 1829, and the worthy supercargo appropriated to his own use the whole profits of the voyage, and continued for some time longer upon the island, selling whisky, brandy, and other liquors. In 1834, (says the Quarterly Review, from which, together with other sources, I derived my information,) this gentleman departed for Europe, with a view of communicating with the French government; or rather, as I am informed upon good authority, to confer with the order of Jesuits in that country. On his way to Europe, this Moerenhout came to the United States, obtained some letters of introduction in New York and Boston, with which he proceeded to Washington; and on the strength of them, was appointed United States’ consul for Tahiti. With the title of consul-general of the United States, this diplomatist proceeds to France, and immediately—no doubt according to previous arrangement—entered into all the plans of the Jesuits for the extirpation of Protestantism in the Society Islands. He became the agent of the Propaganda in France, an institution placed under the patronage of St. Xavier. The duty of converting all the islands of the Pacific, from the South to the North Pole, is committed to this Propaganda, and a decretal to that effect was confirmed by the Pope on the 22d June, 1823. A bishop was appointed for Eastern Oceania, and several priests preceded him to the islands. Among these priests was an Irish catechist, by the name of Murphy. The bishop, it seems, established himself at Valparaiso, while the priests proceeded to Tahiti.

I here give an instance of the manner in which those Popish missionaries discharge their duties. You will find it the October number of the Foreign Quarterly Review. You may rely upon the statement.

The Popish missionaries have acted in the case just as I should have done myself when a Romish priest, in obedience to the instructions given by the infallible church.

“I always bear about me,” says the reverend Jesuit, Patailon, “a flask of holy water and another of perfume. I pour a little of the latter upon the child, and then, whilst its mother holds it out without suspicion, I change the flasks and sprinkle the water that regenerates, unknown to any one but myself.” This is what the holy church calls a pious fraud; and this is what the priests of Boston are doing, in a little different manner, to the children of Protestant mothers. In Tahiti, Popish priests make Christians by jugglery, under the very eye of the mother. In the United States they make Christians of Protestant children by ordering their Catholic nurses to bring them secretly to the priest’s house to be baptized.

But let us resume the subject of the Jesuit missionaries from the Propaganda in France to Tahiti. The Jesuits, always wary and cautious, deemed it necessary, before they landed upon the island in a body, to send one of their number in advance, in order to ascertain “how the land lay,” and what their prospects of success were; and accordingly, in 1836, the Irish Jesuit, Murphy, proceeded alone disguised as a carpenter, and landed safely at a place called Papeete. The unsuspecting inhabitants received the scoundrel among them just as Americans receive Jesuits in this country; and while he was acting the traitor, and clandestinely writing to Jesuits, they shared with him the hospitality of their tables—precisely as Americans have done, for the last fifty years, to other Murphies, in this country.

During this whole time that Murphy was on the island, working as a carpenter, he had secret interviews with the American consul, Moerenhout, until he succeeded in bringing into the island his brother missionaries. They could not, however, remain on the island without permission from the queen, and the payment of a certain sum of money. The queen refused them permission to remain, under any circumstances, fearing, as she well might, that some treason was contemplated against her government. The Jesuits called a meeting, and, under the patronage of the American consul, they urged their demand to remain, comparing themselves to St. Peter, and the Protestants to St. Simon, the magician. I use the language of the Quarterly.

I must here observe, in justice to our government, that the conduct of Moerenhout, United States’ consul at Tahiti, was promptly disavowed, and he was immediately removed from office. But, notwithstanding the improper interference of the American consul, they were ordered to leave the island. It is due to the Protestant missionaries to state, that they took no part whatever in the expulsion of these Jesuits; nor could they, in justice to themselves or to the cause of morality, interfere in preventing it. A French writer, speaking of the occupation of Tahiti, says: “The Catholic priests, instead of going to civilize barbarous nations and checking debauchery, seem, on the contrary, only desirous of becoming rivals to the Protestant ministers, and decoying away their proselytes.” As soon as the expelled Jesuits arrived in France, one of them proceeded to Rome, to consult with his holiness the Pope; the result of which was, an immediate order to a French captain, named Dupetit Thouars, who was then stationed at Valparaiso, to proceed to Tahiti, and demand reparation for a supposed indignity to France.

Here we see the influence of the Pope, and an evidence of Jesuit intrigue. In what consisted the alleged indignity to France? Had not the queen of Tahiti the right to receive or refuse those Jesuit missionaries, if she had evidence that they were spies among her people? If it appeared clear to her that the object of those reverend intriguers’ visit was only to overthrow her government, and to decoy away from the path of virtue and religion both herself and her subjects, what right had Louis Phillippe or the French government to look upon this as an indignity to the French nation? The fact is, if the whole truth were known, Louis Phillippe knew but little of this affair, and his minister for foreign affairs, or some other member of his cabinet, was either imposed upon or bribed by Jesuits.

A statement of the difficulties, into which the hitherto peaceful island of Tahiti has been thrown by Jesuits, could not fail to be interesting to my readers; but, as the whole affair is to be found in the Foreign Quarterly, I refer the public to that work. I cannot, however, dismiss the subject, without asking the reader’s particular attention to the Irish Jesuit, Murphy, who figures so conspicuously in the transaction. A brief view of the conduct of this reverend spy cannot fail to have a good effect, and must tend greatly to remove that delusion under which the Protestants of the United States have so long labored.

I have been recently conversing with a very intelligent member of the Massachusetts legislature, on the subject of Jesuitical intrigue. I stated to him that it was a common practice among them, ever since the formation of that society, to keep spies in all Protestant countries, under various disguises and in different occupations. But though I had given him such proofs as could scarcely fail to satisfy any man, yet he replied, as American Protestants generally do, on all such occasions, “Those times are gone by. The Romish church is not at all now, what it was in the days you speak of.” But, when the fact was made plain to him—when he learned from authority, admitting of no doubt, that only a few weeks ago, a Jesuit, and an Irishman too, crept into Tahiti in the disguise of a carpenter, and continued to work there, in that character, until he laid a proper foundation for the overthrow of the Protestant religion on that island, his incredulity seemed to vanish; the cloud, which so long darkened his vision, evaporated into thin air; and my impression is, that he no longer thinks our country safe, unless something is done to exclude forever all Papists, without distinction, from any participation in the making and administration of our laws.

This Murphy, to whom allusion is made, appeared in great distress when he arrived among the natives of Tahiti. He seemed entirely indifferent upon the subject of religion; all he wanted, apparently, was employment. This was procured for him among the simple natives by the American consul, both of whom soon united themselves together, according to some previous arrangement; and, while they were “breaking bread” with the natives, they were laying plans for their destruction. A blow was aimed at their national and moral existence, and the death of both has nearly been the result. Thus we see a harmless and inoffensive people, only just rescued from a savage state by the laudable efforts of Protestant missionaries, partly thrown back again into their original condition by infidel Popish priests, whose “god is their belly,” whose religion is allegiance to their king, the Pope, and whose sports and pastimes consist in debauching the good and virtuous of every country.

The flourishing condition of Tahiti, before the Jesuits found access to it, is well known in this country. Peace, plenty, and religion flourished among its people—all produced by the efforts of our Protestant missionaries. But what sad changes have Jesuits effected among them! By their intrigues they have caused a difficulty between Tahiti and France. The French government fancied itself insulted; false representations were made by the Jesuits; and, with the aid of their brethren in France, the government was deceived and the island blockaded, until reparation was made by the inoffensive queen, Pomare. I will quote an instance of the conduct of the French—all Roman Catholics, and under the advice of Jesuits—after they entered Tahiti. It is taken from the Foreign Quarterly Review of October, and not denied by the French themselves.

“After persuading four chiefs, who were authorized to act in the absence of the queen, to affix their names to a document, asking ‘French protection,’ a boat was sent by the French captain, Dupetit Thouars, to a place called Eimeo, with a peremptory order for queen Pomare to sign it within twenty-four hours.

“It was evening before the boat reached the place whither Pomare had retired with her family. Her situation was one in which it is the custom for women to receive the most anxious and respectful attention from all of the opposite sex, especially if they call themselves gentlemen. She was every moment expected to give birth to a child; and, according to custom, had come to lie-in at Eimeo, leaving Paraita, who basely betrayed his trust, re gent in her absence. On learning the demand made by Thouars, the queen, surprised and alarmed, sent for Mr. Simpson, the missionary of the island, and a long and painful consultation ensued. Armed resistance was obviously impossible. The only alternative was between dethronement and protection. Pomare at first determined to choose the former, but her friends pressing round her, represented that Great Britain, the court of appeal whither all the grievances of the world are carried for redress, would certainly interfere; that subjection would be but temporary, and that she would ultimately triumph. Stretched on her couch, in the first pangs of labor, the unfortunate queen withstood all supplications until near morning. Mr. Simpson observes, that this was indeed ‘a night of tears.’ Many hours were passed in silence, interrupted only by the sobs of the suffering Pomare.

“Let us leave her for a while, and turn to consider in what manner the French buccaneer and his crew passed the same night. We refer to no inimical statement. Our authority is a letter which went the round of all the Paris papers, written by an officer on board the Reine Blanche, who did not seem to perceive any thing at all immoral in what he related. His intention was merely to excite the envy of his fellow-countrymen by detailing the delights that, were to be found in the new Cythera of Bougainville. We dare not follow him into his details. It will be enough to state that more than a hundred women were enticed on board the ship, and there compelled to remain all night, under pretence that it would be dangerous to row them back in the dark, Some were taken to the officers’ cabin, others were sent to the youthful midshipmen, the rest to the crew. When this account made its appearance, the government, alarmed at the effect it might produce, published an official declaration in the ‘Moniteur,’ (30 Mars,) addressed to ‘French mothers,’ denying the truth of the statement. But M. Guizot, or whoever directed this disavowal, merely argued from the silence of his own despatches—if they were silent—and not long before, in the voyage of Dumont d’Urville, published by royal ‘ordon-nance,’ a description of conduct, still more atrocious, had been given to the world.

“Towards morning, the sufferings of Pomare increasing, her resolution began to fail her, and at length she signed the fatal document. Then bursting into a flood of tears, she took her eldest son, aged six years, in her arms, and exclaimed, ‘My child, my child, I have signed away your birthright!’ In another hour, with almost indescribable pangs, she was delivered of her fourth child. Meanwhile the boat which carried the news of her yielding, sped for the port of Papeete. The sea was rough, and the wind threatened every moment to shift. The white sail was beheld afar off by the look-out on the mast of the Reine Blanche, and it was thought impossible she could reach by the appointed time. Thouars, however, troubled himself but little about all these things. He was fixed in his resolve, that if the answer did not arrive before twelve he would bombard Papeete. The guns were loaded, gun-boats stationed along the shore; and whilst the frightened inhabitants crowded down to the beach, beseeching, with uplifted hands, that their dwellings might be spared, the ruthless pirate, bearing the commission of the king of France, was giving his orders, and burning to emulate the exploits of Stopford and Napier at St. Jean d’Acre, by destroying a few white-washed cottages on the shore of a little island in the Pacific. Hero! worthy the grand cross of the legion of honor which was bestowed on him for this achievement! Worthy the sword raised by farthing subscriptions among ‘haters of the English,’ which was presented to him for so distinguished an exploit! What exultation must have filled his breast as he beheld the white sail of the boat scud for a moment past the entrance of the port; and what sorrow, when, by a skilful tack, it bore manfully along the very skirts of the breakers, and rushed through the hissing and boiling waters into the placid bay of Papeete, exactly one half hour before mid-day!

“We must pass rapidly over the arrangements which followed. The treaty of protection professed to secure the external sovereignty to the French, but to leave the internal to the queen. The former, however, were empowered ‘to take whatever measures they might judge necessary for the preservation of harmony and peace.’ When we learn that the ever recurring M. Moerenhout was appointed royal commissioner to carry out this treaty, we at once perceive that Pomare had in reality ceased to reign. How this base person employed his power may be discovered from the fact, that it became his constant habit, when he desired to obtain the signature of the queen to any distasteful document, to vituperate her in the lowest language, and shake his fist in her face.

“It has been asserted, in this country and elsewhere, that the passive resistance of the queen and people to the proper establishment of the protectorate, did not begin until the arrival of Mr. Pritchard on the 25th of February, 1843. The object of this has been to attribute all the subsequent difficulties experienced by the French to him. But the fact is well known, that before he made his appearance the queen had written to the principal European powers, stating that she had been compelled against her will to accept the protectorate of France. On the 9th of February also, a great public meeting, presided at by the queen, was held, in which speeches of the most violent description were made. It was resolved, however, that by no overt act the French should be furnished with an excuse for further arbitrary proceedings. The determination come to, was to write for the opinion of Great Britain. The morning after this meeting Moerenhout went to the queen and acted in a manner so gross and insulting, that she determined to complain to Sir Thomas Thompson, of the Talbot frigate, who promised her protection. All this happened, as we have seen, before the arrival of Mr. Pritchard, who, in truth, instead of proving a firebrand, introduced moderation and caution into the councils of Pomare. Sir Toup Nicolas, it is true, commanding the Tiudictive, which brought our consul to Tahiti, did go so far, despising some of the forms which were perhaps necessary, as threaten that unless the French ceased to molest British subjects, he would use force to compel them. He is said even to have cleared for action. When we consider what was daily passing under his eyes, there was some excuse for this gallant captain’s warmth. Setting aside the insults offered to our own countrymen, he was the spectator of constant tyrannical conduct towards the queen. Messrs. Reine and Vrignaud, under whose name all this was done, were but instruments in the hands of the sagacious Moerenhout. The following letter of queen Pomare, hitherto, we believe, unpublished, will throw some light on his conduct. It is addressed to Toup Nicolas, who took measures to fulfil the wishes it contains.

Pagfae, March 5, 1844.

‘O Commodore, ‘I make known unto you that I have oftentimes been troubled by the French consul, and on account of his threatening language I have left my house. His angry words to me have been very strong. I have hitherto only verbally told you of his ill-actions towards me; but now I clearly make these known to you, O Commodore, that the French consul may not trouble me again. I look to you to protect me now at the present time, and you will seek the way how to do it.

‘This is my wish, that if M. Moerenhout, and all other foreigners, want to come to me, they must first make known to me their desire, that they may be informed whether it is, or is not, agreeable to me to see them.

‘Health and peace to you,

‘O servant of the Queen of Britain, (Signed)

‘Pomare,

‘Queen of Tahiti, Mourea, &c. &c.’

“During the time that elapsed between the establishment of the protectorate and the third visit of Dupetit Thouars to Tahiti, the only overt act which the French could complain of was the hoisting of a fancy flag by the queen over her house. Whatever difficulties existed at the outset, had been in reality overcome in spite of the ‘intriguing Mr. Pritchard.’ Even M. Guizot has declared in his place in the chamber of deputies: ‘There existed on the admiral’s arrival none of those difficulties which are not to be surmounted by good conduct, by prudence, by perseverance, by time, or which require the immediate application of force.’ Nevertheless, on the first of November, 1843, our buccaneering admiral entered the harbor of Papeete, and wrote immediately to inform the queen that unless she pulled down the flag she had hoisted, he would do so for her, and at the same time depose her. In spite of his threats, however, she refused compliance; and Lieutenant D’Aubigny landed at the head of five hundred men, to occupy the island. The speech in which this person inaugurated French dominion in Tahiti was one of the richest specimens of bombast and braggadocia ever uttered.

“Much merriment might be excited by its repetition, but it has already caused the sides of Europe to ache, more than once. Suffice it to say, that the deposed queen fled on board the British ship of war, the Dublin, commanded by Capt. Tucker, and Papeete was, for many days, like a town taken by storm. Drunkenness, debauchery, rioting, filled its streets, and every means were taken to undo what the missionaries had, by half a century’s labor, accomplished.”

The above is another melancholy evidence of the spirit of Popery; and if any thing can open the eyes of our people to a sense of danger from it, this evidence cannot fail to do so. I lay it down as a truth—though I may be censured for the boldness of such an assertion—that there is not a man of common sense, or ordinary penetration, who does not see, at a glance, that our danger as a nation, and our morals as a people, are eminently periled by the continuance of Popery amongst us. There are certain truths which need not be proved; they prove themselves. Like the sun, which is seen by its own light, they carry with them their own evidence; and, among those self-evident truths, I see none more clear or more lucid, than that Popery, which has taken root in this country, will—if not torn up and totally uprooted before long—dash to pieces the whole frame of our republic. Sympathizers, Puseyites, and all other such bastard Protestants, may think differently. Be it so. Valueless as my opinion may be, let it be herein recorded, that I entirely disagree with them.

It seems that another speck of Popery is just making its appearance on the north-west horizon of our national firmament. It appears, by accounts very recently received from Oregon, that the Propaganda in Rome has sent out a company of Jesuits and nuns to that territory. Popish priests and Jesuits seldom travel without being accompanied by nuns: they add greatly to their comforts while on their pilgrimage for the advancement of morality and chastity. Hitherto the occupants of Oregon have advanced quietly. They have adopted a temporary form of government, established courts of law, and such municipal regulations as they deemed best calculated to forward their common interest. But the modern serpent, Jesuitism, has already entered their garden: the tree of Popery has been planted: it is now in blossom, and will soon be seen in full bearing. It is truly a melancholy reflection to think that this pest; Popery, should find access to all places and to all people. One year will not pass over us, before the aspect of things in Oregon will be entirely changed. These Jesuits who arrived there haye been preceded by some Popish spy—some reverend Irish Murphy, in the capacity of carpenter, or perhaps horse-jockey, has gone before them, and has been laying plans for their reception. I venture to say, it will be discovered, at no distant day, that all the good which our Protestant missionaries have done there will soon be undone by Popish agents. They will commence, as they have done in Tahiti, by causing some panic among the resident settlers. They will find in Oregon, as well as in our United States, some functionary who may want their aid; and he, like many of the unprincipled functionaries among ourselves, will give them his patronage in exchange.

Liberty has, in reality, but few votaries among officeholders, in comparison with Popery; and this is one of the chief causes of the great advances which the latter is making, and has been making, especially for the last six or eight years. Look around you, fellow-citizens, and you will scarcely find an individual in office, from the President to the lowest office-holder, possessed of sufficient moral courage to raise his voice against Popery. But justice to Americans requires me to say, that in this the great mass of the people are without blame—for I cannot call certain leading, unprincipled politicians, the people. The first steps which foreign priests and Jesuits have taken, in disturbing the harmony of our republican system of government, might have been easily checked; but those who have represented the people, and who held offices of honor and emolument, were not, and will not be, disturbed by a moment’s reflection on a proper sense of their duty. The whole responsibility of the gross outrages offered to our Protestant country, by Popish priests and Papal allies, rests upon our representatives in Congress. They could, if they would, have long since checked Popery; and it is now high time that the people should take this matter into their own hands, and so alter the constitutions of their respective states, as to exclude Papists from any positive or negative participation in the creation or execution of their laws.

Jesuits calculate with great accuracy upon the selfishness of man: they know that, generally speaking, it is paramount to all other considerations. Artful, intriguing, avaricious, and more licentious themselves than any other body of men in the world, they soon discover all that is vulnerable in the American character, and take advantage of it. They discover that popular applause is greatly coveted by Americans; and this is the reason why we see established among us so many repeal associations. The writer understands that several of those associations are now formed in Oregon; and it was at their request that the Pope had sent out Jesuits and nuns amongst them. Repeal is looked upon as the great lever by which the whole political world can be turned upside down. Its members meet in large numbers, in order to show the gullible Americans the consequent extent of their power, and the great advantage which some office-hunter may gain by bringing them over to his views. The bait has taken well hitherto; but as we have—solemnly attested by the sign manual of the Pope himself—seen his object in causing to be established repeal societies, the American, who continues hereafter to encourage them, deserves the execration of every lover of freedom. The Pope tells Americans, through his agent, O’Connell, what the design and objects of all the movements of Papists in the United States are; and I trust, when Americans see them in their true colors, they will sink deeply into their hearts.

Hear, then, I entreat you, Americans, the language of O’Connell, as the Pope’s agent, as uttered by him in the Loyal National Repeal Association in Dublin, Ireland. It is addressed to Irish Catholics in the United States. Where you have the electoral franchise, give your votes to none but those who will assist you in so holy a struggle. You should do all in your power to carry out the pious intentions of his holiness the Pope. This is plain language; there is no misunderstanding it. It is ad-dressed to Papists, whether in Oregon or the United States, and what are the pious intentions of the Pope? I will tell you. I understand those matters probably better than you do. The object is, in the first place, to extirpate Protestantism; and, secondly, to overthrow this republican government, and place in our executive chair a Popish king. This is the sole design of all the ramifications of the various repeal clubs throughout the length and breadth of the United States and its territories. O’Connell—the greatest layman living—is the nuncio of the Pope for carrying this vast and holy design into execution. Will Americans submit to this? Will they again attend repeal associations? Does not every meeting of the repeal party impliedly make an assault upon our constitution? Is not this foreign demagogue endeavoring to pollute our ballot-box? and will you any longer trust an Irish Papist, who is the fettered slave of the Pope? Aye! a greater slave than the African, the Mussulman, or the Chinese. Never before was there such a combination formed for the destruction of American liberty, as that of Irish repealers, and never before was such an insidious attempt made to pollute the morals of the wives and daughters of Americans, as that which Jesuits have for years made, and are now making, by the introduction of priests and nunneries among them.

Repeal unchains the loud blasts of conspiracy, and opens the bloody gates of sedition; yet this Repeal lives in the very midst of us. I can almost hear, while I am writing these lines, the wild shouts of its lawless members; and to the shame and everlasting disgrace of Americans, the sons of free and noble sires, there are many of them, at the very repeal meetings to which I allude, aiding and abetting them in aiming their mad and wild blows at liberty, while she sleeps sweetly, perhaps dreaming that she was safe, with the spirits of Washington, Warren, and others, watching over her slumbers. Sleep on, fair goddess! Popish traitors cannot, shall not disturb thee. American Republicans will not let them; and to you, Protestant foreigners, I would most earnestly appeal. Let us stand by those noble patriots. We know what tyranny is! We felt many of its pains and penalties. We know what Popery is! It has desolated our native land 1 It has made barren our fairest fields! It has sealed up from our parents, our brothers, sisters, and relatives, the eternal fountain of life! It is drunk with the blood of the saints! It has closed against us the gates of liberty! It has rendered us strangers to its blessings, and it was not until we landed upon these shores, that we were first permitted to inhale its fragrance or taste its fruits. But now that we enjoy all these blessings, let us thank God for them. Let us be grateful to Americans for receiving us among them, and prove by our deeds that we are not unworthy of the kind and hospitable reception which they gave us, by being foremost amongst them in resisting and warding off the blows which that enemy of mankind, the Pope, and his foul-mouthed nuncio, Daniel O’Connell, with his Irish repealers, are striking at American freedom! They shall not succeed. The slaves of a Pope cannot succeed.

“The sensual and the dark rebel in vain,
Slaves by their own compulsion!
In mad game They burst their manacles, and wear the name
Of freedom, graven on a heavier chain
O Liberty! with profitless endeavor
Have I pursued thee many a weary hour;—
But thou nor swell’st the victor’s strain, nor ever
Didst breathe thy soul in forms of human power.
Alike from all, howe’er they praise thee—
Nor prayer, nor boastful name delays thee—
Alike from priestcraft’s harpy minions,
And factious blasphemy’s obscener slaves,
Thou speedest on thy subtle pinions,
The guide of horseless winds, and playmate of the waves!
And there I felt thee!—on that sea-cliffs verge,
Whose pines, scarce travelled by the breeze above,
Had made one murmur with the distant surge;—
Yea, while I stood and gazed, my temples bare,
And shot ray being through earth, sea, and air,
Possessing all things with intensest love,
O Liberty! my spirit felt thee there!”

Continued from The Papal System – VII. The Pope Claims to be Lord of Kings and Nations – Part 3. The Excommunication of Queen Elizabeth.

As this ecclesiastical legislature has a wider reputation and influence in the Church of Rome than any convention of prelates known to history, and as it interests Protestants more than any assemblage of Catholic bishops ever called together, a brief sketch of the synod is indispensable to the completeness of this work. The Council of Trent acted on the baseless assumption that

In the fifteenth chapter of the Acts of the Apostles there is an account given of a consultation between the apostles and elders about circumcision in its bearings upon Gentile converts. The conference ended in a decree which was introduced in these words: “It seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us, to lay upon you no greater burden than these necessary things.” The apostles, of course, were inspired men, qualified by the Spirit of God to write Scripture, and give infallible decisions about everything pertaining to the government and instruction of the Church of God. From this record of the proceedings of inspired apostles at Jerusalem, Romish ecclesiastics have found the doctrine that their uninspired bishops, convened in a General Council, are led by the Holy Spirit in everything; and, as a result, that their decrees are the decisions of the Fountain of Wisdom, incapable of error, and invested with perpetual force. Acting upon this conviction, the decree of a General Council, for ages, begins thus: “The sacred and holy (Ecumenical and General Synod of _________, lawfully assembled, in the Holy Spirit.” There is no more authority for the assumption that the Comforter leads a Catholic Council to right conclusions because he discharged this office for the apostles, than there would be to imagine that he would enable it to make Holy Scripture whenever a synod tried its hand at writing “Revelations,” because he gave this power to the apostles. Nothing has made great synods look more ridiculous than this, even in the opinion of some Catholics.

At Trent, the idea that the Spirit governed the council was a standing joke with many of the witty fathers. As nothing could be done without orders from Rome, it became a common proverb among the bishops that: “The synod was guided by the Holy Spirit, sent thither from time to time from Rome in a cloak-bag.”

The Bishop of “Five Churches,” one of the leading men in the synod, declared that: “The Holy Spirit had nothing to do in that assembly; that all the counsels given there proceeded from human policy, and tended only to maintain the pope’s immoderate and shameful domination; that answers were expected from Rome as from the oracles of Delphos and Dodona (sarcasm); that the Holy Spirit, which they boast doth govern their councils, was sent from thence in a postilion’s cloak-bag, which, in case of any inundations, could not come thither (a thing most ridiculous), until the waters were assuaged. So it came to pass that the Spirit was not upon the waters, as it is in Genesis, but by the waters. Oh, monstrous, extraordinary madness!”

The Causes which led to the calling of the Council of Trent

The court of Rome, in the early part of the sixteenth century, was flagrantly corrupt. No language could be too strong to describe its falsehood and treachery, and its accursed love of money, its sumptuous extravagance, its loathsome licentiousness, its fierce despotism, and its unrelenting cruelty. Its turpitude was known over the world, and shocked the moral sense of all Christian nations; so that, wherever the name of Jesus was breathed with reverence, there was one universal demand, that there should be a reformation in the Church, in its head and in its members. Princes were disquieted on their thrones by these demands; popes shook in the chair of the Fisherman as they rung in their ears; and all Europe felt the first vibrations of a coming earthquake, that would shake, and eventually overturn, the throne of the Man of Sin, and give an impetus to liberty and intelligence that would reach the ends of the earth, and the limits of the empire of-time.

St. Bernard writes to Pope Eugenius: “Your court receives good men, but makes them not: lewd men thrive there; the good pine and fall away.” This statement was true to the letter of the court of Clement VII. Indeed his predecessor, A drian VI., admitted that “the mischief proceeded from the court of Rome and the ecclesiastical order,” which had provoked Germany, and excited heart-burnings in all Christian countries.

Dante, in his visit to the infernal regions; represents himself as seeing a pope in a part of hell where exquisite torture was inflicted, of whom he says:

Such, in Dante’s day, was the common opinion among thinking men about several popes. The conviction grew stronger towards the sixteenth century; and, in its first half, the universal remedy for these evils was a general council. As Luther commenced his great work, the papal system, the work of ages, and the pride of millions, tottered to its underworld foundations, the wildest excitement rolled over Europe; a vast upheaval threatened to overturn German thrones, and the foundations of society in that land. Its princes, Diet and emperor, time and again, demanded a council, and other countries united in the urgent appeal. Clement VII. is frightened by the cry. He is of illegitimate birth, a stain which, in his day, was regarded as a disqualification for Peter’s chair. And he is charged with securing the popedom by unhallowed means. A general council might depose him, as Constance served John XXIII. But he is compelled, in 1531, to promise a synod which he never intended to gather.

At first, Mantua is the proposed place of meeting for the council, then Piacenza. But, as in either place the synod would be wholly at the mercy of the pontiff, the Germans made resistance, and insisted that it should be held in their country. There was, however, no council till Clement was in his grave. After an agitation running over many years and all Christendom, it was at last decided by Paul III. to call a council.

Those who were invited to the Council.

Paul summoned all patriarchs, archbishops, bishops, abbots, and those who, by privilege, should appear in a general synod; also, the emperor, king of France, and all other kings, dukes and princes; and, should they be unable to appear in person, they were to send representatives.

The council was most anxious to have the Protestants represented in it; and, to induce them to appear at its meetings, it sent them several safe-conducts, whose proffered protection they obstinately refused. They demanded that it should be held in Germany; that the bishops should be released from their oath of obedience to the pope; that he, neither in person nor by legates, should preside in the council; and that, if they came to it, they should be entitled to vote as well as to deliberate; and, failing to secure these requisites of justice, they utterly refused to take any part in the discussions of the approaching great synod. The council met December 13th, 1545, at

Trent is in the southern part of the Tyrol, on the left bank of the Adige, in a beautiful valley, surrounded by lofty hills. It is nearly fifty miles north of Verona. It is an Austrian possession. Its cathedral was commenced in the beginning of the thirteenth century, and it is a fine architectural work. The Church of Santa Maria Maggiore stands on the site of the structure in which the Council of Trent held its meetings.

The Synod.

Its presiding officers were the legates, Cardinal John Maria de Monte, Cardinal Marcellus Cervinus, and Cardinal Reginald Pole. Paul III. gave these cardinals their positions.

At the session held on the 7th of January, 1546, there were present, beside the legates and the cardinal of Trent, four archbishops, twenty-eight bishops, three abbots and four generals of religious orders. Of the archbishops, two were titular, that is bishops without flocks. One of these was Robert Venante, a Scotchman, Archbishop of Armagh in Ireland, who, though nearsighted, had a splendid reputation in Italy as the “best post-rider in the world.” These two bishops had lived for years on papal alms, and they gratefully came to Trent to vote for their benefactor’s measures.

Only the ambassador of the king of the Romans was present at the first session, At a later period every state of any note belonging to the Catholic Church was represented by secular ambassadors in the synod, who made speeches in that body, and took an active part in its affairs. What a scanty delegation of bishops to legislate for the universal Church in a general council.

The modes of transacting Business adopted by the Council.

A special congregation or committee was appointed to examine every question, and frame decrees for the general congregation, in which all were free to express their sentiments, and fit the subject under discussion for formal proclamation as a decree or canon. A session was the meeting when the perfected work received the final vote, and the solemn sanction of the synod as a part of the code of the Catholic Church.

In a congregation the prelates wore caps; in a session they appeared with miters in all the pomp of episcopal dignity.

The right of speaking in the synod in 1551 was given to the pope’s representatives first; the emperor’s spoke next; the bishops of Louvain sent by the queen next; after them the divines who came with the electors; secular clergymen in the order of their promotion next; and after them the friars.

The bishops of the council were a jury; inferior clergymen were the lawyers who made speeches; and after their addresses had exhausted the debate, the bishops were generally ready to vote. Of the powerful and learned speeches delivered in the synod, few came from the bishops.

The council decided that the Holy Scriptures might be quoted as authorities, the traditions of the apostles, the decisions of councils, constitutions, the authority of popes and holy fathers, and the consent of the Catholic Church.

The Position of the Pope in the Council of Trent.

The pontiffs watched the deliberations of the synod with unwearied vigilance; they viewed its every movement with unhidden jealousy. They used every effort manly and mean to regulate its entire affairs, insignificant and important. If any father was troublesome, means must be used to keep him quiet. If fearless bishops at any time were too numerous, good prelates, who would speak and vote as they were instructed, came speedily from Rome or from some other part of Italy. If the council became conscious of their manhood and their episcopal rank, the synod was threatened with suspension or removal; or the council was disbanded for.a time; or it was transferred to some Italian city where the pope was all powerful, or where the persuasive eloquence of an adjacent inquisition would suggest. submission to papal dictation.

Every bishop in the Council of Trent at his consecration had to take this oath:

“I., N. C., bishop, will henceforward bear true faith to St. Peter, and to the holy apostolic Roman Church, to my lord the Pope N. and his successors, who shall enter canonically. I will not be a means, either by word or deed, that he may lose either life or member, or be taken prisoner; I will not reveal any counsel he may impart unto me, either by letter or message which may be any way damageable to him; I will help to defend and maintain the papacy of the Church of Rome against all the world, and the rules of the holy fathers.”

Each bishop in the synod of Trent was bound hand and foot by this oath, to obey the successor of St. Peter. And the pontiff sent orders to his legates who presided over the council, about the business which was to be pushed forward, or that which was to be excluded, and nothing was formally discussed which had not his approval. He was master of the entire deliberations of Trent.

To make his authority undoubted he employed ecclesiastics, who watched every father at the synod: at the head of these men, for some time was Simoneta, the confidential manager of the council for his Holiness. Simoneta, with other agents, employed a number of needy bishops who could jest soberly, and by provoking independent men, make them look ridiculous, while they remained unmoved themselves. These artful operators often broke up congregations of the synod by their sober jokes at the expense of worthy bishops. By their sarcastic interruptions and sneering criticisms at the conclusion of an opposition address, they often created the greatest confusion and, secured the adjournment of a debate which was becoming troublesome to the friends of the pontiff. And as the hirelings of Simoneta were numerous and needy, and as his funds were regularly and largely replenished from Rome, he could silence most opponents, or so tarnish their reputation or orthodoxy by private slanders, that their influence was destroyed.

In 1563, the Emperor Ferdinand wrote Pius IV. to give liberty to the council, of which it had been deprived by three causes: first, everything must be managed at Rome before being presented to the synod; the second difficulty was, that only the presidents could make propositions in the council; and the last was, that prelates bent on the pope’s glory rendered their brethren powerless. This difficulty was occasioned by the grave jesters who aided the holy spirit which guided Catholic councils to reach proper conclusions. It can he easily seen that a council whose members were bound to the pope by solemn oaths, whose propositions must all come from his legates, and whose bishops were bribed, browbeaten, or ridiculed, was a mere expression of the pope’s will.

One of the Decrees of Trent.

“That the memory of paternal incontinency may be banished as far as possible from places consecrated to God, which purity and holiness most especially become, it shall not be lawful for the sons of clerks, who are not born from lawful wedlock, to hold, in those churches, in which their fathers have, or have had an ecclesiastical benefice, any benefice whatsoever, even though a different one, nor to minister in any way in the said churches, nor to have pensions out of the fruits of benefices which their fathers hold, or have at another time held. And if a father and a son shall be found, at this present time, to hold benefices in the same church, the son shall be compelled to resign his benefice, or to exchange it for another out of that church, within the space of three months; otherwise he shall, by the very fact, be deprived thereof.”

A law in any Protestant church forbidding the sons of its clergy, born out of lawful wedlock, to enjoy a benefice jointly with their fathers, would have a ring of iniquity too loud and clear to be misapprehended.

Controversies in the Council.

Men differed in opinions, in feelings, and in proposed acts, And not a few instances of apparent harmony were but compulsory submissions.

The cup (of the Communion ceremony) excited a deeply interesting and prolonged discussion in Trent. It may be safely asserted that three-fourths of the Catholics in Europe were in favor of having it given with the bread. And this preponderance was nearly as great among the clergy as among the laity. In 1562, the ambassador of the Duke of Bavaria, in the council, demanded the cup for the laity in the name of his master, declaring that Paul III. had granted it to Germany; and he insisted in a spirit of honest earnestness that it should not be refused. The ambassadors of the Emperor Ferdinand about the same time presented a paper to the council, in which they declared, that there were Catholics in Hungary, Austria, Moravia, Silesia, Carinthia, Carniola, Styria, Bavaria, Suevia, and other parts of Germany, who desired the cup with great zeal, In Hungary, said they, “They force the priests to give them the cup by taking away their goods, and threatening to kill them;” and in manly words they appealed for the chalice given by Jesus to all. The legates themselves were strongly inclined to yield to the appeal, and grant the cup to Germany. Pius IV. was equally disposed to gratify one of the most popular desires that ever agitated the Catholic Church. Nor was Charles IX., King of France, a whit less anxious for the cup than the Catholic Emperor and princes of Germany: with him and his people the desire amounted to a passion, and on many occasions it was urged with vehemence on the bishops at Trent.

The Council of Constance, in 1414, had first changed the character of the Supper, by keeping back the chalice: the date was too recent, and the change too senseless to make the people calm, when another council gave them an opportunity to restore the honored forms of other days. Against the change, the talented but unscrupulous party who governed the council, urged that if the Holy Spirit guided councils, he ruled at Constance, and it would be impiety to reverse the decree he inspired there; besides, they said, many demands were made, and if the synod began: to yield, it would be difficult to find a stopping place. They brought in Scripture in abundance to support their positions; they instanced the case in St. John, where it is said: “He that eateth this bread shall live forever;” they pointed to the disciples going to Emmaus, who only knew Jesus in the breaking of bread, not in the drinking of wine: to St. Paul, ready to suffer shipwreck, who blesses bread, but speaks not of wine; to the Lord’s Prayer, in which daily bread is asked without any allusion to wine; to the manna which represents the Eucharist, and yet has no drink in it; to Jonathan, who tasted the honey, but did not drink.

James Payva, a Portuguese, declared that when Christ gave the bread to his disciples first, they were all laymen, but when he ordained them priests, in these words: “Do this in remembrance of me,” he then gave them the cup. And the cup was therefore only for priests, while the bread was for all.

Another argued in the council that “the cup being the blood of Christ might fall on the ground, or hang on the beard of a layman; that the vessels to hold it would not be kept clean, and that giving it to a layman would make him the equal of a priest.” But reasons of this character weighed little; and when the discussion was exhausted there were three opinions, one that it should not be granted, another that the cup should be permitted with conditions, and still another that it should be referred to the pope. And “fifty of the most intelligent persons in the synod maintained that the cup should be conceded with some cautions.” And when the question was to be decided, it was found that it could not receive the number required to pass it as a doctrine, it could only receive the vote needed for a decree of reformation.

It was a maxim in Trent, that “a decree of faith could not be made if a considerable part contradicted; but to establish a decree of reformation, a major part of voices was sufficient.” And the cup resolution, though recognized as an article of faith, owing to the impossibility of passing it in its true character for lack of requisite votes, was introduced as a decree of reformation, and by this artifice it became the permanent law of the Catholic Church, and a lasting insult to Jesus.

Claims of the Clergy over Secular Affairs.

Perhaps the most exciting controversy in the Council of Trent was aroused by the presentation of certain articles giving the clergy supremacy in many affairs purely civil. One of these articles declared that ecclesiastical persons should not be judged in a secular court; another, that the civil magistrate shall not interfere in any spiritual case, such as one about matrimony, heresy, patronage, benefices, tithes, ecclesiastical fees, temporal jurisdiction of churches, and other cases civil, criminal, or mixed, belonging to the Ecclesiastical Court; another, that laymen shall not appoint ecclesiastical judges; another declares that the ecclesiastical judge shall be free from secular authority in imposing or revoking excommunications, in summoning whom he will, and in pronouncing sentence of condemnation on him, and in having officers to execute it; another forbids the Emperor, or any other prince, to interfere with ecclesiastical causes or persons by edicts, or otherwise, and commands all sovereigns to lend the secular arm to execute ecclesiastical decisions; another declares that the letters, citations and sentences of ecclesiastical judges, especially of the Court of Rome, shall be immediately executed by all rulers without any consent from the civil authorities. These articles, no doubt, contained the sentiments of three-fourths of the fathers at Trent. In many countries, the articles had been laws at work for centuries, if not fully developed, at least in a modified form. But they raised an immense commotion in every court in Europe, and most of all in Catholic courts. The ambassadors at Trent, were indignant at their presentation, and took the earliest occasion to denounce them.

De Ferrieres, one of the ambassadors of France, among other things, told the council, that their proposed reforms of princes were not the plaster of Isaiah, to heal the wound, but of Ezekiel, to make it raw, though healed before; that these additions of excommunications and curses, were without example in the ancient Church; that their articles had no other aim than to take away the liberty of the French Church, and offend the majesty of the most Christian kings, who, by the example of Constantine, Justinian, and other emperors, have made many ecclesiastical laws. He said, the king marveled at two things: one, that they, the fathers, adorned with so great ecclesiastical power, assembled only to restore church discipline, not regarding this, should bind themselves to reform those whom they ought to obey, though they were stiffnecked; another, that they should think they can and ought, without any admonition, excommunicate and anathematize kings who are given by God to men, which ought not to be done to any ordinary man, though persevering in a most grievous offense.

He said that Michael, the archangel, durst not curse the devil, and yet they were wholly conversant with maledictions against kings, and against his sovereign, if he will defend the laws of his ancestors, and the liberties of the Gallican Church. He told them that the king desired the council not to decree anything against those laws; and his ambassadors to oppose such decrees as he did then oppose them. Afterwards, speaking not for the king but himself, he invoked heaven, earth and the fathers to consider, whether the king’s demands were just; whether it were honest for them to make orders for themselves throughout the whole world; whether this was a time to take compassion, not upon the church, nor upon France, but upon themselves, their dignity, reputation, and revenues, which cannot be preserved but by the arts by which they were first obtained; that in so great confusion they must be wary, and not cry when Christ comes, “SEND US INTO THE SWINE;” that if they would restore the Church to its ancient reputation, and compel the adversaries to repentance, and reform princes, they should follow the example of Hezekiah, who did not imitate his father, nor his first, second, third, or fourth grandfather, who were imperfect, but went higher, to the imitation of his perfect ancestor; so the council must not look to its next predecessors, though very learned, but ascend as far as Ambrose, Augustine, and Chrysostom, who overcame the heretics, not by arming princes for war, while they sat picking their nails at home, but by prayers, a holy life, and sincere preaching. For the fathers, becoming like these ancient worthies, will make princes to become Theodosii, Honorii, Areadii, Valentinianii, and Gratiani, which he hoped for, and would praise God if it should he so.

The oration stirred up a perfect tempest in the sacred breasts of the assembled clergy. It was assailed publicly and privately with all kinds of weapons. But its author was sustained by the combined monarchs of Europe, for whom he was scourging the insolence of the council; and both he and his hearers knew well that he had the keen intellect and the material resources which fitted him to defy them. The subject was discussed at great length, and then was allowed to fall into an untimely grave, No spirit guided the Council of Trent but the unholy spirit of cunning, tyranny, worldliness, obsequiousness, and superstition. Little wonder that the witty French made a proverb: That the modern council has more authority than that of the apostles, for its own pleasure only was a sufficient ground for its decrees, without admitting the Holy Spirit.

Numbers and Character of the Council.

In 1546 the council was composed of five cardinals and forty eight bishops. It was at this time it issued its famous decrees about the scriptures, giving inspired authority to apocryphal writings and uncertain traditions; and authenticity or superiority over all other copies of the word of God to the Vulgate, a mere version, and one so full of errors that the council itself had to appoint a committee of six to correct it; and restraining men in their proper liberty to discover its meaning.

Among the prelates in the council at this time, there was no man “remarkable for learning, some were lawyers, perhaps learned in that profession, a few divines, but of less than ordinary merit, the greater number were gentlemen or courtiers. As to their dignities, some were only titular, and the greater part bishops of such small cities, that if each one represented his people, it could not be said that one in a thousand of Christendom was represented, And from Germany at this time there was not one bishop or divine.”

In the sixth session, which issued the decrees on justification, there were present four cardinals, ten archbishops, and forty-seven bishops; in the thirteenth, which defined transubstantiation, there were four legates, six archbishops, and thirty-four bishops; in the last session there were, according to Labbé and Cossart, seven legates, two cardinals, three patriarchs, thirty-three archbishops and two hundred and thirty-seven bishops, besides eleven proxies. Of these about two-thirds were from Italy, the rest, with few exceptions, from France and Spain. These Italian bishops and the natives of Italy wearing titular dignities, were all the mere creatures of the pope, and through them the council was constantly in the power of the holy father.

At the close of the proceedings of the council, according to the authoritative report of its doings, four legates, two cardinals, three patriarchs, twenty-five archbishops, one hundred and six eight bishops, seven abbots, thirty-nine proctors of absent prelates, and seven generals of religious orders, subscribed with their own hand the decrees of the council. The number, notwithstanding this statement, at the last meeting of the council, is not to be fully credited. But that most of its sessions were very slenderly attended, and that the attendance was made up of men of limited attainments and ability, is undoubted. Even Paul IV. said scornfully of the council: “It was a great vanity to send into the mountains sixty bishops of the least able and forty doctors of the most insufficient, as was twice done already (1556), and to believe that by those the world could be better regulated than by the vicar of Christ aided by his cardinals, prelates, and doctors at Rome.”

The Bishop of Five Churches, in a letter to the Emperor Maximilian, says of the Council of Trent:

“What good could be done in that council in which the votes were not weighed but numbered? If goodness of cause and reason had been the weapons, though we were but few, we had vanquished a great army of our enemies. The pope had a hundred for one, and in case that were not sufficient, he could have created a thousand. We daily saw hungry and needy bishops come to Trent; youths, for the most part, who just began to have beards, given over to luxury and riot, hired only to give their voices as the pope pleased. They were unlearned, and simple, but supplied with impudent boldness. When these were added to the pope’s old flatterers, iniquity triumphed, and it was impossible to determine anything but as they pleased.

“There was a grave and learned man, who was not able to bear so great an indignity, and as he made the fact known, he was traduced (maligned) as not a good Catholic, and he was terrified, threatened and persecuted that he might approve things against his will. Matters were brought to this pass by the iniquity of those who came there, fitted and prepared, that the council seemed to consist, not of bishops, but of disguised maskers, not of men but of images, such as Dedalus made, that moved by nerves which were none of their own. They were hireling bishops, who, as country bagpipes, could not speak but as breath was put into them. The Holy Spirit had nothing to do in this assembly.”

Such is the testimony of a man of great power, truth and observation. And yet this council, composed of such materials as it was, gave their present cast to all the doctrines and usages of the Catholic Church. These youthful bishops were no doubt titular prelates, bearing the name of an eastern diocese, and performing no episcopal acts except voting at the Council of Trent.

The Pontiffs who Reigned during the Sessions of the Council.

These were Paul III., Julius III., and Pius IV. The council first assembled in 1545, and after several prorogations (interruptions), and some protracted intermissions, it finally adjourned in 1563.

Influence of the Council.

It exerted for centuries, and it enjoys still, the greatest power ever springing from any assembly of ecclesiastics. The world is more familiar with its name than with the insignificance of its membership; and it is remarkable that such a body should stretch long and vigorous arms over the gulf of time since its dissolution, and over all the Catholic countries of the world, and hold the entire papal nations in its powerful grasp. Several causes contribute to this result: the first is the profound reverence entertained for councils in the Catholic Church. In several Protestant communities there are ecclesiastical legislatures who make authoritative enactments for the government of their churches, but such laws are regarded, even by those who make them, as wise or unwise, according to the principles embodied in them. But a Catholic council, constituted in proper form, is believed to be an “Inspired Assembly,” speaking by the promptings of the unerring Jehovah, whose decisions are the revealed will of the Lord of all, which ought not to be questioned, and can never be repealed.

As the clergyman who addressed the Council of Trent, when Mascarenius the Portuguese ambassador was received, said:

“The authority of councils is so great that their decrees are to be received as divine oracles.”

Such is the general doctrine of the Catholic Church. And this view of councils gave great force to the decrees issued at Trent.

The second was the extensive range of the council in the adoption of new articles of faith. The synod received every sanctified folly, almost without exception, revered in any quarter of the Romish communion, as a tenet of the Church; and in this way gained a wide extent of favor.

Another reason was the able management of the council by the pontiffs, who selected the shrewdest strategists of the entire papal Church and employed them to direct the decisions of the council.

Another reason is found in the extraordinary deference paid by the bishops of Rome to the canons and enactments of Trent.

The fifth reason why the Council of Trent became such a potent power in the papal Church is to be found in the condition of Catholicism when the council held its meetings. The Reformation, like an earthquake, had shaken and shattered the Romish world, and burst the ties which bound the system together, its old mighty ties of force and terror; and it compelled the council to give a new shape to nearly all her ancient doctrines; and such a cast as would fit them to bear the most searching scrutiny. As worn out rails are rolled again, and after the process come forth totally unlike their former ground, ragged, rusty selves: so in the foundry at Trent, through canons, decrees and the Catechism, the old rails of the Romish system were rolled over again, and some of them received a greater thickness; some of them an altered shape, and all of them new and additional sleepers, to sustain without injury the thundering trains of the great Reformation.

The Church of Rome before the Council of Trent was like a tower built of stones from many ancient structures. A great many came from Solomon’s temple, and quite a number from the buildings adjoining the manger in Bethlehem; some jagged rocks were placed upon the tower that once formed a part of a temple of Moloch; not a few stones from a temple of Jupiter; and a block of marble beautifully sculptured from a temple of Venus. Cement made from the rock of Calvary, well crushed, and bitumen from the Dead Sea joined the stones together. The tower was strong, and a source of terror to the world. Lightning from Wittemburg struck it fiercely several times and burned off the roof, exposing the inmates to the pelting fury of the storms, and so shattering the walls that the fathers at Trent, thinking it was going to tumble to pieces, carefully took down the tower and rebuilt and greatly enlarged it. They put in every old stone, carefully placing it in a new position; they procured new materials from the walls of the Sorbonne, the graves of St. Bernard, Thomas Aquinas, Duns Scotus, Peter Lombard, Gregory VII., and Innocent III., from the battlefields of Judas Maccabeus, and from nearly every quarter of the world. They made the many window sashes and doors out of the wood of the true cross and the nails with which the Saviour was fastened on it. Each one of its many hundred guards imagined that he carried the identical spear with which the soldier pierced the Saviour’s side, and every one of them wore some garment which belonged to the Saviour or his mother; the tower was intended to reach heaven, and was indeed a very lofty structure; it was designed as a home for the heroes who should conquer the world, As we have seen a school-house once, whose walls, on close inspection, showed angel figures, a sculptured Holy Spirit, several saints, the plunder of an ancient neighboring nunnery: so, on closely examining this massive tower, you easily detected representations in the stones of Moses, Aaron, Levi, a Jewish altar and sacrifice, a censer, Judas Maccabeus making an offering for his dead soldiers, the virgin and child, Jupiter, Venus, Moloch, the Angelic Doctor, the Master of the Sentences, and other scholastic divines by the hundred, and saints and angels without number, with an occasional scene from purgatory. The architecture was a mixture of all orders; the building was of all shapes, and the careful observer could easily see above its main doorway its name: BABEL, CONFUSION. While on its corner stone were cut the words: Built by the fathers of Trent, after designs sent from Rome.

Continued in The Papal System – IX. Baptism

All chapters of The Papal System by William Cathcart

Introduction

Matthew Henry (18 October 1662 – 22 June 1714) was a nonconformist minister and author, born in Wales but spending much of his life in England. He is best known for the six-volume biblical commentary Exposition of the Old and New Testaments.

Matthew Henry’s classic, describing how Christians can rightly conduct prayers for public occasions, has for centuries been a valuable source for believers.

Writing in the 1710s, the author reflected on his lifetime as a man of God who had conducted many official ceremonies and events in his church. The concerns of his congregation, many of whom experienced the heights of joy and depths of despair that life offers, led Matthew Henry to devise a methodology for praying to the Lord rich in example.

This method is intended to both respect and properly consult the divine, and also give comfort to believers who are in a state of distress or anxiety. Requests to God to fulfil a desire, to forgive a sin, as well as communications of life. Simple prayers of praise, wherein the Lord is given thanks for good fortune or daily small blessings, are also detailed.

Most of Henry’s recommendations reference Biblical scripture as a source: with the Holy Bible as his backing, the advices and methods of the author are beyond question. The language he uses is reminiscent of the King James Version of the text, which was the dominant Bible in the 17th and 18th centuries. Despite the passage of centuries, the authority and authenticity of Henry’s prayer method is undiminished.

There are other text versions of this online, but the one I saw used the English Standard Version of the Bible which I don’t like. I found a good PDF file of this book that used the KJV and copied and pasted the text from it to make this post on my website.

I believe this book can strengthen our prayer life.

Chapter I Adoration of God

Our spirits being composed into a very reverent serious frame, our thoughts gathered in, and all that is within us charged in the name of the great God carefully to attend the solemn and awful service that lies before us, and to keep close to it, we must with a fixed intention and application of mind, and an active lively faith, set the Lord before us, see His eye upon us, and set ourselves in His special presence, presenting ourselves to Him, as living sacrifices, which we desire may be holy and acceptable, and a reasonable service; and then bind these sacrifices with cords to the horns of the altar, in such thoughts as these: Romans 12:1. Psalm 118:27.

LET us now lift up our hearts with our eyes and our hands unto God in the heavens. Lamentations 3:41. John 17:1.

Let us stir up ourselves to take hold on God, to seek his face, and to give him the glory due unto his name. Isaiah 64:7. Psalm 27:8. Psalm 29:2.

Unto thee, O Lord, do we lift up our souls. Psalm 25:1.

Let us now, with humble boldness, enter into the Holiest by the blood of Jesus, in the new and living way, which he hath consecrated for us through the vail. Hebrews 10:19, 20.

Let us now attend upon the Lord without distraction, and let not our hearts be far from him when we draw nigh to him with our mouths, and honour him with our lips. 1 Corinthians 7:35. Matthew 15:8.

Let us now worship God who is a Spirit, in the spirit and in truth; for such the Father seeks to worship him. John 4:24, 23.

Having thus engaged our hearts to approach unto God, Jeremiah 30:21.

HOLY, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty, which art and wast, and art to come. Revelation 4:8.

O thou whose name alone is JEHOVAH, and who art the most high over all the earth. Psalm 83:18.

O God, thou art our God, early will we seek thee; Our God, and we will praise thee; our fathers God, and we will exalt thee. Psalm 63:1. Exodus 15:2.

O thou who art the true God, the living God, the one only living and true God, and the everlasting king. THE LORD OUR GOD WHO IS ONE LORD. Jeremiah 10:10. 1 Thessalonians 1:9. Deuteronomy 6:4.

― And we may thus distinguish ourselves from the worshippers of false gods.

The idols of the heathen are silver and gold, they are vanity and a lie, the work of mens hands; they that make them are like unto them, and so is every one that trusteth in them. But the portion of Jacob is not like them, for he is the former of all things, and Israel is the rod of his inheritance, the Lord of hosts is his name; God over all, blessed for evermore. Psalm 115:4, 8. Jeremiah 10:15, 16. Romans 9:5.

Their rock is not our Rock, even the enemies themselves being judges, for he is the Rock of ages, THE LORD JEHOVAH, with whom is everlasting strength. Whose name shall endure for ever, and his memorial unto all generations, when the gods that have not made the heavens and the earth, shall perish from off the earth, and from under those heavens. Deuteronomy 32:31. Isaiah 26:4. Psalm 135:13. Jeremiah 10:11.

O LORD our God, thou art very great, thou art clothed with honour and majesty, thou coverest thyself with light as with a garment, and yet as to us makest darkness thy pavilion, for we cannot order our speech by reason of darkness. Psalm 104:1, 2. Psalm 18:11. Job 37:19.

This is the message which we have heard of thee, and we set to our seal that it is true, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all: And that God is love, and they that dwell in love, dwell in God, and God in them. 1 John 1:5. John 3:33. 1 John 4:16.

Thou art the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness or shadow of turning, and from whom proceedeth every good and perfect gift. James 1:17.

Thou art the blessed and only Potentate; the King of kings, and Lord of lords, who only hast immortality, dwelling in the light which no man can approach unto, whom no man hath seen nor can see. 1 Timothy 6:15, 16.

― We must acknowledge His being to be unquestionable and past dispute.

The heavens declare thy glory, O God, and the firmament sheweth thy handy work, and by the things that are made is clearly seen and understood thine eternal power and GODHEAD. So that they are fools without excuse, who say there is no God; for verily there is a reward for the righteous, verily there is a God that judgeth in the earth, and in heaven too. Psalm 19:1. Romans 1:20. Psalm 14:1. Psalm 58:11.

We therefore come to thee, believing that thou art, and that thou art the powerful and bountiful rewarder of them that diligently seek thee. Hebrews 11:6.

― Yet we must own His nature to be incomprehensible.

We cannot by searching find out God, we cannot find out the Almighty unto perfection. Job 11:7.

Great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised, and his greatness is unsearchable. Psalm 145:3.

Who can utter the mighty acts of the Lord, who can shew forth all his praise? Psalm 106:2.

― And His perfections to be matchless and without compare.

Who is a God like unto thee, glorious in holiness, fearful in praises, doing wonders? Exodus 15:11.

Who in the heaven can be compared unto the Lord? who among the sons of the mighty can be likened unto the Lord? O Lord God of hosts, who is a strong Lord like unto thee, or to thy faithfulness round about thee? Psalm 89:6, 8.

Among the gods there is none like unto thee, O Lord, neither are there any works like unto thy works: For thou art great, and dost wondrous things; thou art God alone. Psalm 86:8, 10.

There is not any creature that has an arm like God, or can thunder with a voice like him. Job 40:9.

― And that He is infinitely above us and all other beings.

Thou art God and not man; hast not eyes of flesh, nor seest thou as man seeth: Thy days are not as the days of man, nor thy years as man’s days. Hosea 11:9. Job 10:4, 5.

As heaven is high above the earth, so are thy thoughts above our thoughts, and thy ways above our ways. Isaiah 55:9.

All nations before thee are as a drop of the bucket, or the small dust of the balance, and thou takest up the isles as a very little thing: They are as nothing, and are counted to thee less than nothing, and vanity. Isaiah 40:15, 17.

― Particularly in our adorations we must acknowledge,

1. That He is an eternal immutable God, without beginning of days, or end of life, or change of time.

Thou art the King eternal, immortal, invisible. 1 Timothy 1:17.

Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever thou hadst formed the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting thou art God; the same yesterday, to day, and for ever. Psalm 90:2. Hebrews 13:8.

Of old hast thou laid the foundation of the earth, and the heavens are the works of thy hands: They shall perish, but thou shalt endure; yea all of them shall wax old like a garment, as a vesture shalt thou change them, and they shall be changed; but thou art the same, and thy years shall have no end. Psalm 102:25, 26, 27.

Thou art God, and changest not; therefore is it that we are not consumed. Malachi 3:6.

Art thou not from everlasting, O Lord our God, our Holy One? The everlasting God, even the Lord, the Creator of the ends of the earth, who faintest not, neither art weary; there is no searching out of thine understanding. Habakkuk 1:12. Isaiah 40:28.

2. That He is present in all places, and there is no place in which He is included, or out of which He is excluded.

Thou art a God at hand, and not a God afar off; None can hide himself in secret places that thou canst not see him, for thou fillest heaven and earth. Jeremiah 23:23, 24.

Thou art not far from every one of us. Acts 17:27.

We cannot go any whither from thy presence, or flee from thy spirit: If we ascend into heaven, thou art there; if we make our bed in hell, in the depths of the earth, behold thou art there; if we take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there shall thy hand lead us, and thy right hand shall hold us, that we cannot outrun thee. Psalm 139:7-10.

3. That He hath a perfect knowledge of all persons and things, and sees them all, even that which is most secret, at one clear, certain, and unerring view.

All things are naked and open before the eyes of him with whom we have to do; even the thoughts and intents of the heart. Hebrews 4:13, 12.

Thine eyes are in every place beholding the evil and the good; they run to and fro through the earth, that thou mayest shew thyself strong on the behalf of those whose hearts are upright with thee. Proverbs 15:3. 2 Chronicles 16:9.

Thou searchest the heart, and triest the reins, that thou mayest give to every man according to his ways, and according to the fruit of his doings. Jeremiah 17:10.

O God, thou hast searched us and known us, thou knowest our downsitting and our uprising, and understandest our thoughts afar off: Thou compassest our path and our lying down, and art acquainted with all our ways: There is not a word in our tongue, but lo, O Lord, thou knowest it altogether. Such knowledge is too wonderful for us, it is high, we cannot attain unto it. Psalm 139:1-4, 6.

Darkness and light are both alike to thee. Psalm 139:12.

4. That His wisdom is unsearchable, and the counsels and designs of it cannot be fathomed.

Thine understanding, O Lord, is infinite, for thou tellest the number of the stars, and callest them all by their names. Psalm 147:5, 4.

Thou art wonderful in counsel, and excellent in working. Wise in heart, and mighty in strength. Isaiah 28:29. Job 9:4.

O Lord, how manifold are thy works, in wisdom hast thou made them all; all according to the counsel of thine own will. Psalm 104:24. Ephesians 1:11.

O the depth of the wisdom and knowledge of God! how unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past finding out. Romans 11:33.

5. That His sovereignty is uncontestable, and He is the owner and absolute Lord of all.

The heavens, even the heavens are thine, and all the hosts of them: The earth is thine, and the fulness thereof, the world and they that dwell therein. In thy hand are the deep places of the earth, and the strength of the hills is thine also: The sea is thine, for thou madest it, and thy hands formed the dry land: All the beasts of the forest are thine, and the cattle upon a thousand hills: Thou art therefore a great God, and a great King above all gods. Psalm 115:16. Psalm 24:1. Psalm 95:4, 5. Psalm 50:10, 11. Psalm 95:3.

In thy hand is the soul of every living thing, and the breath of all mankind. Job 12:10.

Thy dominion is an everlasting dominion, and thy kingdom is from generation to generation: Thou dost according to thy will in the armies of heaven, and among the inhabitants of the earth, and none can stay thy hand, or say unto thee, What doest thou, or Why doest thou so? Daniel 4:34, 35.

6. That His power is irresistible, and the operations of it cannot be controlled.

We know, O God, that thou canst do every thing, and that no thought can be withholden from thee: Power belongs to thee; And with thee nothing is impossible. Job 42:2. Psalm 62:11. Luke 1:37.

All power is thine both in heaven and in earth. Matthew 28:18. holden from thee: Power belongs to thee; And with thee nothing is impossible. Job 42:2. Psalm 62:11. Luke 1:37.

All power is thine both in heaven and in earth. Matthew 28:18.
holden from thee: Power belongs to thee; And with thee nothing is impossible. Job 42:2. Psalm 62:11. Luke 1:37.

All power is thine both in heaven and in earth. Matthew 28:18.
Thou killest and thou makest alive, thou woundest and thou healest, neither is there any that can deliver out of thy hand. Deuteronomy 32:39.

What thou hast promised thou art able also to perform. Romans 4:21.

7. That He is a God of unspotted purity and perfect rectitude.

Thou art holy, O thou that inhabitest the praises of Israel: Holy and reverend is thy name; and we give thanks at the remembrance of thy holiness. Psalm 22:3. Psalm 111:9. Psalm 30:4.

Thou art of purer eyes than to behold iniquity, neither shall evil dwell with thee. Habakkuk 1:13. Psalm 5:4.

Thou art the Rock, thy work is perfect, all thy ways are truth and judgment; a God of truth, and in whom there is no iniquity. Thou art our rock, and there is no unrighteousness in thee. Deuteronomy 32:4. Psalm 92:15.

Thou art holy in all thy works, and holiness becomes thy house, O Lord, for ever. Psalm 145:17. Psalm 93:5.

8. That He is just in the administration of His government, and never did, nor ever will do wrong to any of His creatures.

Righteous art thou, O God, when we plead with thee, and wilt be justified when thou speakest, and clear when thou judgest. Jeremiah 12:1. Psalm 51:4.

Far be it from God that he should do wickedness, and from the Almighty that he should commit iniquity; for the work of a man shall he render unto him. Job 34:10, 11.

Thy righteousness is as the great mountains, even then when thy judgments are a great deep! And though clouds and darkness are round about thee, yet judgment and justice are the habitation of thy throne. Psalm 36:6. Psalm 97:2.

9. That His truth is inviolable, and the treasures of His goodness inexhaustible.

Thou art good, and thy mercy endures for ever. Thy lovingkindness is great towards us, and thy truth endureth to all generations.

Psalm 136:1. Psalm 117:2. Psalm 100:5.

Thou hast proclaimed thy name: The Lord, The Lord God, merciful and gracious, slow to anger, abundant in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity, transgression and sin. And this name of thine is our strong tower. Exodus 34:6, 7. Proverbs 18:10.

Thou art good and dost good; good to all, and thy tender mercy is over all thy works. But truly God is in a special manner good to Israel, even to them that are of a clean heart. Psalm 119:68. Psalm 145:9. Psalm 73:1.

O that thou wouldst cause thy goodness to pass before us; that we may taste and see that the Lord is good; and his loving kindness may be always before our eyes. Exodus 33:19. Psalm 34:8. Psalm 26:3.

10. Lastly, that when we have said all we can of the glorious perfections of the divine nature, we fall infinitely short of the merit of the subject.

Lo these are but parts of thy ways, and how little a portion is heard of God! But the thunder of his power who can understand? Job 26:14.

Touching the Almighty we cannot find him out, he is excellent in power and in judgment, and in plenty of justice; and he is exalted far above all blessing and praise. Job 37:23. Nehemiah 9:5.

THOU hast prepared thy throne in the heavens, and it is a throne of glory, high and lifted up, and before thee the seraphims cover their faces. And it is in compassion to us that thou holdest back the face of that throne, and spreadest a cloud upon it. Psalm 103:19. Isaiah 6:1, 2. Job 26:9.

Thou makest thine angels spirits, and thy ministers a flame of fire. Thousand thousands of them minister unto thee, and ten thousand times ten thousand stand before thee, to do thy pleasure: They excel in strength, and hearken to the voice of thy word. And we are come by faith and hope and holy love into a spiritual communion with that innumerable company of angels, and the spirits of just men made perfect, even to the general assembly and church of the first-born, in the heavenly Jerusalem. Psalm 104:4. Daniel 7:10. Psalm 103:21, 20. Hebrews 12:22, 23.

THOU art worthy, O Lord, to receive blessing, and honour, and glory, and power; for thou hast created all things, and for thy pleasure, and for thy praise they are and were created. Revelation 4:11.

We worship him that made the heaven and the earth, the sea and the fountains of waters; who spake and it was done, who commanded and it stood fast; who said, Let there be light, and there was light; Let there be a firmament, and he made the firmament; and he made all very good; and they continue this day according to his ordinance; for all are his servants. Revelation 14:7. Psalm 33:9. Genesis 1:3, 6, 7, 31. Psalm 119:91.

The day is thine, the night also is thine; thou hast prepared the light and the sun: Thou hast set all the borders of the earth, thou hast made summer and winter. Psalm 74:16, 17.

Thou upholdest all things by the word of thy power, and by thee all things consist. Hebrews 1:3. Colossians 1:17.

The earth is full of thy riches; so is the great and wide sea also. The eyes of all wait upon thee, and thou givest them their meat in due season: Thou openest thy hand, and satisfiest the desire of every living thing. Thou preservest man and beast, and givest food to all flesh. Psalm 104:24, 25. Psalm 145:15, 16. Psalm 36:6. Psalm 136:25.

Thou, even thou art Lord alone; thou hast made heaven, the heaven of heavens, with all their host, the earth and all things that are therein, the seas and all that is therein, and thou preservest them all: And the host of heaven worshippeth thee, whose kingdom ruleth over all. Nehemiah 9:6. Psalm 103:19.

A sparrow falls not to the ground without thee. Matthew 10:29.

Thou madest man at first of the dust of the ground, and breathedst into him the breath of life, and so he became a living soul. Genesis 2:7.

And thou hast made of that one blood, all nations of men, to dwell on all the face of the earth, and hast determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation. Acts 17:26.

Thou art the most High, who rulest in the kingdom of men, and givest it to whomsoever thou wilt; for from thee every man’s judgment proceeds. Daniel 4:25. Proverbs 29:26.

Hallelujah, the Lord God omnipotent reigns, and doth all according to the counsel of his own will, to the praise of his own glory. Revelation 19:6. Ephesians 1:11, 12.

WE pay our homage to the three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost; for these three are one. 1 John 5:7.

We adore thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth; and the eternal Word, who was in the beginning with God, and was God, by whom all things were made, and without whom was not any thing made that was made, and who in the fulness of time was made flesh, and dwelt among us, and shewed his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. Matthew 11:25. John 1:1, 2, 3. Galatians 4:4. John 1:14.

And since it is the will of God that all men should honour the Son as they honour the Father, we adore him as the brightness of his Father’s glory, and the express image of his person; herein joining with the angels of God, who were all bid to worship him. John 5:23. Hebrews 1:3, 6.

We pay our homage to the exalted Redeemer, who is the faithful witness, the first begotten from the dead, and the prince of the kings of the earth, confessing that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. Revelation 1:5. Philippians 2:11.

We also worship the Holy Ghost the Comforter, whom the Son hath sent from the Father, even the Spirit of truth who proceedeth from the Father, and who is sent to teach us all things, and to bring all things to our remembrance; who indited the scriptures, holy men of God writing them as they were moved by the Holy Ghost. John 15:26. John 14:26. 2 Peter 1:21.

THOU, O God, madest us, and not we ourselves, and therefore we are not our own, but thine, thy people and the sheep of thy pasture; Let us therefore worship, and fall down and kneel before the Lord our maker. Psalm 100:3. 1 Corinthians 6:19. Psalm 95:6.

Thou, Lord, art the former of our bodies, and they are fearfully and wonderfully made, and curiously wrought. Thine eye did see our substance yet being imperfect, and in thy book all our members were written, which in continuance were fashioned, when as yet there was none of them. Psalm 139:14, 15, 16.

Thou hast clothed us with skin and flesh, thou hast fenced us with bones and sinews; Thou hast granted us life and favour, and thy visitation preserves our spirits. Job 10:11, 12.

Thou art the Father of our spirits; for thou formest the spirit of man with him, and madest us these souls. The Spirit of God hath made us, and the breath of the Almighty hath given us life. Thou puttest wisdom in the inward part, and givest understanding to the heart. Hebrews 12:9. Zechariah 12:1. Jeremiah 38:16. Job 33:4. Job 38:36.

Thou art God our maker, who teachest us more than the beasts of the earth, and makest us wiser than the fowls of heaven. Job 35:10, 11.

We are the clay, and thou our potter, we are the work of thy hand. Isaiah 64:8.

Thou art he that tookest us out of the womb, and keepest us in safety when we were at our mother’s breasts; We have been cast upon thee from the womb, and holden up by thee, thou art our God from our mother’s bowels, and therefore our praise shall be continually of thee. Psalm 22:9, 10. Psalm 71:6.

In thee, O God, we live and move, and have our being; for we are thine offspring. Acts 17:28.

In thy hand our breath is, and thine are all our ways; for the way of man is not in himself, neither is it in man that walketh to direct his steps; but our times are in thy hand. Daniel 5:23. Jeremiah 10:23.

Psalm 31:15.

Thou art the God that hast fed us all our life long unto this day, and redeemed us from all evil. Genesis 48:15, 16.

It is of thy mercies that we are not consumed, even because thy compassions fail not, they are new every morning, great is thy faithfulness. Lamentations 3:22, 23.

If thou take away our breath we die, and return to the dust out of which we were taken. Psalm 104:29, 30.

Who is he that saith and it cometh to pass, if thou commandest it not? Out of thy mouth, O most High, both evil and good proceed. Lamentations 3:37, 38.

OUR souls have said unto the Lord, Thou art our Lord, though our goodness extendeth not unto thee, neither if we are righteous art thou the better. Psalm 16:2. Job 35:7.

Thou art our King, O God: Other lords besides thee have had dominion over us, but from henceforth by thee only will we make mention of thy name. Psalm 44:4. Isaiah 26:13.

We avouch the Lord this day to be our God, to walk in his ways, and to keep his statutes, and his commandments, and his judgments, and to hearken to his voice, and give ourselves unto him to be his peculiar people as he hath promised, that we may be a holy people unto the Lord our God; and may be unto him for a name, and for a praise, and for a glory. Deuteronomy 26:17, 18, 19. Jeremiah 13:11.

O Lord, truly we are thy servants, we are thy servants born in thy house, and thou hast loosed our bonds; we are bought with a price, and therefore we are not our own; but yield ourselves unto the Lord, and join ourselves to him in an everlasting covenant that shall never be forgotten. Psalm 116:16. 1 Corinthians 6:20, 19. 2 Chronicles 30:8. Jeremiah 50:5.

We are thine, save us; for we seek thy precepts: It is thine own, Lord, that we give thee, and that which cometh of thine hand. Psalm 119:94. 1 Chronicles 29:16.

THOU hast commanded us to pray always, with all prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, and to watch thereunto with all perseverance and supplication for all saints; to continue in prayer; and in every thing with prayer and supplication to make our requests known to God. Ephesians 6:18. Colossians 4:2. Philippians 4:6.

Thou hast directed us to ask and seek and knock, and hast promised that we shall receive, we shall find, and it shall be opened to us. Matthew 7:7, 8.

Thou hast appointed us a great high priest, in whose name we may come boldly to the throne of grace, that we may find mercy and grace to help in time of need. Hebrews 4:14-16.

Thou hast assured us that while the sacrifice of the wicked is an abomination to the Lord, the prayer of the upright is his delight; and that he that offers praise glorifies thee, and the sacrifice of thanksgiving shall please the Lord better than that of an ox or bullock that has horns and hoofs. Proverbs 15:8. Psalm 50:23. Psalm 69:30, 31.

Thou art he that hearest prayer, and therefore unto thee shall all flesh come. Psalm 65:2.

Thou sayest, Seek ye my face, and our hearts answer, Thy face, Lord, will we seek. For should not a people seek unto their God? Whither shall we go but to thee? Thou hast the words of eternal life. Psalm 27:8. Isaiah 8:19. John 6:68.

BUT will God in very deed dwell with man upon the earth? that God whom the heaven of heavens cannot contain, with man that is a worm, and the son of man that is a worm. 2 Chronicles 6:18. Job 25:6.

Who are we, O Lord God, and what is our father’s house, that thou hast brought us hitherto, to present ourselves before the Lord; that we have through Christ an access by one Spirit unto the Father: And yet as if this had been a small thing in thy sight, thou hast spoken concerning thy servants for a great while to come, and is this the manner of men, O Lord God? 2 Samuel 7:18. Ephesians 2:18. 2 Samuel 7:19.

What is man that thou art thus mindful of him, and the son of man that thou visitest him? and dost thus magnify him. Psalm 8:4. Job 7:17.

O let not the Lord be angry, if we that are but dust and ashes take upon us to speak unto the Lord of glory. Genesis 18:30, 27.

We are not worthy of the least of all the mercies, and of all the truth which thou hast shewed unto thy servants; nor is it meet to take the childrens bread, and cast it to such as we are; yet the dogs eat of the crumbs which fall from their master’s table: And thou art rich in mercy to all that call upon thee. Genesis 32:10. Matthew 15:26, 27. Romans 10:12.

WHOM have we in heaven but thee; and there is none upon earth that we desire besides thee, or in comparison of thee: When our flesh and our heart fail, be thou the strength of our heart, and our portion for ever; the portion of our inheritance in the other world, and of our cup in this, and then we will say that the lines are fallen to us in pleasant places, and that we have a goodly heritage. Psalm 73:25, 26. Psalm 16:5, 6.

The desire of our souls is to thy name, and to the remembrance of thee; with our souls have we desired thee in the night, and with our spirits within us will we seek thee early. Isaiah 26:8, 9.

As the hart panteth after the water brooks, so panteth our soul after thee, O God; our soul thirsteth for God, for the living God; who will command his loving-kindness in the day-time, and in the night his song shall be with us, and our prayer to the God of our life. Psalm 42:1, 2, 8.

O that we may come hungering and thirsting after righteousness; for thou fillest the hungry with good things, but the rich thou sendest empty away. Matthew 5:6. Luke 1:53.

O that our souls may thirst for thee, and our flesh long for thee in a dry and thirsty land, where no water is, that we may see thy power and thy glory, as we have seen thee in the sanctuary. Thy lovingkindness is better than life; our souls shall be satisfied with that as with marrow and fatness, and then our mouths shall praise thee with joyful lips. Psalm 63:1, 2, 3, 5.

IN thee, O God, do we put our trust, let us never be ashamed; yea let none that wait on thee be ashamed. Psalm 31:1. Psalm 25:3.

Truly our souls wait upon God; from him cometh our salvation; he only is our rock and our salvation: In him is our glory, our strength, and our refuge, and from him is our expectation. Psalm 62:1, 2, 7, 5.

When refuge fails us, and none cares for our souls, we cry unto thee, O Lord; Thou art our refuge and our portion in the land of the living. Psalm 142:4, 5.

Some trust in chariots, and some in horses, but we will remember the name of the Lord our God. We will trust in thy mercy, O God, for ever and ever, and will wait on thy name, for it is good before thy saints. Psalm 20:7. Psalm 52:8, 9.

We have hoped in thy word; O remember thy word unto thy servants, upon which thou hast caused us to hope. Psalm 119:74, 49.

THERE be many that say, Who will shew us any good? But this we say, Lord, lift up the light of thy countenance upon us, and that shall put gladness into our hearts more than they have whose corn and wine increaseth. Psalm 4:6, 7.

We intreat thy favour with our whole hearts; for in this we labour, that whether present or absent we may be accepted of the Lord. Psalm 119:58. 2 Corinthians 5:9.

Hear our prayers, O Lord, give ear to our supplications; in thy faithfulness answer us. And be nigh unto us in all that which we call upon thee for; for thou never saidst to the seed of Jacob, Seek ye me in vain. Psalm 143:1. Deuteronomy 4:7. Isaiah 45:19.

Thou that hearest the young ravens which cry, Be not silent to us, lest if thou be silent to us, we be like them that go down to the pit. Psalm 147:9. Psalm 28:1.

Let our prayer be set forth before thee as incense, and the lifting up of our hands be acceptable in thy sight as the evening sacrifice. Psalm 141:2.

LORD, we know not what to pray for as we ought, but let thy Spirit help our infirmities, and make intercession in us. Romans 8:26.

O pour upon us the spirit of grace and supplication; the Spirit of adoption teaching us to cry, Abba Father; that we may find in our hearts to pray this prayer: Zechariah 12:10. Romans 8:15. 2 Samuel 7:27.

O send out thy light and thy truth, let them lead us, let them guide us to thy holy hill, and thy tabernacles; to God our exceeding joy. Psalm 43:3, 4.

O Lord, open thou our lips, and our mouth shall shew forth thy praise. Psalm 51:15.

THIS is that which thou, O Lord, hast said, that thou wilt be sanctified in them that come nigh unto thee, and before all the people thou wilt be glorified; we therefore worship before thee, O Lord, that we may glorify thy name; and therefore we call upon thee, that thou mayest deliver us, and we may glorify thee. Leviticus 10:3. Psalm 86:9. Psalm 50:15.

For of thee, and through thee, and to thee, are all things. Romans 11:36.

WE do not present our supplication before thee for our own righteousness; for we are before thee in our trespasses, and cannot stand before thee because of them: But we make mention of Christ’s righteousness, even of his only, who is THE LORD OUR RIGHTEOUSNESS. Daniel 9:18. Ezra 9:15. Psalm 71:16. Jeremiah 23:6.

We know that even spiritual sacrifices are acceptable to God only through Christ Jesus, nor can we hope to receive any thing but what we ask of thee in his name, and therefore make us accepted in the beloved; that other angel, who puts much incense to the prayers of saints, and offers them up upon the golden altar before the throne. 1 Peter 2:5. John 16:23. Ephesians 1:6. Revelation 8:3.

We come in the name of the great high priest, who is passed into the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, who was touched with the feeling of our infirmities, and is therefore able to save to the uttermost all those that come to God by him, because he ever lives making intercession. Hebrews 4:14, 15. Hebrews 7:25.

Behold, O God our shield, and look upon the face of thine anointed, in whom thou hast by a voice from heaven declared thyself to be well pleased; Lord, be well pleased with us in him. Psalm 84:9. Matthew 3:17.

Chapter II Confession of sin

Having given glory to God, which is His due, we must next take shame to ourselves, which is our due, and humble ourselves before Him in the sense of our own sinfulness and vileness; and herein also we must give glory to Him, as our judge, by whom we deserve to be condemned, and yet hope, through Christ, to be acquitted and absolved. Joshua 7:19.

O OUR God, we are ashamed and blush to lift up our faces before thee, our God; for our iniquities are increased over our head, and our trespass is grown up unto the heavens. Ezra 9:6.

To us belongs shame and confusion of face, because we have sinned against thee. Daniel 9:8.

Behold we are vile, what shall we answer thee? we will lay our hand upon our mouth, and put our mouth in the dust, if so be there may be hope; crying with the convicted leper under the law, Unclean, unclean. Job 40:4. Lamentations 3:29. Leviticus 13:45.

Thou puttest no trust in thy saints, and the heavens are not clean in thy sight: How much more abominable and filthy is man, who drinketh iniquity like waters! Job 15:15, 16.

When our eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts, we have reason to cry out, Woe unto us, for we are undone. Isaiah 6:5.

Dominion and fear are with thee, thou makest peace in thy high places: There is not any number of thine armies, and upon whom doth not thy light arise? How then can man be justified with God, or how can he be clean that is born of a woman? Job 25:2, 3, 4.

Thou, even thou art to be feared, and who may stand in thy sight, when once thou art angry? Even thou, our God, art a consuming fire, and who knows the power of thine anger? Psalm 76:7. Hebrews 12:29. Psalm 90:11.

If we justify ourselves, our own mouths shall condemn us, if we say we are perfect, that also shall prove us perverse; for if thou contend with us, we are not able to answer thee for one of a thousand. Job 9:20, 3.

If we knew nothing by ourselves, yet were we not thereby justified, for he that judgeth us is the Lord; who is greater than our hearts, and knows all things. But we ourselves know that we have sinned, Father, against heaven, and before thee, and are no more worthy to be called thy children. 1 Corinthians 4:4. 1 John 3:20. Luke 15:21.

IF thou, Lord, shouldest mark iniquities, O Lord, who should stand? But there is forgiveness with thee that thou mayest be feared; with thee there is mercy, yea with our God there is plenteous redemption, and he shall redeem Israel from all his iniquities. Psalm 130:3, 4, 7, 8.

Thy sacrifices, O God, are a broken spirit; a broken and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise: Nay, though thou art the high and lofty One that inhabitest eternity, whose name is Holy; though the heaven be thy throne, and the earth thy footstool, yet to this man wilt thou look, that is poor and humble, of a broken and a contrite spirit, and that trembleth at thy word, to revive the spirit of the humble, and to revive the heart of the contrite ones. Psalm 51:17. Isaiah 57:15. Isaiah 66:1, 2. Isaiah 57:15.

Thou hast graciously assured us, that though they that cover their sins shall not prosper, yet those that confess and forsake them shall find mercy. And when a poor penitent said, I will confess my transgression unto the Lord, thou forgavest the iniquity of his sin, and for this shall every one that is godly in like manner pray unto thee, in a time when thou mayest be found. Proverbs 28:13. Psalm 32:5, 6.

We know that if we say, We have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us; but thou hast said that if we confess our sins, thou art faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. 1 John 1:8, 9.

LORD, thou madest man upright, but they have sought out many inventions; And being in honour did not understand, and therefore abode not, but became like the beasts that perish. Ecclesiastes 7:29. Psalm 49:12, 20.

By one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin, and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned; By that one man’s disobedience many were made sinners, and we among the rest. Romans 5:12, 19.

We are a seed of evil doers; our father was an Amorite, and our mother a Hittite, and we ourselves were called (and not miscalled) transgressors from the womb, and thou knewest we would deal very treacherously. Isaiah 1:4. Ezekiel 16:3. Isaiah 48:8.

The nature of man was planted a choice and noble vine, wholly a right seed, but it is become the degenerate plant of a strange vine; producing the grapes of Sodom, and the clusters of Gomorrah. How is the gold become dim, and the most fine gold changed! Jeremiah 2:21. Deuteronomy 32:32. Lamentations 4:1.

Behold we were shapen in iniquity, and in sin did our mothers conceive us. For who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean? Not one. We are by nature children of wrath, because children of disobedience, even as others. Psalm 51:5. Job 14:4. Ephesians 2:3, 2.

All flesh hath corrupted their way, we are all gone aside, we are all together become filthy, there is none that doth good, no, no not one. Genesis 6:12. Psalm 14:3.

1. The blindness of our understandings, and their unaptness to admit the rays of the divine light.

BY nature our understandings are darkened, being alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in us, because of the blindness of our hearts. Ephesians 4:18.

The things of the Spirit of God are foolishness, to the natural man, neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned. 1 Corinthians 2:14.

We are wise to do evil, but to do good we have no knowledge. We know not, neither do we understand, we walk on in darkness. Jeremiah 4:22. Psalm 82:5.

God speaketh once, yea twice, but we perceive it not; but hearing we hear, and do not understand, and we see men as trees walking. Job 33:14. Matthew 13:14. Mark 8:24.

2. The stubbornness of our wills, and their unaptness to submit to the rules of the divine law.

We have within us a carnal mind, which is enmity against God, and is not in subjection to the law of God, neither indeed can be. Romans 8:7.

Thou hast written to us the great things of thy law, but they have been accounted by us as a strange thing, and our corrupt hearts have been sometimes ready to say, What is the Almighty that we should serve him? And that we would certainly do whatsoever thing goes forth out of our own mouth. For we have walked in the way of our own heart, and in the sight of our eyes, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind. Hosea 8:12. Job 21:15. Jeremiah 44:17. Ecclesiastes 11:9. Ephesians 2:3.

Our neck hath been an iron sinew, and we have made our heart as an adamant; we have refused to hearken, have pulled away the shoulder, and stopped our ears, like the deaf adder, that will not hearken to the voice of the charmer, charm he never so wisely. Isaiah 48:4. Zechariah 7:12, 11. Psalm 58:4, 5.

How have we hated instruction, and our heart despised reproof, and have not obeyed the voice of our teachers, nor inclined our ear to them that instructed us? Proverbs 5:12, 13.

3. The vanity of our thoughts, their neglect of those things which they ought to be conversant with, and dwelling upon those things that are unworthy of them, and tend to corrupt our minds.

Every imagination of the thought of our heart is evil, only evil, and that continually, and it has been so from our youth. Genesis 6:5. Genesis 8:21.

O how long have those vain thoughts lodged within us! those thoughts of foolishness which are sin. From within out of the heart proceed evil thoughts; which devise mischief upon the bed, and carry the heart with the fool’s eyes into the ends of the earth. Jeremiah 4:14. Proverbs 24:9. Matthew 15:19. Micah 2:1. Proverbs 17:24.

But God is not in all our thoughts, it is well if he be in any: Of the Rock that begat us we have been unmindful, and have forgotten the God that formed us: We have forgotten him days without number, and our hearts have walked after vanity, and become vain. Their inward thought having been that our houses should continue for ever; this our way is our folly. Psalm 10:4. Deuteronomy 32:18. Jeremiah 2:32, 5. Psalm 49:11, 13.

4. The carnality of our affections, their being placed upon wrong objects, and carried beyond due bounds.

We have set those affections on things beneath, which should have been set on things above, where our treasure is, and where Christ sits on the right hand of God, the things which we should seek. Colossians 3:2, 1. Matthew 6:21.

We have followed after lying vanities, and forsaken our own mercies; have forsaken the fountain of living waters, for cisterns, broken cisterns that can hold no water. Jonah 2:8. Jeremiah 2:13.

We have panted after the dust of the earth, and have been full of care what we shall eat, and what we shall drink, and wherewithal we shall be clothed, the things after which the Gentiles seek, but have neglected the kingdom of God and the righteousness thereof. Amos 2:7. Matthew 6:31, 32, 33.

We have lifted up our souls unto vanity, and set our eyes upon that which is not, have looked at the things that are seen which are temporal, but the things that are not seen that are eternal, have been forgotten and postponed. Psalm 24:4. Proverbs 23:5. 2 Corinthians 4:18.

5. The corruption of the whole man: irregular appetites towards those things that are pleasing to sense, and inordinate passions against those things that are displeasing, and an alienation of the mind from the principles, powers and pleasures of the spiritual and divine life.

We are born of the flesh, and we are flesh: Dust we are: We have borne the image of the earthly; and in us, that is, in our flesh, there dwells no good thing: For if to will is present to us, yet how to perform that which is good we find not; for the good that we would do we do it not, and the evil which we would not do that we do. John 3:6. Genesis 3:19. 1 Corinthians 15:49. Romans 7:18, 19.

We have a law in our members warring against the law of our mind, and bringing us into captivity to the law of sin that is in our members: So that when we would do good, evil is present with us, and most easily besets us. Romans 7:23, 21. Hebrews 12:1.

The whole head is sick, the whole heart faint, from the sole of the foot even unto the head there is no soundness in us, but wounds and bruises, and putrifying sores. Isaiah 1:5, 6.

There is in us a bent to backslide from the living God: Our hearts are deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked; who can know them? They start aside like a broken bow. Hosea 11:7. Jeremiah 17:9. Hosea 7:16.

WE have been as fig-trees planted in the vineyard, and thou hast come many years seeking fruit from us, but hast found none; and therefore we might justly have been cut down and cast into the fire for cumbering the ground: Thou hast come looking for grapes, but behold wild grapes; or we have been empty vines, bringing forth fruit unto ourselves. Luke 13:6, 7. Matthew 3:10. Isaiah 5:4. Hosea 10:1.

We have known to do good, but have not done it: We have hid our Lord’s money, and therefore deserve the doom of the wicked and slothful servant. James 4:17. Matthew 25:18, 26.

We have been unfaithful stewards, that have wasted our Lord’s goods; for one sinner destroys much good. Luke 16:1. Ecclesiastes 9:18.

Many a price hath been put into our hand to get wisdom, which we have had no heart to; or our heart has been at our left hand. Proverbs 17:16. Ecclesiastes 10:2.

Our childhood and youth was vanity, and we have brought our years to an end, as a tale that is told. Ecclesiastes 11:10. Psalm 90:9.

We have not known, or improved, the day of our visitation, have not provided meat in summer, nor gathered food in harvest, though we have had guides, overseers and rulers. Luke 19:44. Proverbs 6:8, 7.

We are slow of heart to understand and believe, and whereas for the time we might have been teachers of others, we are yet to learn the first principles of the oracles of God, have need of milk, and cannot bear strong meat. Luke 24:25. Hebrews 5:12.

We have cast off fear, and restrained prayer before God; have not called upon thy name, nor stirred up ourselves to take hold on thee. Job 15:4. Isaiah 64:7.

We have come before thee as thy people come, and have sat before thee as thy people sit, and have heard thy words, when our hearts at the same time have been going after our covetousness. And thus have we brought the torn, and the lame, and the sick for sacrifice, have offered that to our God, which we would not have offered to our governor; and have vowed and sacrificed to the Lord a corrupt thing, when we had in our flock a male. Ezekiel 33:31. Malachi 1:8, 14.

WE have sinned, Father, against heaven and before thee; we have all sinned, and have come short of the glory of God; for the God in whose hand our breath is, and whose are all our ways, have we not glorified. Luke 15:18. Romans 3:23. Daniel 5:23.

Against thee, thee only have we sinned, and have done much evil in thy sight; neither have we obeyed the voice of the Lord our God, to walk in his laws which he hath set before us; though they are all holy, just, and good. Psalm 51:4. Daniel 9:10. Romans 7:12.

Who can understand his errors? Cleanse thou us from secret faults. Psalm 19:12.

In many things we all offend; and our iniquities are more than the hairs of our head. James 3:2. Psalm 40:12.

As a fountain casteth out her waters, so do our hearts cast out wickedness; and this hath been our manner from our youth up, that we have not obeyed thy voice. Jeremiah 6:7. Jeremiah 22:21.

Out of the evil treasure of our hearts we have brought forth many evil things. Matthew 12:35.

1. We must confess and bewail the workings of pride in us.

We have all reason to be humbled for the pride of our hearts, that we have thought of ourselves above what hath been meet, and have not thought soberly, nor walked humbly with our God. 2 Chronicles 32:26. Romans 12:3. Micah 6:8.

We have leaned to our own understanding; and trusted in our own hearts; and have sacrificed to our own net. Proverbs 3:5. Proverbs 28:26. Habakkuk 1:16.

We have sought our own glory more than the glory of him that sent us; and have been puffed up for that for which we should have mourned. John 7:18. 1 Corinthians 5:2.

2. The breaking out of passion and rash anger.

We have not had the rule which we ought to have had over our own spirits, which have therefore been as a city that is broken down, and has no walls. Proverbs 25:28.

We have been soon angry, and anger hath rested in our bosoms. And when our spirits have been provoked, we have spoken unadvisedly with our lips; and have been guilty of that clamour and bitterness which should have been put far from us. Proverbs 14:17. Ecclesiastes 7:9. Psalm 106:33. Ephesians 4:31.

3. Our covetousness and love of the world.

Our conversation has not been without covetousness, nor have we learned in every state to be content with such things as we have. Hebrews 13:5. Philippians 4:11.

Who can say he is clean from that love of money, which is the root of all evil, that covetousness which is idolatry. 1 Timothy 6:10. Colossians 3:5.

We have sought great things to ourselves, when thou hast said, Seek them not. Jeremiah 45:5.

4. Our sensuality and flesh-pleasing.

We have minded the things of the flesh more than the things of the Spirit, and have lived in pleasure on the earth, and been wanton, and have nourished our hearts as in a day of slaughter. Romans 8:5. James 5:5.

We have made provision for the flesh to fulfil the lusts of it; even those lusts which war against our souls: and in many instances have acted as if we had been lovers of pleasure more than lovers of God. Romans 13:14. 1 Peter 2:11. 2 Timothy 3:4.

When we did eat, and when we did drink, did we not eat to ourselves, and drink to ourselves? Zechariah 7:6.

5. Our security and unmindfulness of the changes we are liable to in this world.

We have put far from us the evil day, and in our prosperity have said we should never be moved, as if to morrow must needs be as this day, and much more abundant. Amos 6:3. Psalm 30:6. Isaiah 56:12.

We have encouraged our souls to take their ease, to eat and drink and be merry, as if we had goods laid up for many years, when perhaps this night our souls may be required of us. Luke 12:19, 20.

We have been ready to trust in uncertain riches more than in the living God; to say to the gold thou art our hope, and to the fine gold thou art our confidence. 1 Timothy 6:17. Job 31:24.

6. Our fretfulness and impatience and murmuring under our afflictions, our inordinate dejection, and distrust of God and His providence.

When thou hast chastised us and we were chastised, we have been as a bullock unaccustomed to the yoke; and though our own foolishness hath perverted our way, yet our heart hath fretted against the Lord; and thus in our distress we have trespassed yet more against the Lord. Jeremiah 31:18. Proverbs 19:3. 2 Chronicles 28:22.

We have either despised the chastening of the Lord, or fainted when we have been rebuked of him; and if we faint in the day of adversity, our strength is small. Proverbs 3:11. Proverbs 24:10.

We have said in our haste we are cut off from before thine eyes, and that the Lord hath forsaken us, our God hath forgotten us, as if God would be favourable no more; as if he had forgotten to be gracious, and had in anger shut up his tender mercies. This has been our infirmity. Psalm 31:22. Isaiah 49:14. Psalm 77:7, 9, 10.

7. Our uncharitableness towards our brethren, and unpeaceableness with our relations, neighbours and friends, and perhaps injustice towards them.

We have been verily guilty concerning our brother; for we have not studied the things that make for peace, nor things wherewith we might edify one another. Genesis 42:21. Romans 14:19.

We have been ready to judge our brother, and to set at nought our brother, forgetting that we must all shortly stand before the judgment seat of Christ. Romans 14:10.

Contrary to the royal law of charity, we have vaunted ourselves, and been puffed up, have behaved ourselves unseemly, and sought our own, have been easily provoked, have rejoiced in iniquity, and been secretly glad at calamities. 1 Corinthians 13:4, 5, 6. Proverbs 17:5.

We have been desirous of vain-glory, provoking one another, envying one another; when we should have considered one another to provoke to love and to good works. Galatians 5:26. Hebrews 10:24.

The bowels of our compassion have been shut up from those that are in need; and we have hidden ourselves from our own flesh. Nay, perhaps our eye has been evil against our poor brother, and we have despised the poor. 1 John 3:17. Isaiah 58:7. Deuteronomy 15:9. James 2:6.

And if in any thing we have gone beyond and defrauded our brother, if we have walked with vanity, and our foot hath hasted to deceit, and any blot hath cleaved to our hands, Lord, discover it to us, that if we have done iniquity, we may do so no more. 1 Thessalonians 4:6. Job 31:5, 7. Job 34:32.

8. Our tongue-sins.

In the multitude of our words there wanteth not sin, nor can a man full of talk be justified. Proverbs 10:19. Job 11:2.

While the lips of the righteous feed many, our lips have poured out foolishness, and spoken frowardness. Proverbs 10:21. Proverbs 15:2. Proverbs 10:32.

Much corrupt communication hath proceeded out of our mouths; that foolish talking and jesting which is not convenient; and little of that which is good, and to the use of edifying, and which might minister grace unto the hearers. Ephesians 4:29. Ephesians 5:4.

If for every idle word that men speak they must give an account, and by our words we must be justified, and by our words we must be condemned, Woe unto us, for we are undone! for we are of unclean lips, and dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips. Matthew 12:36, 37. Isaiah 6:5.

What would become of us, if God should make our own tongues to fall upon us. Psalm 64:8.

9. Our spiritual slothfulness and decay.

We have been slothful in the business of religion, and not fervent in spirit, serving the Lord. Romans 12:11.

The things which remain are ready to die, and our works have not been found perfect before God. Revelation 3:2.

We have observed the winds, and therefore have not sown, have regarded the clouds, and therefore have not reaped; and with the sluggard have frightened ourselves with the fancy of a lion in the way, a lion in the streets, and have turned on our bed as the door on the hinges; still crying, Yet a little sleep, a little slumber. Ecclesiastes 11:4. Proverbs 26:13, 14. Proverbs 6:10.

We have lost our first love, and where is now the blessedness we sometimes spake of? Revelation 2:4. Galatians 4:15.

Our goodness hath been as the morning cloud and the early dew which passeth away. Hosea 6:4.

And that which is at the bottom of all, is the evil heart of unbelief in us, which inclines us to depart from the living God. Hebrews 3:12.

1. The sinfulness of sin.

O THAT sin may appear sin to us, may appear in its own colours, and that by the commandment we may see it to be exceeding sinful; because it is the transgression of the law. Romans 7:13. 1 John 3:4.

By every wilful sin we have in effect said, We will not have this man to reign over us; And who is the Lord, that we should obey his voice? And thus have we reproached the Lord, and cast his law behind our backs. Luke 19:14. Exodus 5:2. Numbers 15:30. Nehemiah 9:26.

2. The foolishness of sin.

O God, thou knowest our foolishness, and our sins are not hid from thee: We were foolish in being disobedient; and our lusts are foolish and hurtful. Psalm 69:5. Titus 3:3. 1 Timothy 6:9.

Foolishness was bound up in our hearts when we were children; for though vain man would be wise, he is born like the wild ass’s colt. Proverbs 22:15. Job 11:12.

Our way hath been our folly, and in many instances we have done foolishly, very foolishly. Psalm 49:13. 2 Samuel 24:10.

So foolish have we been and ignorant, and even as beasts before God. Psalm 73:22.

3. The unprofitableness of sin.

We have sinned and perverted that which was right, and it profited us not. Job 33:27.

What fruit have we now in those things whereof we have cause to be ashamed; seeing the end of those things is death? And what are we profited, if we should gain the whole world, and lose our own souls? Romans 6:21. Matthew 16:26.

4. The deceitfulness of sin.

Sin hath deceived us, and by it slain us; for our hearts have been hardened through the deceitfulness of sin; and we have been drawn away of our own lust, and enticed. Romans 7:11. Hebrews 3:13. James 1:14.

It hath promised us liberty, but has made us the servants of corruption; hath promised that we shall not surely die, and that we shall be as gods; but it has flattered us, and spread a net for our feet. 2 Peter 2:19. Genesis 3:4, 5. Proverbs 29:5.

The pride of our heart particularly has deceived us. Obadiah 3.

5. The offence which by sin we have given to the Holy God.

By breaking the law we have dishonoured God, and have provoked the Holy One of Israel to anger most bitterly. And many a thing that we have done hath displeased the Lord. Romans 2:23. Isaiah 1:4. Hosea 12:14. 2 Samuel 11 (v. 27).

God has been broken by our whorish heart, and our eyes that have gone a whoring after our idols. Ezekiel 6:9.

We have tempted him, and proved him, and grieved him in the wilderness; have rebelled and vexed his holy Spirit, and pressed him with our iniquities, as a cart is pressed that is full of sheaves. Psalm 95:9, 10, 8. Isaiah 63:10. Amos 2:13.

We have grieved the holy Spirit of God, by whom we are sealed to the day of redemption. Ephesians 4:30.

6. The damage which by sin we have done to our own souls, and their great interests.

By our iniquities we have sold ourselves, and in sinning against thee have wronged our own souls. Isaiah 50:1. Proverbs 8:36.

Our sins have separated between us and God, and have kept good things from us; and by them our minds and consciences have been defiled. Isaiah 59:2. Jeremiah 5:25. Titus 1:15.

Our own wickedness hath corrected us, and our backslidings have reproved us, and we cannot but know and see, that it is an evil thing, and bitter, that we have forsaken the Lord our God, and that his fear hath not been in us. Jeremiah 2:19.

O what fools are they that make a mock at sin! Proverbs 14:9.

WE bewail before thee all our sins, and all our transgressions in all our sins. Leviticus 16:21.

1. The more knowledge we have of good and evil, the greater is our sin.

We have known our Master’s will, but have not done it, and therefore deserve to be beaten with many stripes. Luke 12:47.

We have known the way of the Lord, and the judgments of our God, and yet have altogether broken the yoke, and burst the bonds. Jeremiah 5:4, 5.

We have known the judgment of God, that they which do such things are worthy of death, and yet have done them, and have had pleasure in them that do them. Romans 1:32.

We have taught others, and yet have not taught ourselves; and while we profess to know God, we have in works denied him. Romans 2:21. Titus 1:16.

2. The greater profession we have made of religion, the greater hath been our sin.

We call ourselves of the holy city, and stay ourselves upon the God of Israel, and make mention of his name, but not in truth and righteousness. For we have dishonoured that worthy name by which we are called, and given great occasion to the enemies of the Lord to blaspheme. Isaiah 48:2, 1. James 2:7, 23. 2 Samuel 12:14.

We have named the name of Christ, and yet have not departed from iniquity. 2 Timothy 2:19.

3. The more mercies we have received from God, the greater hath been our sin.

Thou hast nourished and brought us up as children, but we have rebelled against thee. Isaiah 1:2.

We have ill requited thee, O Lord, as foolish people and unwise: Though thou art our Father that hast made us, and bought us, and established us, yet our spot has not been the spot of thy children. Deuteronomy 32:6, 5.

We have not rendered again according to the benefit done unto us. 2 Chronicles 32:25.

4. The fairer warning we have had from the word of God, and from our own consciences, concerning our danger of sin, and danger by sin, the greater is the sin if we go on in it.

We have been often reproved, and yet have hardened our neck; and have gone on frowardly in the way of our heart. Proverbs 29:1. Isaiah 57:17.

Thou hast sent to us, saying, O do not this abominable thing which I hate; but we have not hearkened, nor inclined our ear. Jeremiah 44:4, 5.

The word of God hath been to us, precept upon precept, and line upon line; and though we have beheld our natural faces in the glass of it, yet we have gone away, and straitway forgot what manner of men we were. Isaiah 28:13. James 1:23, 24.

5. The greater afflictions we have been under for sin, the greater is the sin if we go on in it.

Thou hast stricken us, but we have not grieved, we have refused to receive correction, and have made our faces harder than a rock; and the rod hath not driven the foolishness out of our hearts. Jeremiah 5:3. Proverbs 22:15.

Thou hast chastened us with the rod of men, and with the stripes of the children of men, yet we have not turned to him that smiteth us, nor have we sought the Lord of hosts. 2 Samuel 7:14. Isaiah 9:13.

When some have been overthrown as Sodom and Gomorrah were, we have been as brands plucked out of the fire, yet have we not returned unto thee, O Lord. And when thy hand has been lifted up, we have not seen it. Amos 4:11. Isaiah 26:11.

6. The more vows and promises we have made of better obedience, the greater has our sin been.

We have not performed the words of the covenant which we made before thee, but as treacherous dealers we have dealt treacherously. Jeremiah 34:18. Isaiah 24:16.

Did we not say we would not transgress, we would not offend any more? We did, and yet we have returned with the dog to his vomit; have returned to folly after God hath spoken peace. Jeremiah 2:20. Job 34:31. 2 Peter 2:22. Psalm 85:8.

AND now, O our God, what shall we say after this, for we have forsaken thy commandments? We have sinned, what shall we do unto thee, O thou preserver of men? Ezra 9:10. Job 7:20.

We know that the law curseth every one that continues not in all things that are written in the book of the law to do them; that the wages of every sin is death; and that for these things sake cometh the wrath of God upon the children of disobedience. Galatians 3:10. Romans 6:23. Ephesians 5:6.

And we are all guilty before God; the scripture hath concluded us all under sin; and therefore thou mightest justly be angry with us till thou hadst consumed us; so that there should be no remnant, nor escaping. Romans 3:19. Galatians 3:22. Ezra 9:14.

If thou shouldest lay righteousness to the line and judgment to the plummet, thou mightest justly separate us unto all evil, according to all the curses of the covenant, and blot out our names from under heaven. Isaiah 28:17. Deuteronomy 29:21, 20.

Thou mightest justly swear in thy wrath, that we should never enter into thy rest; mightest justly set us naked and bare, and take away our corn in the season thereof, and our wine in the season thereof, and put into our hands the cup of trembling, and make us drink even the dregs of that cup. Psalm 95 (v. 11). Hosea 2:3, 9. Isaiah 51:22.

Thou art just in whatever thou art pleased to lay upon us; for thou hast done right, but we have done wickedly: Nay, thou our God hast punished us less than our iniquities have deserved. Nehemiah 9:33. Ezra 9:13.

Thou therefore shalt be justified when thou speakest, and clear when thou judgest; and we will accept of the punishment of our iniquity, and humble ourselves under thy mighty hand, and say the Lord is righteous. Psalm 51:4. Leviticus 26:43. 1 Peter 5:6. 2 Chronicles 12:6.

Wherefore should a living man complain, a man for the punishment of his sins? No, we will bear the indignation of the Lord, because we have sinned against him. Lamentations 3:39. Micah 7:9.

O THE riches of the patience and forbearance of God! how long-suffering is he to us ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance. Romans 2:4. 2 Peter 3:9.

Thou hast not dealt with us according to our sins, nor rewarded us after our iniquities; but thou waitest to be gracious to us. Psalm 103:10. Isaiah 30:18.

Sentence against our evil works has not been executed speedily; but thou hast given us space to repent, and make our peace with thee; and callest even backsliding children to return to thee, and hast promised to heal their backslidings; And therefore, behold we come unto thee, for thou art THE LORD OUR GOD. Ecclesiastes 8:11. Revelation 2:21. Jeremiah 3:22, 23.

Surely the long-suffering of our Lord, is salvation; and if the Lord had been pleased to kill us, he would not as at this time have shewed us such things as these. 2 Peter 3:15. Judges 13:23.

And O that this goodness of God might lead us to repentance! for though we have trespassed against our God, yet now there is hope in Israel concerning this thing. Romans 2:4. Ezra 10:2.

Thou hast said it, and hast confirmed it with an oath, that thou hast no pleasure in the death of sinners, but rather that they should turn and live: Therefore will we rent our hearts and not our garments, and turn to the Lord our God; for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness, who knows if he will return and repent, and leave a blessing behind him. Ezekiel 33:11. Joel 2:13, 14.

LORD, we repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand; to which thou hast exalted thy Son Christ Jesus to give repentance and remission of sins. Matthew 3:2. Acts 5:31.

We have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear, but now our eye sees thee; wherefore we abhor ourselves, and repent in dust and ashes. Therefore will we be like the doves of the valleys, every one mourning for his iniquities. Job 42:5, 6. Ezekiel 7:16.

O that our heads were waters, and our eyes fountains of tears, that we might weep day and night for our transgressions, and might in such a manner sow in those tears, as that at last we may reap in joy; may now go forth weeping, bearing precious seed, and may in due time come again with rejoicing, bringing our sheaves with us. Jeremiah 9:1. Psalm 126:5, 6.

Our iniquities are gone over our heads as a heavy burden, they are too heavy for us; but weary and heavy laden under this burden we come to Christ, who has promised that in him we shall find rest for our souls. Psalm 38:4. Matthew 11:28, 29.

O that knowing every man the plague of his own heart, we may look unto him whom we have pierced, and may mourn, and be in bitterness for him as one that is in bitterness for a first-born. That we may sorrow after a godly sort, with that sorrow which worketh repentance unto salvation, not to be repented of; and that we may remember and be confounded, and never open our mouth any more, because of our shame when thou art pacified towards us. 1 Kings 8:38. Zechariah 12:10. 2 Corinthians 7:10. Ezekiel 16:63.

And, O that we may bring forth fruits meet for repentance! and may never return again to folly! for what have we to do any more with idols? Sin shall not have dominion over us, for we are not under the law, but under grace. Matthew 3:8. Psalm 85:8. Hosea 14:8. Romans 6:14.

We have gone astray like lost sheep; seek thy servants, for we do not forget thy commandments. Psalm 119 (v. 176).

Chapter III Petitions and requests

Having opened the wounds of sin, both the guilt of it, and the power of it, and its remainders in us, we must next seek unto God for the remedy, for healing and help, for from Him alone it is to be expected, and He will for this be enquired of by us. And now we must affect our hearts with a deep sense of the need we have of those mercies which we pray for, that we are undone, for ever undone, without them; and with a high esteem and value for them, that we are happy, we are made for ever, if we obtain them; that we may like Jacob wrestle with Him in prayer as for our lives, and the lives of our souls. But we must not think in our prayers to prescribe to Him, or by our importunity to move Him. He knows us better than we know ourselves, and knows what He will do. But thus we open our wants and our desires, and then refer ourselves to His wisdom and goodness: And hereby we give honour to Him as our protector and benefactor, and take the way which He Himself hath appointed of fetching in mercy from Him, and by faith plead His promise with Him; and if we are sincere herein, we are through His grace qualified according to the tenor of the new covenant to receive His favours, and are to be assured, that we do and shall receive them. Ezekiel 36:37. John 6:6. Mark 11:24.

AND now, Lord, what wait we for? Truly our hope is even in thee: Deliver us from all our transgressions, that we may not be the reproach of the foolish. Psalm 39:7, 8.

Lord, all our desire is before thee, and our groaning is not hid from thee; even the groanings which cannot be uttered: For he that searcheth the heart, knows what is the mind of the Spirit. Psalm 38:9. Romans 8:26, 27.

We do not think that we shall be heard for our much speaking; for our Father knows what things we have need of before we ask him; but our Master hath told us, that whatsoever we ask the Father in his name he will give it us. And he hath said, Ask and ye shall receive, that your joy may be full. Matthew 6:7, 8. John 16:23, 24.

And this is the confidence that we have in him, that if we ask any thing according to his will, he heareth us: And if we know that he hear us, whatsoever we ask, we know that we have the petitions that we desired of him. 1 John 5:14, 15.

LORD, we come to thee, as the poor publican, that stood afar off, and would not so much as lift up his eyes to heaven, but smote upon his breast; and we pray his prayer, God be merciful to us sinners. The God of infinite mercy be merciful to us. Luke 18:13.

O wash us throughly from our iniquity, and cleanse us from our sin, for we acknowledge our transgressions, and our sin is ever before us. O purge us with hyssop and we shall be clean, wash us and we shall be whiter than snow: Hide thy face from our sins, and blot out all our iniquities. Psalm 51:2, 3, 7, 9.

Be thou merciful to our unrighteousness, and our sins and our iniquities do thou remember no more. O forgive us that great debt. Hebrews 8:12. Matthew 18:32.

Let us be justified freely by thy grace through the redemption that is in Jesus, from all those things from which we could not be justified by the law of Moses. Romans 3:24. Acts 13:39.

O let not our iniquity be our ruin; but let the Lord take away our sin that we may not die, not die eternally: that we may not be hurt of the second death. Ezekiel 18:30. 2 Samuel 12:13. Revelation 2:11.

Blot out as a cloud our transgressions, and as a thick cloud our sins; for we return unto thee because thou hast redeemed us. Isaiah 44:22.

Enter not into judgment with thy servants, O Lord, for in thy sight shall no flesh living be justified. Psalm 143:2.

Take away all iniquity, and receive us graciously; Heal our backslidings, and love us freely, and let thine anger be turned away from us; for in thee the fatherless findeth mercy. Hosea 14:2, 4, 3.

Though our sins have been as scarlet, let them be as white as snow, and though they have been red like crimson, let them be as wool, that being willing and obedient, we may eat the good of the land. Isaiah 1:18, 19.

We will say unto God, Do not condemn us, but deliver us from going down to the pit, for thou hast found the ransom. Job 10:2. Job 33:24.

For the encouraging of our faith, and the exciting of our fervency in this petition for the pardon of sin, we may plead with God,

1. The infinite goodness of His nature, His readiness to forgive sin, and His glorying in it.

Thou, Lord, art good, and ready to forgive; and rich in mercy to all them that call upon thee. Thou art a God full of compassion and gracious, long-suffering and plenteous in mercy and truth. Psalm 86:5, 15.

Thou art a God of pardons, merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness; that dost not always chide, nor keep thine anger for ever. Nehemiah 9:17. Psalm 103:9.

Thou, even thou art he that blottest out our transgressions for thine own sake, and wilt not remember our sins; which we are here to put thee in remembrance of, to plead with thee and to declare that we may be justified. Isaiah 43:25, 26.

And now we beseech thee, let the power of our Lord be great, according as thou hast spoken, saying, The Lord is long-suffering and of great mercy, forgiving iniquity and transgression. Pardon, we beseech thee, the iniquity of thy people, according unto the greatness of thy mercy; and as thou hast forgiven, even until now. Numbers 14:17, 18, 19.

For who is a God like unto thee, that pardonest iniquity, and passeth by the transgression of the remnant of thine heritage; who retainest not thine anger for ever, because thou delightest in mercy. O that thou wouldest have compassion upon us, and subdue our iniquities, and cast all our sins into the depths of the sea. Micah 7:18, 19.

2. The merit and righteousness of our Lord Jesus Christ, which we rely upon as our main plea in our petition for the pardon of sin.

We know that as thou art gracious and merciful, so thou art the righteous God that loveth righteousness, and wilt by no means clear the guilty. We cannot say, Have patience with us, and we will pay thee all; for we are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags. But Jesus Christ is made of God to us righteousness; being made sin for us, though he knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in him. Psalm 11:7. Exodus 34:7. Matthew 18:26. Isaiah 64:6. 1 Corinthians 1:30. 2 Corinthians 5:21.

We have sinned, but we have an advocate with the Father, JESUS CHRIST THE RIGHTEOUS, who is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only, but for the sins of the whole world. 1 John 2:1, 2.

It is God that justifieth, who is he that shall condemn? It is Christ that died, yea rather that is risen again, and now is even at the right hand of God; who also maketh intercession for us, and whose blood speaks better things than that of Abel. Romans 8:33, 34. Hebrews 12:24.

We desire to count every thing loss for Christ; and dung that we may win Christ, and be found in him, not having any righteousness of our own, but that which is through the faith of Christ. Philippians 3:7, 8, 9.

This is the name whereby we will call him, THE LORD OUR RIGHTEOUSNESS. In him, Lord, we believe, help thou our unbelief. Jeremiah 23:6. Mark 9:24.

Lord, remember David and all his troubles; the Son of David. Remember all his offerings, and accept his burnt sacrifice; and turn not away the face of thine anointed; who by his own blood is entered into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God for us. Psalm 132:1. Psalm 20:3. Psalm 132:10. Hebrews 13:12. Hebrews 9:24.

Hast not thou thyself set forth thy Son Christ Jesus to be a propitiation for sin through faith in his blood, to declare thy righteousness for the remission of sins, to declare at this time thy righteousness, that thou mayest be just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus; And we now receive the atonement. Romans 3:25, 26. Romans 5:11.

3. The promises God hath made in His word to pardon and absolve all them that truly repent, and unfeignedly believe His Holy gospel.

Lord, is not this the word which thou hast spoken, that if the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts, and return unto the Lord, even to our God, that thou wilt abundantly pardon, wilt multiply to pardon? Isaiah 55:7.

To thee the Lord our God belong mercies and forgivenesses, though we have rebelled against thee. Daniel 9:9.

Is not this the covenant which thou hast made with the house of Israel, that thou wilt take away their sins; that thou wilt forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more; that the iniquity of Israel shall be sought for, and there shall be none; and the sins of Judah, and they shall not be found? Romans 11:27. Jeremiah 31:34. Jeremiah 50:20.

Hast thou not said, that if the wicked will turn from all his sins which he hath committed, and keep thy statutes, he shall live, he shall not die, all his transgressions shall not be mentioned unto him? Ezekiel 18:21, 22.

Hast thou not appointed that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in Christ’s name unto all nations? Luke 24:47.

Didst thou not promise, that when the sins of Israel were put upon the head of the scapegoat, they should be sent away into the wilderness, into a land not inhabited? And as far as the east is from the west, so far dost thou remove our transgressions from us. Leviticus 16:21, 22. Psalm 103:12.

O remember these words unto thy servants, upon which thou hast caused us to hope. Psalm 119:49.

4. Our own misery and danger because of sin.

For thy name’s sake, O Lord, pardon our iniquity, for it is great; for innumerable evils have compassed us about, our iniquities have taken hold upon us, so that we are not able to look up. Be pleased, O Lord, to deliver us; O Lord, make haste to help us. Psalm 25:11. Psalm 40:12, 13.

O remember not against us former iniquities, let thy tender mercies speedily prevent us, for we are brought very low. Help us, O God of our salvation, for the glory of thy name; deliver us, and purge away our sins for thy name’s sake. Psalm 79:8, 9.

Remember not the sins of our youth, nor our transgressions; according to thy mercy remember thou us, for thy goodness sake, O Lord. Psalm 25:7.

5. The blessed condition which they are in whose sins are pardoned.

O let us have the blessedness of those whose transgression is forgiven, and whose sin is covered; of that man unto whom the Lord imputeth not iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no guile. Psalm 32:1, 2.

O let us have redemption through Christ’s blood, even the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of thy grace; wherein thou hast abounded towards us in all wisdom and prudence. That being in Christ Jesus, there may be no condemnation to us. Ephesians 1:7, 8. Romans 8:1.

That our sins, which are many, being forgiven us, we may go in peace: And the inhabitant shall not say, I am sick, if the people that dwell therein be forgiven their iniquity. Luke 7:47, 50. Isaiah 33 (v. 24).

1. That we may be at peace with God; and His anger may be turned away from us.

BEING justified by faith, let us have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, and through him let us have access into that grace wherein believers stand, and rejoice in hope of the glory of God. Romans 5:1, 2.

Be not thou a terror to us, for thou art our hope in the day of evil. Jeremiah 17:17.

In Christ Jesus let us, who sometimes were afar off, be made nigh by the blood of Christ; For he is our peace, who hath broken down the middle wall of partition between us, and that he might reconcile us to God by his cross, hath slain the enmity thereby, so making peace. Through him therefore let us who had made ourselves strangers and foreigners, become fellow citizens with the saints, and of the household of God. Ephesians 2:13-16, 19.

Fury is not in thee, who would set the briers and thorns against thee in battle, thou wouldest go through them, yea thou wouldst burn them together; but thou hast encouraged us to take hold on thy strength that we may make peace, and hast promised that we shall make peace; O let us therefore acquaint ourselves with thee, and be at peace, that thereby good may come unto us. Isaiah 27:4, 5. Job 22:21.

Heal us and we shall be healed, save us, and we shall be saved, for thou art our praise. Be not angry with us for ever, but revive us again, that thy people may rejoice in thee. Shew us thy mercy, O Lord, and grant us thy salvation. Jeremiah 17:14. Psalm 85:5-7.

2. That we may be taken into covenant with God, and admitted into relation to Him.

Be thou to us a God, and take us to be to thee a people; and make us a willing people in the day of thy power. Hebrews 8:10. Psalm 110:3.

Though we are no more worthy to be called thy children; for how shouldest thou put us that have been rebellious among the children, and give us the pleasant land? But thou hast said that we shall call thee our Father, and not turn away from thee. Shall we not therefore from this time cry unto thee, Our Father, thou art the guide of our youth. Luke 15:19. Jeremiah 3:19, 4.

Lord, we take hold of thy covenant, to thee we join ourselves in a perpetual covenant; O that thou wouldest cause us to pass under the rod, and bring us into the bond of the covenant, that we may become thine. Isaiah 56:4. Jeremiah 50:5. Ezekiel 20:37. Ezekiel 16:8.

Make with us an everlasting covenant, even the sure mercies of David. Isaiah 55:3.

3. That we may have the favour of God, and an interest in His special love.

We intreat thy favour, O God, with our whole hearts; be merciful to us according to thy word, for in thy favour is life, yea thy loving kindness is better than life itself. Psalm 119:58. Psalm 30:5. Psalm 63:3.

Lord, make thy face to shine upon us, and be gracious unto us; Lord, lift up the light of thy countenance upon us, and give us peace. Numbers 6:25, 26.

Remember us, O Lord, with the favour that thou bearest unto thy people, O visit us with thy salvation, that we may see the good of thy chosen, and may rejoice in the gladness of thy nation, and may glory with thine inheritance. Psalm 106:4, 5.

4. That we may have the blessing of God.

O God, be merciful to us and bless us, and cause thy face to shine upon us; yea let God, even our own God, give us his blessing. Psalm 67:1, 6.

The Lord that made heaven and earth, bless us out of Zion; bless us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly things by Christ Jesus. Psalm 134:3. Ephesians 1:3.

O that thou wouldest bless us indeed! Command the blessing upon us, even life for ever more; For thou blessest, O Lord, and it shall be blessed. 1 Chronicles 4:10. Psalm 133:3. 1 Chronicles 17:27.

Let us receive the blessing from the Lord, even righteousness from the God of our salvation. Psalm 24:5.

Hast thou but one blessing? Yea, thou hast many blessings: Bless us, even us also, O our Father; yea, let the blessing of Abraham come upon us, which comes upon the Gentiles through faith. And the blessing of Jacob, for we would not let thee go, except thou bless us. Genesis 27:38. Galatians 3:14. Genesis 32:26.

5. That we may have the presence of God with us.

If thy presence go not up with us, carry us not up hence; never leave us nor forsake us. Exodus 33:15. Hebrews 13:5.

O cast us not away from thy presence, nor ever take thy holy spirit away from us; but let us always dwell with the upright in thy presence. Psalm 51:11. Psalm 140:13.

WE MUST PRAY FOR THE COMFORTABLE SENSE OF OUR RECONCILIATION TO GOD, AND OUR ACCEPTANCE WITH HIM

1. That we may have some evidence of the pardon of our sins, and of our adoption.

O MAKE us to hear joy and gladness, that the bones which sin hath broken may rejoice. Psalm 51:8.

Say unto each of us, Son, Daughter, be of good cheer, thy sins are forgiven thee. Matthew 9:2.

Let the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without spot to God, purge our conscience from dead works to serve thee the living God. Hebrews 9:14.

Let thy Spirit witness with our spirits that we are the children of God, and if children, then heirs, heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ. Romans 8:16, 17.

Say unto our souls, that thou art our salvation. Psalm 35:3.

2. That we may have a well-grounded peace of conscience; a holy security and serenity of mind arising from a sense of our justification before God, and a good work wrought in us.

The Lord of peace himself give us peace, all peace, always, by all means; that peace which Jesus Christ hath left with us, which he gives to us, such a peace as the world can neither give nor take away; such a peace as that our hearts may not be troubled or afraid. 2 Thessalonians 3:16. John 14:27.

Let the work of righteousness in our souls be peace, and the effect of righteousness quietness and assurance for ever. Isaiah 32:17.

Speak peace unto thy people and to thy saints, and let not them turn again to folly. Psalm 85:8.

O create the fruit of the lips, Peace, peace to them that are afar off and to them that are nigh, and restore comfort to thy mourners. Isaiah 57:19, 18.

Where the sons of peace are, let thy peace find them out, and rest upon them. Luke 10:6.

Cause us to hear thy loving kindness, and to taste that thou art gracious, for in thee do we trust. Psalm 143:8. 1 Peter 2:3.

Let the peace of God which passeth all understanding, keep our hearts and minds through Christ Jesus; and let that peace rule in our hearts, unto which we are called. Philippians 4:7. Colossians 3:15.

Now the God of hope fill us with all joy and peace in believing, that we may abound in hope through the power of the Holy Ghost. Romans 15:13.

WE come to the throne of grace, that we may obtain not only mercy to pardon, but grace to help in every time of need; grace for seasonable help. Hebrews 4:16.

From the fulness that is in Jesus Christ (in whom it pleased the Father that all fulness should dwell) let every one of us receive, and grace for grace. John 1:16. Colossians 1:19.

1. We must pray for grace to fortify us against every evil thought, word and work. Having been earnest for the removing of the guilt of sin, that we may not die for it as a crime; we must be no less earnest for the breaking of the power of sin, that we may not die by it as a disease; but that it may be mortified in us.

O let no iniquity have dominion over us, because we are not under the law, but under grace. Romans 6:14.

Let the flesh be crucified in us with its affections and lusts; that walking in the Spirit we may not fulfil the lusts of the flesh. Galatians 5:24, 16.

Let our old man be crucified with Christ, that the body of sin may be destroyed, that henceforth we may not serve sin; and let not sin reign in our mortal bodies (in our immortal souls) that we should obey it in the lusts thereof. But being made free from sin, let us become the servants of righteousness. Romans 6:6, 12, 18.

Let the law of the Spirit of life, which is in Christ Jesus, make us free from the law of sin and death. Romans 8:2.

Give us grace to put off the old man, which is corrupt according to the deceitful lusts, that we may put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness. Ephesians 4:22, 24.

That the world may be crucified to us, and we to the world, by the cross of Christ. Galatians 6:14.

― And that the temptations of Satan may not overcome us.

We pray that we may not enter into temptation: Or however, that no temptation may take us but such as is common to men, and let the faithful God never suffer us to be tempted above what we are able, but with the temptation make way for us to escape. Matthew 26:41. 1 Corinthians 10:13.

Put upon us the whole armour of God, that we may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil, to withstand in the evil day, and having done all to stand; Let our loins be girt about with truth: put on us the breast-plate of righteousness, and let our feet be shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace. Give us the shield of faith, wherewith we may quench all the fiery darts of the wicked, and the helmet of salvation; and let the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God, be always ready to us. Ephesians 6:11-17.

Enable us so to resist the devil, as that he may flee from us; to resist him stedfast in the faith. And the God of peace tread Satan under our feet, and do it shortly. James 4:7. 1 Peter 5:9. Romans 16:20.

2. We must pray for grace to furnish us for every good thought, word, and work; that we may not only be kept from sin, but may be in every thing as we should be, and do as we should do.

Let Christ be made of God to us not only righteousness, but wisdom, sanctification and redemption. 1 Corinthians 1:30.

Let us be planted together in the likeness of Christ’s death and resurrection, that as he was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we also may walk in newness of life. Romans 6:5, 4.

(a) That the work of grace may be wrought there where it is not yet begun.

Lord, teach transgressors thy ways, and let sinners be converted unto thee; and let the disobedient be turned to the wisdom of the just; and made ready, a people prepared for the Lord. Psalm 51:13. Luke 1:17.

Let those be quickened that are yet dead in trespasses and sins: Say unto them, Live; yea, say unto them, Live; and the time shall be a time of love. Ephesians 2:1. Ezekiel 16:6, 8.

Open their eyes, and turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins, and an inheritance among them which are sanctified. Acts 26:18.

By the blood of the covenant send forth the prisoners out of the pit in which is no water, that they may turn to the strong hold, as prisoners of hope. Zechariah 9:11, 12.

Let the word of God prevail to the pulling down of strong holds, and the casting down of imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and let every thought be brought into obedience to Christ. 2 Corinthians 10:4, 5.

(b) That where it is begun it may be carried on, and at length perfected, and the foundation that is well laid may be happily built upon.

Fulfil in us all the good pleasure of thy goodness, and the work of faith with power. 2 Thessalonians 1:11.

Let the God that has begun a good work in us, perform it unto the day of Christ. Philippians 1:6.

Perfect, O God, that which concerns us: Thy mercy, O Lord, endures for ever; forsake not the work of thine own hands. Psalm 138:8.

Lord, let thy grace be sufficient for us, and let thy strength be made perfect in weakness; that where we are weak there we may be strong; strong in the Lord and the power of his might. 2 Corinthians 12:9, 10. Ephesians 6:10.

3. More particularly we must pray for grace.

(a) To teach and instruct us, and make us knowing and intelligent in the things of God.

Give us so to cry after knowledge, and lift up our voice for understanding, to seek for it as silver, and to search for it as for hid treasure, that we may understand the fear of the Lord, and find the knowledge of God. Proverbs 2:3, 4, 5.

Give us all to know thee, from the least even to the greatest, and to follow on to know thee; and so to know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent, as may be life eternal to us. Hebrews 8:11. Hosea 6:3. John 17:3.

Give us the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Christ, that the eyes of our understanding being enlightened, we may know what is the hope of his calling, and what the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints, and may experience what is the exceeding greatness of his power to us ward who believe; according to the working of his mighty power. Ephesians 1:17, 18, 19.

Open thou our eyes, that we may see the wondrous things of thy law and gospel. Psalm 119:18.

Give us to know the certainty of those things wherein we have been instructed; and let our knowledge grow up to all riches of the full assurance of understanding, to the acknowledgment of the mystery of God, even of the Father and of Christ. Luke 1:4. Colossians 2:2.

Deal with thy servants according to thy mercy, and teach us thy statutes; we are thy servants, give us understanding that we may know thy testimonies. Let our cry come before thee, O Lord, give us understanding according to thy word; that good understanding which they have that do thy commandments; whose praise endureth for ever. Psalm 119:124, 125, 169. Psalm 111:10.

(b) To lead us into, and keep us in the way of truth, and if in any thing we be in an error, to rectify our mistake.

Let the Spirit of truth guide us into all truth, and cause us to understand wherein we have erred. John 16:13. Job 6:24.

That which we see not teach thou us, and enable us so to prove all things, as to hold fast that which is good. Job 34:32. 1 Thessalonians 5:21.

Lord, grant that we may not be as children, tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the slight of men, but speaking the truth in love, may grow up into Christ in all things, who is the head. Ephesians 4:14, 15.

Lord, give us so to do thy will, as that we may know of the doctrine whether it be of God; and so to know the truth, as that the truth may make us free, may make us free indeed. John 7:17. John 8:32, 36.

Enable us, we pray thee, to hold fast the form of sound words, which we have heard, in faith and love which is in Christ Jesus, and to continue in the things which we have learned and been assured of. 2 Timothy 1:13. 2 Timothy 3:14.

(c) To help our memories, that the truths of God may be ready to us, whenever we have occasion to use them.

Lord, let thy Spirit teach us all things, and bring all things to our remembrance, whatsoever thou hast said unto us; that the word of Christ may dwell richly in us in all wisdom and spiritual understanding. John 14:26. Colossians 3:16. Colossians 1:9.

Lord, grant that we may give a more earnest heed to the things which we have heard, lest at any time we let them slip, and may keep in memory what hath been preached to us, and may not believe in vain. Hebrews 2:1. 1 Corinthians 15:2.

Lord, make us ready and mighty in the scriptures, that we may be perfect, throughly furnished unto all good works; and being well instructed unto the kingdom of heaven, may as the good householder, bring out of our treasure things new and old. Acts 18:24. 2 Timothy 3:17. Matthew 13:52.

(d) To direct our consciences, to shew us the way of our duty, and to make us wise, knowing, judicious Christians.

Lord, give us a wise and an understanding heart, that wisdom which in all cases is profitable to direct; that wisdom of the prudent which is to understand his way. 1 Kings 3:9, 12. Ecclesiastes 10:10. Proverbs 14:8.

This we pray, that our love may abound yet more and more in knowledge, and in all judgment, that we may discern things that differ, and may approve things that are excellent; That we may be sincere and without offence unto the day of Christ, and may be filled with the fruits of righteousness, which are by Jesus Christ unto the glory and praise of God. Philippians 1:9, 10, 11.

O that we may be filled with the knowledge of thy will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding; That we may walk worthy of the Lord unto all pleasing, being fruitful in every good work, and increasing in the knowledge of God. Colossians 1:9, 10.

Teach us thy way, O God, and lead us in a plain path, because of our observers. Psalm 27:11.

When we know not what to do, our eyes are up unto thee; Then let us hear the word behind us, saying, This is the way, walk in it, that we turn not to the right hand, or to the left. 2 Chronicles 20:12. Isaiah 30:21.

Order our steps in thy word, and let no iniquity have dominion over us. Psalm 119:133.

(e) To sanctify our natures, to plant in us all holy principles and dispositions, and to increase every grace in us.

The very God of peace sanctify us wholly, and we pray God our whole spirit, and soul and body, may be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ; for faithful is he that calleth us, who also will do it. 1 Thessalonians 5:23, 24.

Create in us a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within us; Cast us not away from thy presence, and take not thy holy spirit away from us; Restore unto us the joy of thy salvation, and uphold us with thy free spirit. Psalm 51:10, 11, 12.

Write thy law in our hearts, and put it in our inward part, that we may be the epistles of Christ written by the Spirit of the living God, not in tables of stone, but in fleshy tables of the heart, that the law of our God being in our heart, none of our steps may slide, and we may delight to do thy will, O God, may delight in the law of God after the inward man. Hebrews 8:10. 2 Corinthians 3:3. Psalm 37:31. Psalm 40:8. Romans 7:22.

O that we may obey from the heart that form of doctrine into which we desire to be delivered, as into a mould, that our whole souls may be leavened by it; and that we may not be conformed to this world, but transformed by the renewing of our mind; may not fashion ourselves after our former lusts in our ignorance, but as obedient children may be holy in all manner of conversation, as he which hath called us is holy. Romans 6:17. Matthew 13:33. Romans 12:2. 1 Peter 1:14, 15.

1) We must pray for faith.

Unto us (Lord) let it be given to believe; for the faith by which we are saved is not of ourselves, it is the gift of God. Philippians 1:29. Ephesians 2:8.

Lord, increase our faith; and perfect what is lacking in it, that we may be strong in faith, giving glory to God. Luke 17:5. 1 Thessalonians 3:10. Romans 4:20.

Lord, give us so to be crucified with Christ, as that the life we now live in the flesh we may live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved us, and gave himself for us; And so to bear about with us continually the dying of the Lord Jesus, as that the life also of Jesus may be manifested in our mortal bodies. Galatians 2:20. 2 Corinthians 4:10.

As we have received Christ Jesus the Lord, enable us so to walk in him, rooted and built up in him, and stablished in the faith as we have been taught, abounding therein with thanksgiving. Colossians 2:6, 7.

Let every word of thine profit us, being mixed with faith, by which we receive thy testimony, and set to our seal that God is true. Hebrews 4:2. John 3:33.

We beseech thee work in us that faith which is the substance of things hoped for, and the evidence of things not seen, by which we may look above the things that are seen that are temporal, and may look at the things that are not seen that are eternal. Hebrews 11:1. 2 Corinthians 4:18.

Enable us by faith to set the Lord always before us, and to have our eyes ever towards him; that we may act in every thing as seeing him that is invisible, and having a respect to the recompence of reward. Psalm 16:8. Psalm 25:15. Hebrews 11:27, 26.

Let our hearts be purified by faith, and let it be our victory overcoming the world. And let us be kept from fainting by believing that we shall see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. Acts 15:9. 1 John 5:4. Psalm 27:13.

2) We must pray for the fear of God.

Lord, work in us that fear of thee, which is the beginning of wisdom, which is the instruction of wisdom, and which is a fountain of life to depart from the snares of death. Proverbs 1:7. Proverbs 15:33. Proverbs 14:27.

Unite our hearts to fear thy name, that we may keep thy commandments, which is the whole of man. Psalm 86:11. Ecclesiastes 12:13.

O put thy fear into our hearts, that we may never depart from thee. Let us all be devoted to thy fear; And let us be in the fear of the Lord every day, and all the day long. Jeremiah 32:40. Psalm 119:38. Proverbs 23:17.

3) We must pray that the love of God and Christ may be rooted in us, and in order thereunto, that the love of the world may be rooted out of us.

Give us grace (we beseech thee) to love thee the Lord our God with all our heart and soul, and mind and might, which is the first and great commandment, to set our love upon thee, and to delight ourselves always in thee, and therein we shall have the desire of our heart. Matthew 22:37, 38. Psalm 91:14. Psalm 37:4.

Circumcise our hearts to love thee the Lord our God with all our heart, and with all our soul, that we may live. Deuteronomy 30:6.

O that the love of God may be shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost. Romans 5:5.

O that Jesus Christ may be very precious to us, as he is to all that believe, that he may be in our account the chiefest of ten thousands, and altogether lovely; and that he may be our beloved and our friend: That though we have not seen him, yet we may love him, and though now we see him not, yet believing we may rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory. 1 Peter 2:7. Canticle (Song of Solomon) 5:10, 16. 1 Peter 1:8.

Let the love of Christ to us constrain us to live, not to ourselves, but to him that died for us and rose again. 2 Corinthians 5:14, 15.

And, Lord, grant that we may not love the world, nor the things that are in the world, because if any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him; that we may set our affections on things above, and not on things that are on the earth. 1 John 2:15. Colossians 3:1, 2.

4) We must pray that our consciences may be always tender, and that we may live a life of repentance.

Lord, take away the stony heart out of our flesh, and give us a heart of flesh. Ezekiel 11:19.

Make us afraid of all appearances of evil, and careful not to give Satan advantage against us, as being not ignorant of his devices. 1 Thessalonians 5:22. 2 Corinthians 2:11.

Lord, give us the happiness which they have that fear always; that when we think we stand, we may take heed lest we fall. Proverbs 28:14. 1 Corinthians 10:12.

5) We must pray to God to work in us charity and brotherly love.

Lord, put upon us that charity which is the bond of perfectness, that we may keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace, and may live in love and peace, that the God of love and peace may be with us. Colossians 3:14. Ephesians 4:3. 2 Corinthians 13:11.

Lord, give us to love our neighbour as ourselves, with that love which is the fulfilling of the law; to love one another with a pure heart fervently, that hereby all men may know that we are Christ’s disciples. Romans 13:9, 10. 1 Peter 1:22. John 13:35.

And as we are taught of God to love one another, give us to abound therein more and more, and as we have opportunity to do good to all men, and as much as in us lies to live peaceably with all men; always following after the things that make for peace, and things wherewith one may edify another. 1 Thessalonians 4:9, 10. Galatians 6:10. Romans 12:18. Romans 14:19.

Lord, make us able to love our enemies, to bless them that curse us, and to pray for them that despitefully use us, and to do good to them that hate us, forbearing one another, and forgiving one another in love, as Christ forgave us. Matthew 5:44. Colossians 3:13.

6) We must pray for the grace of self-denial.

Lord, give us grace to deny ourselves, to take up our cross daily, and to follow Christ, to keep under the body, and bring it into subjection. Matthew 16:24. 1 Corinthians 9:27.

Lord, keep us from being lovers of our own selves, from being wise in our own conceit, and leaning to our own understanding. 2 Timothy 3:2. Proverbs 3:7, 5.

Lord, give us to seek not our own only, but every one his brother’s welfare. 1 Corinthians 10:24.

And grant that none of us may live to ourselves, or die to ourselves, but whether we live or die we may be the Lord’s, and may live and die to him. Romans 14:7, 8.

7) We must pray for humility and meekness.

Lord, give us all to learn of Christ to be meek and lowly in heart, that we may find rest to our souls; and that herein the same mind may be in us that was also in Christ Jesus. Matthew 11:29. Philippians 2:5.

Lord, hide pride from us, and clothe us with humility, and put upon us the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit, which in thy sight is of great price. Job 33:17. 1 Peter 5:5. 1 Peter 3:4.

Lord, give us grace to walk worthy of the vocation wherewith we are called, with all lowliness and meekness, with long-suffering forbearing one another in love. Ephesians 4:1, 2.

Let anger never rest in our bosoms, nor the sun ever go down upon our wrath; but enable us to shew all meekness towards all men, because we ourselves also were sometimes foolish and disobedient. Ecclesiastes 7:9. Ephesians 4:26. Titus 3:2, 3.

Let us be clothed as becomes the elect of God, holy and beloved, with bowels of mercies, kindness, humbleness of mind, meekness, and long-suffering; that being merciful as our Father which is in heaven is merciful, we may be perfect as he is perfect. Colossians 3:12. Luke 6:36. Matthew 5 (v. 48).

8) We must pray for the grace of contentment and patience, and a holy indifferency to all the things of sense and time.

Lord, teach us whatsoever state we are in therewith to be content; let us know both how to be abased, and how to abound, every where and in all things let us be instructed both to be full and to be hungry, both to abound and to suffer need; And let godliness with contentment be great gain to us; and a little with the fear of the Lord and quietness, is better than great treasure and trouble therewith. Philippians 4:11, 12. 1 Timothy 6:6. Proverbs 15:16. Proverbs 17:1.

Lord, grant that our conversation may be without covetousness, and we may always be content with such things as we have; still saying, The will of the Lord be done. Hebrews 13:5. Acts 21:14.

Enable us in our patience to possess our own souls; and let patience always have its perfect work, that we may be perfect and entire, wanting nothing. Luke 21:19. James 1:4.

Lord, give us grace to weep as though we wept not, and to rejoice as though we rejoiced not, and to buy as though we possessed not, and to use this world as not abusing it, because the time is short, and the fashion of this world passeth away. 1 Corinthians 7:29, 30, 31.

9) We must pray for the grace of hope; a hope in God and Christ, and a hope of eternal life.

Let patience work experience in us, and experience hope, such a hope as maketh not ashamed. Through patience and comfort of the scriptures let us have hope, and be saved by hope. Romans 5:4, 5. Romans 15:4. Romans 8:24.

Let the God of Jacob be our help, and our hope always be in the Lord our God. Psalm 146:5.

Let us be begotten again to a lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ, and let that hope be to us as an anchor of the soul, sure and stedfast, entering into that within the vail, whither the forerunner is for us entered. 1 Peter 1:3. Hebrews 6:19, 20.

Let us have Christ in us the hope of glory, and never be moved away from that hope of the gospel; but enable us to give diligence unto the full assurance of hope unto the end. Colossians 1:27, 23. Hebrews 6:11.

10) We must pray for grace to preserve us from sin, and all appearances of it and approaches towards it.

Now we pray to God that we may do no evil, but may be blameless and harmless as the children of God, without rebuke, in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation. 2 Corinthians 13:7. Philippians 2:15.

Turn away our eyes from beholding vanity, and quicken thou us in thy way; Remove from us the way of lying, and grant us thy law graciously. Psalm 119:37, 29.

Incline not our hearts to any evil thing, to practise wicked works with them that work iniquity, and let us not eat of their dainties. Psalm 141:4.

O cleanse us from our secret faults, keep back thy servants also from presumptuous sins; let not them have dominion over us, but let us be upright and innocent from the great transgressions, and grant that hereby we may prove ourselves upright before thee, by keeping ourselves from our own iniquity. Psalm 19:12, 13. Psalm 18:23.

Let thy word be hid in our hearts, that we may not sin against thee, and thy grace be at all times sufficient for us, ready to us, and mighty in us, and never give us up to our own hearts lusts, to walk in our own counsels. Psalm 119:11. 2 Corinthians 12:9. Psalm 81:12.

Enable us to walk circumspectly, not as fools, but as wise, so circumspectly, that we may cut off occasion from them which desire occasion to blaspheme that worthy name by which we are called, and with well-doing may put to silence the ignorance of foolish men, and may adorn the doctrine of God our Saviour, in all things. Ephesians 5:15. 2 Corinthians 11:12. James 2:7. 1 Peter 2:15. Titus 2:10.

4. We must pray for grace to enable us, both to govern our tongues well, and to use them well.

Lord, enable us to take heed to our ways, that we offend not with our tongue, and to keep our mouth as it were with a bridle, that it may not be hasty to utter any thing. Psalm 39:1. Ecclesiastes 5:2.

Set a watch, O Lord, before our mouth, keep the door of our lips, that we may not offend in word. Psalm 141:3. James 3:2.

Let our speech be always with grace seasoned with salt, and enable us always out of the good treasure of our heart to bring forth good things. Let our mouth speak wisdom, and our tongue talk of judgment; and let not thy words depart out of our mouth, nor out of the mouth of our seed, or our seed’s seed, from henceforth and for ever. Colossians 4:6. Matthew 12:35. Psalm 37:30. Isaiah 59:21.

Enable us always to open our mouth with wisdom, and let the law of kindness be in our tongue: Give us to know what is acceptable, that our tongue may be as choice silver, and our lips may feed many. Proverbs 31:26. Proverbs 10:32, 20, 21.

5. We must pray for grace to direct and quicken us to, and to strengthen and assist us in our duty in the whole course of our conversation.

Let the grace of God, which hath appeared to us, and to all men, bringing salvation, effectually teach us to deny all ungodliness and worldly fleshly lusts, and to live soberly, righteously and godly in this present world, looking for the blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us, that he might redeem us from all iniquity, and purify unto himself a peculiar people zealous of good works. Titus 2:11-14.

(a) That we may be prudent and discreet in our duty.

Thou hast said, If any man lack wisdom, he must ask it of God, who gives to all men liberally, and upbraideth not, and it shall be given him. Lord, we want wisdom, make us wise as serpents, and harmless as doves, that wisdom may make our face to shine, and may be better to us than weapons of war. James 1:5. Matthew 10:16. Ecclesiastes 8:1. Ecclesiastes 9:18.

Enable us to walk in wisdom towards them that are without, redeeming the time. Colossians 4:5.

Give us to order all our affairs with discretion; and to behave ourselves wisely in a perfect way, with a perfect heart. Psalm 112:5. Psalm 101:2.

(b) That we may be honest and sincere in our duty.

Let our wisdom be not that from beneath, which is earthly, sensual, devilish, but wisdom from above, which is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, and easy to be intreated, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality, and without hypocrisy. James 3:15, 17.

O that we may always have our conversation in the world in simplicity and godly sincerity, not with fleshly wisdom, but by the grace of God. 2 Corinthians 1:12.

Lord, uphold us in our integrity, and set us before thy face for ever, and let integrity and uprightness preserve us, for we wait on thee. Psalm 41:12. Psalm 25:21.

Let our hearts be sound in thy statutes, that we be not ashamed; and let our eye be single, that our whole body may be full of light. Psalm 119:80. Matthew 6:22.

(c) That we may be active and diligent in our duty.

Lord, quicken us to work the works of him that was sent us, while it is day, because the night comes wherein no man can work; and what good our hand finds to do, to do it with all our might, because there is no work or knowledge in the grave, whither we are going. John 9:4. Ecclesiastes 9:10.

Lord, grant that we may never be slothful in any good business, but fervent in spirit serving the Lord; stedfast and unmoveable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, forasmuch as we know that our labour is not in vain in the Lord. Romans 12:11. 1 Corinthians 15:58.

Lord, make us zealously affected in every good work; and what we do enable us to do it heartily as unto the Lord, and not unto men.

Galatians 4:18. Colossians 3:23.

Lord, enable us to do the work of every day in its day, according as the duty of the day requires, redeeming the time, because the days are evil; that when our Lord comes he may find us doing. Ezra 3:4. Ephesians 5:16. Luke 12:43.

(d) That we may be resolute and courageous in our duty, as those that know that though we may be losers for Christ, we shall not be losers by Him in the end.

Lord, teach us to endure hardness as good soldiers of Jesus Christ; that we may not fear the reproach of men, or their revilings, nor be ashamed of Christ or of his words, knowing whom we have believed, even one who is able to keep what we have committed to him against that day. 2 Timothy 2:3. Isaiah 51:7. Mark 8:38. 2 Timothy 1:12.

Though bonds and afflictions should abide us, Lord, grant that none of these things may move us, and that we may not count life itself dear to us, so we may finish our course with joy. Acts 20:23, 24.

Enable us in all things to approve ourselves to God, and then to pass by honour and dishonour, by evil report and good report, clad with the armour of righteousness on the right hand and on the left, as those that account it a very small thing to be judged of man’s judgment, for he that judgeth us is the Lord. 2 Corinthians 6:4, 8, 7. 1 Corinthians 4:3, 4.

(e) That we may be pleasant and cheerful in our duty.

Lord, enable us to rejoice evermore; to rejoice in the Lord always, because he hath again said unto us, Rejoice; that we may go on our way rejoicing, may eat our bread with joy, and drink our wine with a merry heart, as we shall have reason to do if God now accepteth our works. 1 Thessalonians 5:16. Philippians 4:4. Acts 8:39. Ecclesiastes 9:7.

Give us grace to serve thee the Lord our God with joyfulness and gladness of heart in the abundance of all things; And to sing in the ways of the Lord, because great is the glory of our God. Deuteronomy 28:47. Psalm 138:5.

Let us have that cheerfulness of heart which doth good like a medicine, and deliver us from that heaviness which maketh the heart stoop, and that sorrow of the world which worketh death. Proverbs 17:22. Proverbs 12:25. 2 Corinthians 7:10.

(f) That we may do the duty of every condition of life, every event of providence, and every relation wherein we stand.

Lord, enable us, in a day of prosperity to be joyful, and in a day of adversity, to consider, because God hath set the one over against the other; to add to our knowledge temperance, and to temperance patience. Ecclesiastes 7:14. 2 Peter 1:6.

Give us grace to abide with thee in the calling wherein we are called; and in all our ways to acknowledge thee, and be thou pleased to direct our steps. 1 Corinthians 7:24. Proverbs 3:6.

Let those that are called, being servants, be the Lord’s freemen, and those that are called, being free, be Christ’s servants. 1 Corinthians 7:22.

Let all in every relation dwell together in unity, that it may be as the dew of Hermon, and as the dew that descended upon the mountains of Zion. O that we may dwell together as joint-heirs of the grace of life, that our prayers may not be hindered. Psalm 133:1, 3. 1 Peter 3:7.

Give us grace to honour all men, to love the brotherhood, to fear God, and to be subject to the higher powers, not only for wrath, but also for conscience sake. 1 Peter 2:17. Romans 13:1,

5. (g) That we may be universally conscientious.

O that we may stand perfect and complete in all the will of God. Colossians 4:12.

O that our ways were directed to keep thy commandments! And then shall we not be ashamed, when we have a respect to them all. Psalm 119:5, 6.

Teach us, O Lord, the way of thy statutes, and we shall keep it unto the end: Give us understanding, and we shall keep thy law, yea we shall observe it with our whole heart: Make us to go in the path of thy commandments, for therein do we delight. Incline our hearts unto thy testimonies, and not to covetousness. Psalm 119:33-36.

Grant us, we pray thee, according to the riches of thy glory, that

we may be strengthened with all might by thy Spirit in the inner man: That Christ may dwell in our hearts by faith, and that we being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height, and may know the love of Christ which passeth knowledge; and be filled with a divine fulness, and may partake of a divine nature. Ephesians 3:16-19. 2 Peter 1:4.

And let the love of Christ constrain us to live not to ourselves, but to him that died for us, and rose again. 2 Corinthians 5:14, 15.

6. We must pray for grace to make us wiser and better every day than other.

Lord, give us to increase with the increases of God; to grow in grace, and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ; to hold on our way, and having clean hands to grow stronger and stronger. Colossians 2:19. 2 Peter 3:18. Job 17:9.

Let our path be as the shining light, which shines more and more to the perfect day. Proverbs 4:18.

We have not yet attained, nor are we already perfect; Lord, grant that therefore forgetting the things that are behind, we may reach forth to those things that are before, for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus. Philippians 3:12, 13, 14.

Be thou as the dew unto us, that we may grow as the lily, and cast forth our roots as Lebanon; that our branches may spread, and our beauty be as the olive-tree. And let the Sun of righteousness arise upon us with healing under his wings, that we may go forth and grow up as calves of the stall. Hosea 14:5, 6. Malachi 4:2.

7. We must pray for effectual support and comfort under all the crosses and afflictions that we meet with in this world.

We know that we are born to trouble as the sparks fly upward; but in six troubles, be thou pleased to deliver us, and in seven let no evil touch us. Job 5:7, 19.

Let the eternal God be our refuge, and underneath be the everlasting arms; that the spirit thou hast made may not fail before thee, nor the soul that thou hast redeemed. Deuteronomy 33:27. Isaiah 57:16. Psalm 71:23.

Let us be strengthened with all might according to thy glorious power, unto all patience and long-suffering with joyfulness. Colossians 1:11.

Let thy statutes be our songs in the house of our pilgrimage; and let thy testimonies, which we have taken as a heritage for ever, be always the rejoicing of our hearts. Psalm 119:54, 111.

When we are troubled on every side, yet let us not be distressed, and when we are perplexed, yet let us not be in despair; but as sorrowful, and yet always rejoicing, as having nothing, and yet possessing all things. 2 Corinthians 4:8. 2 Corinthians 6:10.

8. We must pray for grace to preserve us to the end, and to fit us for whatever lies before us betwixt and the grave.

Lord, deliver us from every evil work, and preserve us to thy heavenly kingdom, being kept from falling, that we may be presented faultless at the coming of thy glory with exceeding joy. 2 Timothy 4:18. Jude 24.

Lord, make us to increase and abound in love one towards another, and towards all men, that our hearts may be established unblameable in holiness, before God even our Father, at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ with all his saints. 1 Thessalonians 3:12, 13.

If Satan desire to have us that he may sift us as wheat, yet let Christ’s intercession prevail for us, that our faith fail not. Luke 22:31, 32.

Till we are taken out of the world, let us be kept from the evil, and sanctified through thy truth; thy word is truth. John 17:15, 17.

Build us up, we pray thee, in our most holy faith, and keep us in the love of God, looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life. Jude 20, 21.

Grant that we may continue to call upon thee as long as we live, and till we die may never remove our integrity from us; and that our righteousness we may hold fast, and never let it go, and our hearts may not reproach us so long as we live. Psalm 116:2. Job 27:5, 6.

9. We must pray for grace to prepare us for death, and to carry us well through our dying moments.

Lord, make us to know our end, and the measure of our days what it is, that we may know and consider how frail we are; and that our days are as a hand breadth, and that every man at his best state is altogether vanity, and our days upon earth are as a shadow, and there is no abiding. Psalm 39:4, 5. 1 Chronicles 29:15.

Lord, teach us so to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom, and make us to consider our latter end. Psalm 90:12. Deuteronomy 32:29.

Lord, make us always ready, with our loins girded about, and our lights burning, because the Son of man comes at an hour that we think not. Luke 12:35, 40.

Keep us all the days of our appointed time, waiting till our change comes; and then shalt thou call, and we will answer. Job 14:14, 15.

Bring us to our grave as a shock of corn in its season; satisfy us

with life, whether it be longer or shorter, and shew us thy salvation. Job 5:26. Psalm 91 (v. 16).

And when we walk through the valley of the shadow of death, be thou with us, that we may fear no evil, let thy rod and thy staff comfort us. Psalm 23:4.

Let goodness and mercy follow us all the days of our life, and let us dwell in the house of the Lord for ever. Mercy and truth be with us. Psalm 23:6. 2 Samuel 15:20.

Redeem our souls from the power of the grave, and receive us; Guide us by thy counsel, and afterwards receive us to glory. Psalm 49:15. Psalm 73:24.

10. We must pray for grace to fit us for heaven, and that we may at length be put in possession of eternal life.

Lord, make us meet to partake of the inheritance of the saints in light; let God himself work us to the self-same thing, and give us the earnest of the Spirit in our hearts. Colossians 1:12. 2 Corinthians 5:5.

O that we may now have our conversation in heaven, that we may from thence with comfort look for the Saviour the Lord Jesus, who shall change our vile bodies, that they may be fashioned like unto his glorious body. Philippians 3:20, 21.

O that now we may set our affections on things above, and that our life may be hid with Christ in God, that when Christ who is our life shall appear, we may also appear with him in glory; that when he shall appear we may be like him, and may see him as he is, may behold his face in righteousness, and when we awake may be satisfied with his likeness. Colossians 3:2, 3, 4. 1 John 3:2. Psalm 17:15.

When we fail, let us be received into everlasting habitations, in the city that hath foundation, whose builder and maker is God, that we may be together for ever with the Lord, to see as we are seen, and know as we are known. Luke 16:9. Hebrews 11:10. 1 Thessalonians 4:17. 1 Corinthians 13:12.

And in the mean time help us to comfort ourselves and one another with these words; and having this hope in us to purify ourselves even as Christ is pure. 1 Thessalonians 4:18. 1 John 3:3.

Now our Lord Jesus Christ himself, and God, even our Father, who hath loved us, and hath given us everlasting consolation and good hope through grace, comfort our hearts, and stablish us in every good word and work. 2 Thessalonians 2:16, 17.

11. We must pray for the good things of this life, with an humble submission to the will of God.

Lord, thou hast told us, that godliness hath the promise of the life that now is, as well as of that which is to come; And that if we seek first the kingdom of God and the righteousness thereof, other things shall be added to us; and therefore we cast all our care about these things upon thee, who carest for us, for our heavenly Father knows that we have need of all these things. 1 Timothy 4:8. Matthew 6:33. 1 Peter 5:7. Matthew 6:32.

(a) We must pray to be preserved from the calamities to which we are exposed.

Thou, Lord, art our refuge and our fortress, and under thy wings will we trust, thy truth shall be our shield and buckler; Let us therefore not be afraid for the terror by night, nor for the arrow that flieth by day. Having made the Lord our refuge, and the most High our habitation, let no evil befall us, nor any plague come nigh our dwelling. Psalm 91:2, 4, 5, 9, 10.

Let the Lord be our keeper, even he that keepeth Israel, and neither slumbers nor sleeps. Let the Lord be our shade on our right hand; That the sun may not smite us by day, nor the moon by night; Let the Lord preserve us from all evil, the Lord preserve our souls; The Lord preserve our going out and coming in, from this time forth, and even for ever more. Psalm 121:4-8.

Lord, make a hedge about us, about our houses, and about all that we have round about; and take sickness away from the midst of us. Job 1:10. Exodus 23:25.

(b) We must pray to be supplied with the comforts and supports we daily stand in need of.

O that the beauty of the Lord our God may be upon us, prosper thou the work of our hands upon us, yea the work of our hands establish thou it; Save now, we beseech thee, O Lord; O Lord, we beseech thee send now prosperity. Psalm 90:17. Psalm 118:25.

Let our sons be as plants grown up in their youth, and our daughters as corner stones polished after the similitude of a palace: Let our garners be full, affording all manner of store; And let there be no breaking in or going out; no complaining within our streets: Happy is the people that is in such a case, yea rather happy is the people whose God is the Lord. Psalm 144:12-15.

Let us be blessed in the city, and blessed in the field, let our basket and store be blessed, let us be blessed when we come in, and when we go out. Deuteronomy 28:3, 5, 6.

Let thy good providence so order all events concerning us, as that they may be made to work for good to us, as thou hast promised they shall to all that love thee and are called according to thy purpose. Romans 8:28.

Give us to trust in the Lord and do good, and then we shall dwell in the land, and verily we shall be fed; and be thou pleased to bring forth our righteousness as the light, and our judgment as the noonday. Psalm 37:3, 6.

Let us be hid from the scourge of the tongue, and not be afraid of destruction when it cometh; let us be in league with the stones of the field, and let the beasts of the field be at peace with us; let us know that our tabernacle is in peace, and let us visit our habitation and not sin. Job 5:21, 23, 24.

And if God will be with us, and will keep us in the way that we go, during our pilgrimage in this world, and will give us bread to eat, and raiment to put on, so that we may come to our heavenly Father’s house in peace, then the Lord shall be our God. Genesis 28:20, 21.

12. We must plead the promises of God for the enforcing of all our petitions, put these promises in suit, and refer ourselves to them.

Lord, thou hast given us many exceeding great and precious promises, which are all yea and Amen in Christ. Now be it unto thy servants according to the word which thou hast spoken. 2 Peter 1:4. 2 Corinthians 1:20. Luke 1:38. 2 Samuel 7:25.

Give us to draw water with joy out of those wells of salvation, to suck and be satisfied from those breasts of consolation; And now, O Lord God, let the word which thou hast spoken concerning thy servants be established for ever, and do as thou hast said. Isaiah 12:3. Isaiah 66:11. 2 Samuel 7:25. 1 Chronicles 17:23.

Deal with us according to the tenor of the everlasting covenant, which is well ordered in all things and sure, and which is all our salvation, and all our desire. 2 Samuel 23:5.

Look upon us and be merciful to us, as thou usest to do unto those that love thy name, and do more for us than we are able to ask or think, and supply all our needs according to thy riches in glory by Christ Jesus. Psalm 119:132. Ephesians 3:20. Philippians 4:19.

Chapter IV Thanksgivings for mercy

Our errand at the throne of grace is not only to seek the favour of God, but to give unto Him the glory due unto His name, and that not only by an awful adoration of His infinite perfections, but by a grateful acknowledgment of His goodness to us, which cannot indeed add any thing to His glory, but He is pleased to accept of it, and to reckon Himself glorified by it, if it come from a heart that’s humbly sensible of its own unworthiness to receive any favour from God, that values the gifts, and loves the giver of them.

UNTO thee, O God, do we give thanks, unto thee do we give thanks, for that thy name is near thy wondrous works declare. Psalm 75:1.

Let our souls bless the Lord, and let all that is within us bless his holy name; yea, let our souls bless the Lord, and not forget any of his benefits. Psalm 103:1, 2.

We will praise the Lord, for it is good, it is pleasant, and praise is comely for the upright, yea it is a good thing to give thanks unto the Lord, and to sing praises unto thy name, O most High, to shew forth thy loving-kindness in the morning, and thy faithfulness every night. Psalm 147:1. Psalm 92:1, 2.

We will extol thee our God, O king, and will bless thy name for ever and ever; Every day will we bless thee, and will praise thy name for ever and ever; we will abundantly utter the memory of thy great goodness, and sing of thy righteousness. Psalm 145:1, 2, 7.

We will sing unto the Lord a new song, and his praise in the congregation of saints; O let Israel rejoice in him that made him, let the children of Zion be joyful in their King; Let the saints be joyful in glory, and let the high praises of God be in their hearts, and in their mouths. Psalm 149:1, 2, 5, 6.

While we live we will bless the Lord, and will sing praises unto our God while we have any being; and when we have no being on earth, we hope to have a being in heaven to be doing it better. Psalm 146:2.

We are here through Jesus Christ to offer the sacrifice of praise to thee, which we desire to do continually, that is the fruit of our lips, giving thanks to thy name. And thou hast said that he that offers praise glorifies thee, and that this also shall please the Lord better than an ox or bullock that hath horns and hoofs. Hebrews 13:15. Psalm 50 (v. 23). Psalm 69:31.

We will mention the loving-kindnesses of the Lord, and the praises of the Lord, according to all that the Lord hath bestowed on us, and the great goodness towards the house of Israel which he hath bestowed on them, according to his mercies, and according to the multitude of his loving kindnesses. Isaiah 63:7.

1. For the discoveries which He has made to us in His word of the goodness of His nature.

WE give thanks unto the God of gods, unto the Lord of lords, for his mercy endures for ever. Psalm 136:2, 3.

Thy goodness is thy glory, and it is that for which all thy works do praise thee, and thy saints do bless thee. Exodus 33:19. Psalm 145:10.

Thou art gracious and full of compassion, slow to anger, and of great mercy, and hast told us that thou dost not afflict willingly, or grieve the children of men, but though thou cause grief, yet thou wilt have compassion, according to the multitude of thy mercies. Psalm 145:8. Lamentations 3:33, 32.

Thou takest pleasure in them that fear thee, in them that hope in thy mercy. Psalm 147:11.

2. For the many instances of His goodness.

A) The goodness of His providence relating to our bodies, and the life that now is; and this,

1) First, with reference to all the creatures, and the world of mankind, in general.

Thou hast stretched out the heavens like a curtain, and in them hast thou set a tabernacle for the sun, which is as a bridegroom coming out of his chamber, and rejoiceth as a strong man to run a race. And thou causest thy sun to shine on the evil and on the good, and sendest rain on the just and on the unjust. Psalm 104:2. Psalm 19:4, 5. Matthew 5:45.

When we consider the heavens the work of thy fingers, the sun, the moon, and the stars which thou hast ordained, Lord, what is man that thou thus visitest him? For truly the light is sweet, and a pleasant thing it is for the eyes to behold the sun: All the glory be to the Father of lights, who commandeth the morning, and causeth the dayspring to know his place. Psalm 8:3, 4. Ecclesiastes 11:7. James 1:17. Job 38:12.

Thou didst not leave thyself without witness among the heathen, in that thou didst good, and gavest them rain from heaven, and fruitful seasons, filling their hearts with food and gladness. Acts 14:17.

Thou coverest the heavens with clouds, and preparest rain for the earth, and makest grass to grow upon the mountains: Thou givest to the beast his food, and to the young ravens which cry. Psalm 147:8, 9.

Thou causest it to rain on the wilderness where there is no man, to satisfy the desolate and waste ground. Job 38:26, 27.

Thou visitest the earth, and waterest it, thou greatly enrichest it with the river of God, which is full of water; thou preparest them corn when thou hast so provided for it: Thou waterest the ridges thereof abundantly, thou settlest the furrows thereof, thou makest it soft with showers, thou blessest the springing thereof; Thou crownest the year with thy goodness, and thy paths drop fatness. Psalm 65:9, 10, 11.

Thou sendest the springs into the valleys which run among the hills; and they give drink to every beast of the field; and by them the fowls of the heaven have their habitation, which sing among the branches. Psalm 104:10, 11, 12.

Thou hast laid the foundations of the earth, that it should not be removed for ever, and settest bounds to the waters of the sea, that they turn not again to cover the earth; Thou hast shut up the sea with doors, and broken up for it thy decreed place, saying, Hitherto shalt thou come but no further, here shall thy proud waves be stayed. And thou hast made good what thou hast sworn, that the waters of Noah should no more go over the earth. Psalm 104:5, 9. Job 38:8, 10, 11. Isaiah 54:9.

Thy covenant of the day and of the night is not broken, but still thou givest the sun for a light by day, and the ordinances of the moon and of the stars for a light by night; and art faithful to that covenant of providence, that while the earth remains, seed-time and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night shall not cease. Jeremiah 33:20. Jeremiah 31:35. Genesis 8:22.

The heaven, even the heavens are thine, but the earth thou hast given to the children of men; and thou hast put all things under their feet, and made them to have dominion over the works of thy hands; so that the fear of man and the dread of man is upon every beast of the earth, and upon the fowl of the air, and into his hand they are delivered, because thou hadst a favour to him, and thy delights were with the sons of men. Psalm 115:16. Psalm 8:6. Genesis 9:2. Proverbs 8:31.

Thou causest the grass to grow for the cattle, and herb for the service of man, that thou mayest bring forth food out of the earth; Wine that makes glad the heart of man, and oil to make his face to shine, and bread which strengthens man’s heart. Psalm 104:14, 15.

Thou givest to all life and breath and all things, and the earth, O Lord, is full of thy mercy. Acts 17:25. Psalm 119:64.

All the creatures wait upon thee, that thou mayest give them their meat in due season; That thou givest them they gather, thou openest thy hand, they are filled with good: Thou sendest forth thy spirit they are created, thou renewest the face of the earth. This thy glory shall endure for ever, and thou rejoicest in these works. Psalm 104:27, 28, 30, 31.

It is through thy goodness, O Lord, that as one generation of mankind passeth away, another generation comes, and that thou hast not blotted out the name of that corrupt and guilty race from under heaven. Ecclesiastes 1:4. Deuteronomy 29:20.

2) Secondly, with reference to us in particular.

(a) We must give thanks that He hath made us reasonable creatures, capable of knowing, loving, serving and enjoying Him, and that He hath not made us as the beasts that perish.

We will praise thee, for we are fearfully and wonderfully made, and that our souls, our nobler part, know right well; for what man knows the things of a man, save the spirit of man which is in him? Psalm 139:14. 1 Corinthians 2:11.

Thou hast made us of that rank of beings which is little lower than the angels, and is crowned with glory and honour; For there is a spirit in man, and the inspiration of the Almighty giveth them understanding. And the spirit of a man is the candle of the Lord. Psalm 8:5. Job 32:8. Proverbs 20:27.

Our bodies are capable of being the temples of the Holy Ghost, and our souls of having the Spirit of God dwell in them; we therefore glorify thee with our bodies, and with our spirits, which are thine. 1 Corinthians 6:19. 1 Corinthians 3:16. 1 Corinthians 6:20.

Thou, Lord, hast formed us for thyself, that we might shew forth thy praise. Isaiah 43:21.

(b) We must give thanks for our preservation, that our lives are prolonged, and that the use of our reason and understanding, our limbs and senses, is continued to us.

It was owing to thy good providence that we died not from the womb, and did not give up the ghost when we came out of the belly, that the knees prevented us, and the breasts that we should suck. Job 3:11, 12.

Though we were called transgressors from the womb, yet by thy power we have been borne from the belly, and carried from the womb; and thou holdest our souls in life, and sufferest not our foot to be moved. Isaiah 48:8. Isaiah 46:3. Psalm 66:9.

All our bones shall say, Lord, who is like unto thee, for thou keepest all our bones, not one of them is broken. Psalm 35:10. Psalm 34:20.

We lay us down and sleep, for thou, Lord, makest us to dwell in safety. Psalm 3:5. Psalm 4:8.

Thou hast given thine angels a charge concerning us, to keep us in all our ways, to bear us up in their hands, lest we dash our foot against a stone. And they are all ministering spirits sent forth to minister for the good of them that shall be heirs of salvation. Psalm 91:11, 12. Hebrews 1:14.

(c) For signal recoveries from danger by sickness, or otherwise.

When perhaps there has been but a step between us and death, and we have received a sentence of death within ourselves, and have been ready to say in the cutting off of our days we should go to the gates of the grave, and were deprived of the residue of our years, yet thou hast in love to our souls delivered them from the pit of corruption, and cast all our sins behind thy back. 1 Samuel 20:3. 2 Corinthians 1:9. Isaiah 38:10, 17.

When the sorrows of death have compassed us, and the pains of hell have got hold upon us, we have called upon the name of the Lord, and have found that gracious is the Lord and righteous, yea, our God is merciful; we have been brought low and he hath helped us, and hath delivered our souls from death, our eyes from tears, and our feet from falling. We will therefore walk before the Lord in the land of the living. Psalm 116:3-6, 8, 9.

(d) For the supports and comforts of this life, which have hitherto made the land of our pilgrimage easy and pleasant to us.

Blessed be the Lord, who daily loads us with his benefits, even the God of our salvation. Psalm 68:19.

Thou makest us to lie down in green pastures, thou feedest us

beside the still waters: Thou preparest a table for us in the presence of our enemies, thou anointest our head, and our cup runs over. Psalm 23:2, 5.

It may be we were sent forth without purse or scrip, but lacked we any thing? Nothing, Lord. Luke 22:35.

The candle of God hath shined upon our head, and by his light we have walked through darkness, and the secret of God has been in our tabernacle. Job 29:3, 4.

Thou hast given us all things richly to enjoy, and into our hands hast brought plentifully. 1 Timothy 6:17. Job 12:6.

Many a time we have eaten and been filled, and have delighted ourselves in thy great goodness. Nehemiah 9:25.

When we remember all the way which the Lord our God hath led us for so many years in this wilderness, we must here set up a stone and call it Eben-ezer, for hitherto the Lord hath helped us. Deuteronomy 8:2. 1 Samuel 7:12.

(e) For success in our callings and affairs, comfort in relations, and comfortable places of abode.

It is God that girdeth us with strength, and maketh our way perfect; that hath blessed the work of our hands, and it may be so as that though our beginning was small, yet our latter end hath greatly increased. Psalm 18:32. Job 1:10. Job 8:7.

Our houses have been safe from fear, and there hath been no rod of God upon us; so that the voice of rejoicing and salvation hath been in our tabernacle from day to day. Job 21:9. Psalm 118:15.

With our staff it may be we have passed over this Jordan, and now we are become two bands; and it is God that setteth the solitary in families. Genesis 32:10. Psalm 68:6.

If we have lived joyfully with our relations, and they have been to us as the loving hind and as the pleasant roe, we must give thee thanks for it; for every creature is that to us, and no more, that thou makest it to be. Ecclesiastes 9:9. Proverbs 5:19.

(f) For our share in the publick plenty, peace, and tranquillity.

When we have eaten and are full, we have reason to bless thee for the good land which thou hast given us: A land which the eyes of the Lord our God are always upon, from the beginning of the year even to the end of the year. Deuteronomy 8:10. Deuteronomy 11:12.

Thou makest peace in our borders, and fillest us with the finest of the wheat: We are delivered from the noise of archers at the places of drawing water; there therefore will we rehearse the righteous acts of the Lord, even his righteous acts towards the inhabitants of his villages. Psalm 147:14. Judges 5:11.

We thank thee that the powers that are set over us are ministers of God to us for good, that they seek the welfare of our people, speaking peace to all their seed. Romans 13:4. Esther 10:3.

B) The goodness of His grace relating to our souls, and the life that is to come.

But especially blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly things in Christ. Ephesians 1:3.

1) First, we must give God thanks for His kindness to the children of men relating to their better part and their future state, and His favours to the church in general.

(a) We must give thanks for the gracious design and contrivance of man’s redemption and salvation, when he was lost and undone by sin.

O how wonderfully did the kindness and love of God our Saviour towards man appear, not by any works of righteousness, which he had done, but according to his mercy he saved us: We had destroyed ourselves, but in thee, and thee only was our help. Titus 3:4, 5. Hosea 13:9.

When we were cast out in the open field, and no eye pitied us, thou sawest us polluted in our own blood, and thou saidst unto us, Live; yea, thou saidst unto us, Live; and the time was a time of love. Ezekiel 16:5, 6, 8.

When the redemption of the soul was so precious, as that it must have ceased for ever, and no man could by any means redeem his brother, or give to God a ransom for him, then thou wast pleased to find a ransom, that we might be delivered from going down to the pit. Psalm 49:8, 7. Job 33:24.

When we must needs die, and were as water spilt upon the ground, which cannot be gathered up again, then didst thou devise means that the banished might not be for ever expelled from thee. 2 Samuel 14:14.

When thou sparedst not the angels that sinned, but didst cast them down to hell, thou saidest concerning the race of mankind, Destroy it not for a blessing is in it. 2 Peter 2:4. Isaiah 65:8.

Herein appears the wisdom of God in a mystery, even the hidden wisdom which God ordained before the world for our glory. 1 Corinthians 2:7.

(b) For the eternal purposes and counsels of God concerning man’s redemption.

We are bound to give thanks always to thee, O God, because thou hast from the beginning chosen some to salvation through sanctification of the Spirit: That there is a remnant according to the election of grace, whom God hath chosen in Christ before the foundation of the world, that they should be holy and without blame before thee in love, having predestinated them to the adoption of children, by Jesus Christ unto thyself, according to the good pleasure of thy will, to the praise of the glory of thy grace. 2 Thessalonians 2:13. Romans 11:5. Ephesians 1:4, 5, 6.

Thine they were, and thou gavest them to Christ, and this is thy will, that of all that thou hast given him he should lose nothing, but should raise it up at the last day. John 17:6. John 6:39.

(c) For the appointing of the Redeemer, and God’s gracious condescension to deal with man upon new terms, receding from the demands of the broken covenant of innocency.

We bless thee that when sacrifice and offering thou wouldest not, and in it hadst no pleasure, that then the eternal Son of God said, Lo I come to do thy will, O God, and a body hast thou prepared me: And that as in the volume of the book it was written of him, he did delight to do thy will, O God, yea, thy law was within his heart. Hebrews 10:5, 6, 7. Psalm 40:7, 8.

Thou hast laid help upon one that is mighty, one chosen out of thy people: Thou hast found David thy servant with thy holy oil, thou hast anointed him, even with the oil of gladness above his fellows, and didst promise that with him thy hand should be established, and thy arm should strengthen him, and that thou wouldest make him thy first-born, higher than the kings of the earth. Psalm 89:19, 20. Psalm 45:7. Psalm 89:21, 27.

We bless thee that the Father now judgeth no man, but hath committed all judgment to the Son: That as he has life in himself, so he hath given to the Son to have life in himself, and hath given him authority to execute judgment also, because he is the Son of man: That the Father loveth the Son, and hath given all things into his hand. And that the counsel of peace is between them both. John 5:22, 26, 27. John 3:35. Zechariah 6:13.

That he is thy servant whom thou dost uphold, thine elect in whom thy soul delighteth: Thy beloved Son in whom thou art well pleased: That thou hast given him for a covenant of the people, and that through him we are not under the law, but under grace. Isaiah 42:1. Matthew 17:5. Isaiah 49:8. Romans 6:14.

That God so loved the world, as to give his only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. John 3:16.

(d) For the early and ancient indications of this gracious design concerning fallen man.

We bless thee, that as soon as ever man had sinned, it was graciously promised that the seed of the woman should break the serpent’s head; and that in the old testament sacrifices Jesus Christ was the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world. Genesis 3:15. Revelation 13:8.

And that by faith the elders, though they received not the promise, yet obtained a good report, for they obtained witness that they were righteous. Hebrews 11:39, 2, 4.

We bless thee for the promise made to Abraham, that in his seed all the families of the earth should be blessed, and to Jacob that the Shiloh should come, and to him should the gathering of the people be: And that the patriarchs rejoiced to see Christ’s day, and they saw it and were glad. Genesis 12:3. Genesis 49:10. John 8:56.

(e) For the many glorious instances of God’s favour to the old testament church.

We adore that wisdom, power and goodness with which thou broughtest the vine out of Egypt, didst cast out the heathen and plant it; thou preparedst room before it, and didst cause it to take deep root, and it filled the land. Psalm 80:8, 9.

And they got not the land in possession by their own sword, neither did their own arm save them, but thy right hand, and thine arm, and the light of thy countenance, because thou hadst a favour to them. Psalm 44:3. Psalm 136:10. & others.

We bless thee that to the Jews were committed the oracles of God; that they had the adoption, and the glory, and the covenants, the giving of the law, and the service of God, and the promises: And that there did not fail one word of all thy good promise, which thou promisedst by the hand of Moses thy servant. Romans 3:2. Romans 9:4. 1 Kings 8:56.

We bless thee for all that which thou didst at sundry times and in divers manners speak in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, those holy men of God, who spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost, and prophesied of the grace that should come unto us, testifying beforehand the sufferings of Christ, and the glory that should follow, and that not to themselves only, but to us they ministered those great things, things which the angels themselves desire to look into. Hebrews 1:1. 2 Peter 1:21. 1 Peter 1:10, 11, 12.

And especially we bless thee that thou hast provided some better thing for us, that they without us should not be made perfect. Hebrews 11:40.

(f) For the wonderful and mysterious incarnation of the Son of God, and His coming into the world.

We bless thee that when the fulness of time was come, thou didst send forth thy Son made of a woman, made under the law, to redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons. Galatians 4:4, 5.

That the eternal Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, and there were those who saw his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. And without controversy great is the mystery of godliness, that God was manifested in the flesh. John 1:14. 1 Timothy 3:16.

We bless thee that to this end he was born, and for this cause he came into the world, that he might bear witness of the truth, and we believe and are sure, that he is that Christ, the Son of the living God; that it is he that should come, and we are to look for no other. John 18:37. John 6:69. Matthew 11:3.

We bless thee that the Son of man is come to seek and to save that which was lost; that he is come that we might have life, and that we might have it more abundantly, and that for this purpose the Son of God was manifested, that he might destroy the works of the devil. Luke 19:10. John 10:10. 1 John 3:8.

Lord, we receive it as a faithful saying, and well worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, even the chief. 1 Timothy 1:15.

We bless thee that forasmuch as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, he also himself likewise took part of the same: That he took not on him the nature of angels, but our nature, and was in

all things made like unto his brethren, that he might be a merciful and faithful high priest, in things pertaining to God, to make reconciliation for the sins of the people; and that he is not ashamed to call them brethren. Hebrews 2:14, 16, 17, 11.

And that the first begotten was brought into the world with a charge given to all the angels of God to worship him. Hebrews 1:6.

(g) For God’s gracious owning of Him in His undertaking, and in the carrying of it on.

We bless thee that thou wast in Christ reconciling the world to thyself, not imputing their trespasses unto them, and that thou hast committed unto us the word of reconciliation. 2 Corinthians 5:19.

That thou hast thyself given him for a witness to the people, a leader and commander to the people. That he was sanctified and sealed and sent into the world, and that the Father which sent him did not leave him alone, for he always did those things that pleased him. Isaiah 55:4. John 10:36. John 6:27. John 8:29.

Glory be to God in the highest, for in and through Jesus Christ there is on earth peace, and good-will towards men. Luke 2:14.

In this was manifested the love of God towards us, because that God sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him. 1 John 4:9.

We thank thee for the power thou hast given him over all flesh, that he should give eternal life to as many as were given him. John 17:2.

(h) For His Holy life, His excellent doctrine, and the glorious miracles He wrought to confirm His doctrine.

We bless thee for the assurance we have that he is a teacher come from God, since no man could do those miracles which he did, except God were with him. John 3:2.

That thou hast in these last days spoken unto us by thy Son, whose doctrine was not his, but his that sent him, and he spake as one having authority, and that we are encouraged to come and learn of him, because he is meek and lowly in heart, and in learning of him we shall find rest to our souls. Hebrews 1:2. John 7:16. Matthew 7 (v. 29). Matthew 11:29.

We bless thee that he hath left us an example, that we should follow his steps, in that he did no sin, neither was guile found in his mouth, and when he was reviled, he reviled not again; and his meat and drink was to do the will of his Father; in that he was holy, harm-

less, undefiled, separate from sinners. O that we may be armed with the same mind, and that as he was so we may be in this world; and that we may so walk even as he walked. 1 Peter 2:21, 22, 23. John 4:34. Hebrews 7:26. 1 Peter 4:1. 1 John 4:17. 1 John 2:6.

We bless thee that the works which he did, the same bore witness of him that the Father had sent him, that by his power the blind received their sight, the lame walked, the lepers were cleansed, the deaf heard, the dead were raised up, and the poor had the gospel preached to them; and even the winds and the sea obeyed him; for which we glorify the God of Israel. Doubtless this was the Son of God. John 5:36. Matthew 11:5. Matthew 8:27. Matthew 15:31. Matthew 27:54.

(i) For the great encouragements Christ gave to poor sinners to come to Him.

We bless thee that Jesus Christ came to call, not the righteous, but sinners (such as we are) to repentance, and had power on earth to forgive sin; that he came to save his people from their sins; and is the Lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world, and that he is (to his honour, not to his reproach) a friend to publicans and sinners. Matthew 9:13, 6. Matthew 1:21. John 1:29. Matthew 11:19.

We thank thee for the gracious invitation he gave to those who are weary and heavy laden, to come to him for rest: And for the assurance he hath given that whosoever comes unto him he will in no wise cast out. Matthew 11:28. John 6:37.

That he made a gracious offer, that whosoever thirsts might come unto him and drink. John 7:37.

(j) For the full satisfaction which He made to the justice of God for the sin of man by the blood of His cross, for the purchases, victories, and triumphs of the cross, and for all the precious benefits which flow to us from the dying of the Lord Jesus.

Herein indeed God commendeth his love to us, in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us, that we might be reconciled to him by the death of his Son. Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only, but for the sins of the whole world; that he tasted death for every man, that through death he might destroy him that had the power of death, that is, the devil. Romans 5:8, 10. 1 John 4:10. 1 John 2:2. Hebrews 2:9, 14.

We bless thee, that by one offering he hath perfected for ever them that are sanctified, that he hath finished transgression, made

an end of sin, made reconciliation for iniquity, and hath brought in an everlasting righteousness. Hebrews 10:14. Daniel 9:24.

That he hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, by being made a curse for us. Galatians 3:13.

That what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God hath done by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, who by a sacrifice for sin condemned sin in the flesh. Romans 8:3.

That he was wounded for our transgressions, and bruised for our iniquities, and that the chastisement of our peace was upon him, and by his stripes we are healed; and that the Lord having laid upon him the iniquity of us all, it pleased the Lord to bruise him, and put him to grief. Isaiah 53:5, 6, 10.

That appearing to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself, he did by the eternal Spirit offer himself without spot unto God, and by his own blood entered in once into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption for us. Hebrews 9:26, 14, 12.

That he hath spoiled principalities and powers, and made a shew of them openly, triumphing over them in his cross, and hath blotted out the hand-writing of ordinances which was against us, which was contrary to us, taking it out of the way by nailing it to his cross. Colossians 2:15, 14.

That he is our peace, who having broken down the middle wall of partition between Jew and Gentile, hath made himself of twain one new man, hath reconciled both unto God, in one body by the cross, having slain the enmity thereby. Ephesians 2:14, 15, 16.

That he hath loved us, and washed us from our sins in his own blood, and hath made us unto our God kings and priests. Revelation 1:5, 6.

O the height, and depth, and length, and breadth of that love of Christ which passeth knowledge; that great love wherewith he loved us. Ephesians 3:18, 19. Ephesians 2:4.

Worthy is the Lamb that was slain to receive power, and riches, and wisdom, and strength, and honour, and glory, and blessing; for he was slain, and hath redeemed us to God by his blood. Revelation 5:12, 9.

(k) For His resurrection from the dead on the third day.

We thank thee that as he was delivered for our offences, so he rose again for our justification, and was declared to be the Son of God with power by the resurrection from the dead. Romans 4 (v. 25). Romans 1:4.

That though he was dead, yet he is alive, and lives for evermore, and hath the keys of hell and death, and being raised from the dead, he dies no more, death has no more dominion over him. Revelation 1:18. Romans 6:9.

That now is Christ risen from the dead, and is become the first fruits of them that slept, that as in Adam all died, so in Christ all might be made alive, and every one in his own order. 1 Corinthians 15:20, 22, 23.

That God suffered not his Holy One to see corruption, but loosed the pains of death, because it was impossible he should be holden of them, and so declared to all the house of Israel, that that same Jesus whom they crucified, is both Lord and Christ. Acts 2:27, 31, 24, 36.

And that for this end Christ both died and rose and revived, that he might be Lord both of the dead and living, and that whether we wake or sleep, we might live together with him. Romans 14:9. 1 Thessalonians 5:10.

(l) For His ascension into heaven, and His sitting at God’s right hand there.

We bless thee that our Lord Jesus is ascended to his Father and our Father, to his God and our God; is ascended up on high, having led captivity captive, and hath received gifts for men, yea, even for the rebellious also, that the Lord God might dwell among them. John 20:17. Psalm 68:18.

That as the fore-runner he is for us entered; entered into heaven itself now to appear in the presence of God for us, a Lamb as it had been slain standing in the midst of the throne. Hebrews 6:20. Hebrews 9:24. Revelation 5:6.

That he is set on the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in the heavens, angels, and authorities, and powers being made subject to him. Hebrews 8:1. 1 Peter 3:22.

That he is gone before to prepare a place for us in his Father’s house, where there are many mansions; and though whether he is gone we cannot follow him now, yet we hope to follow him hereafter, when he shall come again to receive us to himself, that where he is there we may be also. John 14:2. John 13:36. John 14:3.

(m) For the intercession which He ever lives to make in the virtue of His satisfaction.

We thank thee that having borne the sins of many, he makes intercession for transgressors; and prays not for those only that were given him when he was upon earth, but for all that shall believe on him through their word; That they all may be one. Isaiah 53:12. John 17:20, 21.

That we have an advocate with the Father, even JESUS CHRIST THE RIGHTEOUS, who is therefore able to save to the uttermost all those that come to God as a Father by him as mediator, seeing he ever lives making intercession. 1 John 2:1. Hebrews 7:25.

That we have a high priest taken from among men, and ordained for men in things pertaining to God, that he may offer both gifts and sacrifice for sin, who can have compassion on the ignorant, and on them that are out of the way, and that he is become the author of eternal salvation to all them that obey him. Hebrews 5:1, 2, 9.

(n) For the dominion and sovereignty to which the Redeemer is exalted.

We thank thee that because our Lord Jesus humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross, therefore God hath highly exalted him, and given him a name above every name, that in the name of JESUS every knee might bow, and every tongue confess (as we do at this time) that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father. Philippians 2:8-11.

That all power is given unto him both in heaven and in earth, that thou hast set him over the works of thy hands, and hast put all things in subjection under his feet, and so hast crowned him with glory and honour. Matthew 28:18. Hebrews 2:7, 8, 9.

That he is KING OF KINGS AND LORD OF LORDS; that the Ancient of days hath given him dominion and glory and a kingdom, an everlasting dominion, and a kingdom which shall not be destroyed. Revelation 19:16. Daniel 7:13, 14.

That the government is upon his shoulders, and that his name is called Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, and The Prince of Peace; And of the increase of his government and peace there shall be no end. Isaiah 9:6, 7.

That thou hast set him as king upon thy holy hill of Zion, and that he shall reign over the house of Jacob for ever, shall reign till he has put down all opposing rule, principality and power, till all his enemies are made his footstool, and then he shall deliver up the kingdom to God, even the Father, that God may be all in all. Psalm 2:6. Luke 1:33. 1 Corinthians 15:24, 25. Ephesians 6:12. Hebrews 10:13. 1 Corinthians 15:24, 28.

(o) For the assurance we have of His second coming to judge the world.

We bless thee that thou hast appointed a day in which thou wilt judge the world in righteousness, by that man whom thou hast ordained, whereof thou hast given assurance unto all men, in that thou hast raised him from the dead. Acts 17:31.

That in that day the Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven with his mighty angels in flaming fire, taking vengeance on them that know not God, and that obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ: And shall come to be glorified in his saints, and admired in all them that believe; for them that sleep in Jesus he will bring with him. 2 Thessalonians 1:7, 8, 10. 1 Thessalonians 4:14.

That he shall then send forth his angels to gather out of his kingdom all things that offend, and them which do iniquity, and to gather together his elect from the four winds, and then shall the righteous shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father. Matthew 13:41. Matthew 24:31. Matthew 13:43.

And we then, according to thy promise, look for new heavens, and a new earth, wherein dwells righteousness: Lord, grant that seeing we look for such things, we may give diligence to be found of him in peace without spot and blameless: And then come, Lord Jesus, come quickly. 2 Peter 3:13, 14. Revelation 22:20.

(p) For the sending of the Holy Spirit to supply the want of Christ’s bodily presence, to carry on His undertaking, and to prepare things for His second coming.

We bless thee that when our Lord Jesus went away he sent us another Comforter to abide with us for ever, even the Spirit of truth, who shall glorify the Son, for he shall take of his, and shall shew it unto us. John 14:16, 17. John 16:14.

That being by the right hand of God exalted, and having received of the Father the promise of the Holy Ghost, he poured it forth as rivers of living water. Acts 2:33. John 7:38.

Blessed be God for the signs and wonders, and divers miracles, and gifts of the Holy Ghost, with which God bare witness to the great salvation. Hebrews 2:4, 3.

And blessed be God for the promise, that as earthly parents, though evil, know how to give good gifts to their children, so our heavenly Father will give the Holy Spirit to them that ask him, that holy Spirit of promise, which is the earnest of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession. Luke 11:13. Ephesians 1:13, 14.

(q) For the covenant of grace made with us in Jesus Christ, and all the exceeding great and precious privileges of that covenant, and for the seals of it.

We thank thee that in Jesus Christ thou hast made an everlasting covenant with us, even the sure mercies of David, and that though the mountains may depart, and the hills be removed, yet this covenant of thy peace shall never be removed. Isaiah 55:3. Isaiah 54:10.

That thou hast given unto us exceeding great and precious promises, that by these we might be partakers of a divine nature: and that Jesus Christ is the mediator of this better covenant, which is established upon better promises. 2 Peter 1:4. Hebrews 8:6.

That though thou chasten our transgression with the rod, and our iniquity with stripes, yet thy loving kindness thou wilt not utterly take away, nor cause thy faithfulness to fail, thy covenant thou wilt not break, nor alter the thing that is gone out of thy lips. Psalm 89:32, 33, 34.

That being willing more abundantly to shew to the heirs of promise the immutability of thy counsel, thou hast confirmed it by an oath, That by two immutable things in which it was impossible for God to lie, we might have strong consolation, who have fled for refuge to lay hold on the hope set before us. Hebrews 6:17, 18.

That baptism is appointed to be a seal of the righteousness which is by faith, as circumcision was: That it assures us of the remission of sins and the gift of the Holy Ghost; and that this promise is to us and our children. And that the cup in the Lord’s supper is the blood of the new testament, which was shed for many for the remission of sins. Romans 4:11. Acts 2:38, 39. Matthew 26:28.

(r) For the writing of the scriptures, and the preserving of them pure and entire to our day.

We thank thee that we have the scriptures to search, and that in them we have eternal life, and that they testify of Christ, and that all scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, and for instruction in righteousness. John 5:39. 2 Timothy 3:16.

That whatsoever things were written aforetime, were written for our learning, that we through patience and comfort of the scripture might have hope: And that we have this most sure word of prophecy as a light shining in a dark place. Romans 15:4. 2 Peter 1:19.

That the vision is not become to us as the words of a book that

is sealed, but that we hear in our own tongue the wonderful works of God. Isaiah 29:11. Acts 2:11.

We thank thee, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that the things which were hid from the wise and prudent, and which many prophets and kings desired to see and might not, are revealed unto us babes; Even so, Father, for so it seemed good in thy sight. Luke 10:21, 24.

(s) For the institution of ordinances, and particularly that of the ministry.

We thank thee that thou hast not only shewed thy word unto Jacob, but thy statutes and judgments unto Israel, unto us: Thou hast not dealt so with other nations, and as for thy judgments, they have not known them. Psalm 147:19, 20.

That the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them, and that he hath set his sanctuary in the midst of them for evermore, and there will meet with the children of Israel. Revelation 21:3. Ezekiel 37:26. Exodus 29:43.

We thank thee that thou hast made known unto us thy holy sabbaths; and that still there remains the keeping of a sabbath to the people of God. Nehemiah 9:14. Hebrews 4:9.

And that when the Lord Jesus ascended up on high, he gave gifts unto men, not only prophets, apostles, evangelists, but pastors and teachers, for the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ, till we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ! And that while they teach us to observe all things which Christ hath commanded, he hath promised to be with them always even unto the end of the world. Ephesians 4:8, 11, 12, 13. Matthew 28:20.

(t) For the planting of the Christian religion in the world, and the setting up of the gospel church, in despite of all the oppositions of the powers of darkness.

We thank thee that the preaching of Jesus Christ according to the commandment of the everlasting God, and the gospel which was made known to all nations for the obedience of faith, was mighty through God to the pulling down of strong holds. That the Lord wrought with it, and confirmed the word by signs following; so that Satan fell as lightning from heaven. Romans 16:25, 26. 2 Corinthians 10:4. Mark 16:20. Luke 10:18.

That though the gospel was preached in much contention, yet it grew and prevailed mightily, and multitudes turned to God from idols, to serve the living and true God, and to wait for his Son from heaven. 1 Thessalonians 2:2. Acts 19:20. 1 Thessalonians 1:9, 10.

Now came salvation and strength, and the kingdom of our God, and the power of his Christ: And the exalted Redeemer rode forth with his bow, and with his crown conquering, and to conquer; and nations were born at once. Revelation 12:10. Revelation 6:2. Isaiah 66:8.

(u) For the preservation of Christianity in the world unto this day.

We bless thee that though the enemies of Israel have afflicted them from their youth up, have many a time afflicted them, yet they have not prevailed against them, though the plowers have plowed on their back, yet the righteous Lord has cut asunder the cords of the wicked. Psalm 129:1-4.

That Jesus Christ hath built his church upon a rock, which the gates of hell cannot prevail against, but his seed shall endure for ever, and his throne as the days of heaven. Matthew 16:18. Psalm 89:29.

(v) For the martyrs and confessors, the lights of the church, and the good examples of those that are gone before us to heaven.

We bless thee for all those who have been enabled to approve themselves to God in much patience in afflictions, in necessities, in distresses, who when they have been brought before governors and kings for Christ’s sake, it has turned to them for a testimony, and God has given them a mouth and wisdom, which all their adversaries were not able to gainsay or resist. 2 Corinthians 6:4. Luke 21:12, 13, 15.

That those who for Christ’s sake were killed all the day long, and accounted as sheep for the slaughter, yet in all these things were more than conquerors through him that loved us. Romans 8:36, 37.

That they overcame the accuser of the brethren by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of their testimony, and by not loving their lives unto the death. Revelation 12:10, 11.

We bless thee for the cloud of witnesses with which we are compassed about, for the footsteps of the flock, for the elders that have obtained a good report, and are now through faith and patience inheriting the promises. Lord, give us to follow them as they followed Christ. Hebrews 12:1. Canticle (Song of Solomon) 1:8. Hebrews 11:2. Hebrews 6:12. 1 Corinthians 11:1.

(w) For the communion of saints, that spiritual communion which we have in faith and hope and holy love, and in prayers and praises with all good Christians.

We bless thee that if we walk in the light, we have fellowship one with another, even with all that in every place call on the name of Jesus Christ our Lord, both theirs and ours. 1 John 1:7. 1 Corinthians 1:2.

That we being many are one bread and one body, and that though there are diversities of gifts and administrations, and operations, yet there is the same Spirit, the same Lord, and the same God, which worketh all in all. 1 Corinthians 10:17. 1 Corinthians 12:4, 5, 6.

We thank thee that all the children of God, which were scattered abroad, are united in him, who is the head of the body the church; so that they are all our brethren and companions in tribulation, and in the kingdom and patience of Jesus Christ. John 11:52. Colossians 1:18. Revelation 1:9.

(x) For the prospect and hope of eternal life, when time and days shall be no more.

We thank thee for the crown of life which the Lord hath promised to them that love him; the inheritance incorruptible, undefiled, and that fadeth not away, reserved in heaven for us. James 1:12. 1 Peter 1:4.

That having here no continuing city, we are encouraged to seek the better country, that is, the heavenly, the city that hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God. Hebrews 13:14. Hebrews 11:16, 10.

That we are in hope of eternal life, which God that cannot lie hath promised; And that all true believers through grace have eternal life abiding in them. Titus 1:2. Acts 18:27. 1 John 5:13.

2) Secondly, we must give God thanks for the spiritual mercies bestowed upon us in particular, especially if we are called with an effectual call, and have a good work of grace begun in us.

(a) We must bless God for the strivings of His spirit with us, and the admonitions and checks of our own consciences.

We bless thee that thou hast not given us over to a reprobate mind, that our consciences are not seared, that thou hast not said concerning us, They are joined to idols, let them alone, but that thy spirit is yet striving with us. Romans 1:28. 1 Timothy 4:2. Hosea 4:17. Genesis 6:3.

We thank thee for the work of the law written in our hearts, our own consciences also bearing witness, and our own thoughts between themselves accusing or excusing one another. Romans 2:15.

(b) We must bless God if there be a saving change wrought in us by His blessed Spirit.

And hath God by his grace translated us out of the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of his dear Son? Hath he called us into the fellowship of Jesus Christ, and made us nigh by his blood, who by nature were afar off. Not unto us, O Lord, not unto us, but unto thy name give glory. Colossians 1:13. 1 Corinthians 1:9. Ephesians 2:13. Psalm 115:1.

We give thanks to God always for those to whom the gospel is come, not in word only, but in power, and in the Holy Ghost, and in much assurance. 1 Thessalonians 1:2, 5.

Thou hast loved us with an everlasting love, and therefore with loving kindness thou hast drawn us, drawn us with the cords of a man, and the bands of love. Jeremiah 31:3. Hosea 11:4.

When the strong man armed kept his palace in our hearts, and his goods were in peace, it was a stronger than he that came upon him, and took from him all his armour, wherein he trusted, and divided the spoil. Luke 11:21, 22.

(c) We must give thanks for the remission of our sins, and the peace of our consciences.

We bless thee for the redemption we have through Christ’s blood, even the forgiveness of sins according to the riches of thy grace, wherein thou hast abounded towards us. Ephesians 1:7, 8.

That thou hast forgiven all our iniquities, and healed all our diseases; and hast in love to our souls delivered them from the pit of corruption; for thou hast cast all our sins behind thy back. Psalm 103:3. Isaiah 38:17.

When thou broughtest us into the wilderness, yet there thou spakest comfortably to us, and gavest us our vineyards from thence; and the valley of Achor for a door of hope. Hosea 2:14, 15.

(d) For the powerful influences of the divine grace, to sanctify and preserve us, to prevent our falling into sin, and to strengthen us in doing our duty.

Thou hast not quenched the smoking flax, nor broke the bruised reed, nor despised the day of small things, but having obtained help of God, we continue hitherto. Matthew 12:20. Zechariah 4:10. Acts 26:22.

In the day when we cried, thou hast answered us, and hast strengthened us with strength in our souls. Psalm 138:3.

We have been continually with thee, thou hast holden us by thy right hand, when our feet were almost gone, and our steps had well nigh slipped. Psalm 73:23, 2.

We have reason never to forget thy precepts; for by them thou hast quickened us; And unless thy law had been our delight, we should many a time have perished in our affliction; for thy statutes have been our songs in the house of our pilgrimage. Psalm 119:93, 92, 54.

Unless the Lord had been our help, our souls had almost dwelt in silence: But when we said, Our foot slippeth, thy mercy, O Lord, held us up: And in the multitude of our thoughts within us, thy comforts have been the delight of our souls. Psalm 94:17, 18, 19.

(e) For sweet communion with God in holy ordinances, and the communications of His favour.

We have been abundantly satisfied with the fatness of thy house, and thou hast made us drink of the river of thy pleasures. For with thee is the fountain of life, in thy light shall we see light. Psalm 36:8, 9.

Thou hast brought us to thy holy mountain, and made us joyful in thy house of prayer, and we have found it good for us to draw near to God. Isaiah 56:7. Psalm 73:28.

We have had reason to say, That a day in thy courts is better than a thousand, and that it is better to be door-keepers in the house of our God, than to dwell in the tents of wickedness; For the Lord God is a sun and shield, he will give grace and glory, and no good thing will he with-hold from them that walk uprightly: O Lord of hosts, blessed is the man that trusteth in thee. Psalm 84:10, 11, 12.

We have sitten down under thy shadow with delight, and thy fruit hath been sweet unto our taste; Thou hast brought us into the banqueting house, and thy banner over us has been love. Canticle (Song of Solomon) 2:3, 4.

(f) For gracious answers to our prayers.

We have reason to love thee, O Lord, because thou hast heard the voice of our supplications, and because thou hast inclined thine ear unto us, we will therefore call upon thee as long as we live. Psalm 116:1, 2.

Out of the depths have we cried unto thee, O Lord, and thou hast heard our vows, and given us the heritage of those that fear thy name. Psalm 130:1. Psalm 61:5.

Nay, before we have called thou hast answered, and while we have been yet speaking thou hast heard, and hast said, Here I am, and hast been nigh unto us in all that which we call upon thee for. Isaiah 65:24. Isaiah 58:9. Deuteronomy 4:7.

Lord, thou hast heard the desire of the humble, thou wilt prepare their heart, and cause thine ear to hear. Psalm 10:17.

Blessed be God, who hath not turned away our prayer, or his mercy from us, for we have prayed, and have gone away, and our countenance has been no more sad. Psalm 66:20. 1 Samuel 1:18.

(g) For support under our afflictions and spiritual benefit and advantage by them.

Thou hast comforted us in all our tribulation, hast considered our trouble, and known our souls in adversity, and shewed us thy marvellous kindness as in a strong city. 2 Corinthians 1:4. Psalm 31:7, 21.

When afflictions have abounded, consolations have much more abounded. 2 Corinthians 1:5.

Though no affliction for the present hath been joyous, but grievous, nevertheless afterward it hath yielded the peaceable fruit of righteousness; and hath proved to be for our profit, that we might be partakers of thy holiness. Hebrews 12:11, 10.

We have had reason to say that it was good for us we were afflicted, that we might learn thy commandments; for before we were afflicted we went astray, but afterwards have kept thy word. Psalm 119:71, 67.

It has been but for a season, and when there was need that we were in heaviness, through manifold temptations: And we beg that all the trials of our faith may be found unto praise, and honour, and glory, at the appearing of Jesus Christ, whom having not seen we love, in whom though now we see him not, yet believing we rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory; are longing to receive the end of our faith, even the salvation of our souls. 1 Peter 1:6-9.

(h) For the performance of God’s promises.

Thou hast dealt well with thy servants, O Lord, according to thy word, and thou hast been ever mindful of thy covenant, the word which thou hast commanded to a thousand generations. Psalm 119:65. Psalm 105:8.

There hath not failed one word of all the good promise which thou hast promised, to David thy servant, and Israel thy people. 1 Kings 8:56, 66.

And now what shall we render unto the Lord for all his benefits towards us. Let our souls return to him, and repose in him as their rest, because he hath dealt bountifully with us, we will take the cup of salvation, and call upon the name of the Lord; For the Lord is good, his mercy is everlasting, and his truth endureth to all generations. Psalm 116:12, 7, 13. Psalm 100:5.

We will bless the Lord at all times, yea his praise shall continually be in our mouths; we will sing unto the Lord as long as we live; and we hope to be shortly with those blessed ones, who dwell in his house above, and are still praising him, and who rest not day or night from saying, Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty. Psalm 34:1. Psalm 104:33. Revelation 4:8.

Chapter V Intercession for others

Our Lord Jesus hath taught us to pray, not only with, but for others: And the apostle hath appointed us to make supplication for all saints; and many of his prayers in his epistles are for his friends: And we must not think that when we are in this part of prayer, we may let fall our fervency, and be more indifferent, because we ourselves are not immediately concerned in it, but rather let a holy fire of love both to God and man here, make our devotions yet more warm and lively. Ephesians 6:18.

WE pray, as we are taught, for all men, believing that this is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Saviour, who will have all men to be saved, and to come unto the knowledge of the truth, and of Jesus Christ, who gave himself a ransom for all. 1 Timothy 2:1, 3, 4, 6.

O look with compassion upon the world that lies in wickedness, and let the prince of this world be cast out, that has blinded their minds. 1 John 5:19. John 12:31. 2 Corinthians 4:4.

O let thy way be known upon earth, that barbarous nations may be civilized, and those that live without God in the world may be brought to the service of the living God; and thus let thy saving health be known unto all nations: Let the people praise thee, O God, yea let all the people praise thee: O let the nations be glad, and sing for joy, for thou shalt judge the people righteously, and govern the nations upon earth. Psalm 67:2. Ephesians 2:12. Psalm 67:3, 4.

O let thy salvation and thy righteousness be openly shewed in the sight of the heathen, and let all the ends of the earth see the salvation of our God. Psalm 98:2, 3.

O give thy Son the heathen for his inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for his possession! For thou hast said, It is a light thing for him to raise up the tribes of Jacob, and to restore the preserved of Israel, but thou wilt give him for a light to the Gentiles. Psalm 2:8. Isaiah 49:6.

Let all the kingdoms of this world become the kingdoms of the Lord and of his Christ. Revelation 11:15.

O LET the gospel be preached unto every creature; for how shall men believe in him, of whom they have not heard? and how shall they hear without preachers? and how shall they preach, except they be sent? and who shall send forth labourers, but the Lord of the harvest? Mark 16:15. Romans 10:14, 15. Matthew 9:38.

Let the people which sit in darkness see a great light, and to them which sit in the region and shadow of death, let light spring up. Matthew 4:16.

Add unto thy church daily such as shall be saved; Enlarge the place of its tent, lengthen its cords, and strengthen its stakes. Acts 2 (v. 47). Isaiah 54:2.

Bring thy seed from the east, and gather them from the west; say to the north, Give up, and to the south, Keep not back: Bring thy sons from far, and thy daughters from the ends of the earth. Let them come with acceptance to thine altar, and glorify the house of thy glory; Let them fly as a cloud, and as the doves to their windows. Isaiah 43:5, 6. Isaiah 60:7, 8.

In every place let incense be offered to thy name, and pure offerings; And from the rising of the sun to the going down of the same, let thy name be great among the Gentiles; and let the offering up of the Gentiles be acceptable, being sanctified by the Holy Ghost. Malachi 1:11. Romans 15:16.

O let the earth be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea. Isaiah 11:9.

LET the branches which are broken off not abide still in unbelief, but be graffed in again into their own olivetree. And though blindness is in part happened to Israel, yet let the fulness of the Gentiles come in, and let all Israel be saved. Romans 11:17, 23-26.

Let them be made to look unto him whom they have pierced, and that they may turn to the Lord, let the veil which is upon their hearts be taken away. Zechariah 12:10. 2 Corinthians 3:15, 16.

LET the churches of Asia, that were golden candlesticks, which the Lord Jesus delighted to walk in the midst of, be again made so. Revelation 1:11, 12. Revelation 2:1.

Restore unto them their liberties as at the first, and their privileges as at the beginning; purely purge away their dross, and take away all their tin, and turn again their captivity as the streams in the south. Isaiah 1:26, 25. Psalm 126:4.

BE thou the confidence of all the ends of the earth, and of those that are afar off beyond the sea; And let them have the blessing which came upon the head of Joseph, and upon the crown of the head of him that was separated from his brethren, even to the utmost bound of the everlasting hills. Psalm 65:5. Genesis 49:26.

Create peace to those that are afar off, as well as to those that are nigh. Isaiah 57:19.

And let those that suck of the abundance of the seas, and of treasures hid in the sand, call the people to the mountain, that they may offer sacrifices of righteousness. Deuteronomy 33:19.

OUR heart’s desire and prayer to God for the gospel Israel, is that it may be saved. Romans 10:1.

Do good in thy good pleasure unto Zion, build thou the walls of Jerusalem. Peace be within her walls, and prosperity within her palaces; For our brethren and companions sake we will now say, Peace be within her. Psalm 51:18. Psalm 122:7, 8.

O that we may see the good of the gospel Jerusalem, all the days of our life, and peace upon Israel. And that thus we may have reason to answer the messengers of the nations, that the Lord hath founded Zion, and the poor of his people shall trust to that. Psalm 128:5, 6. Isaiah 14:32.

Save thy people, O Lord, and bless thine heritage: Feed them also, and lift them up for ever. Give strength unto thy people, and bless thy people with peace; with thy favour do thou compass them as with a shield. Psalm 28 (v. 9). Psalm 29 (v. 11). Psalm 5 (v. 12).

Grace be with all them that love the Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity; for thou knowest them that are thine; and give to all that name the name of Christ to depart from iniquity. Ephesians 6:24. 2 Timothy 2:19.

We pray for all that believe in Christ, that they all may be one; And since there is one body, and one Spirit, and one hope of our calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, and one God and Father of all, give to all Christians to be of one heart, and one way. John 17:20, 21. Ephesians 4:4, 5, 6. Jeremiah 32:39.

Let the word of the Lord in all places, have a free course, and let it be glorified. 2 Thessalonians 3:1.

O TEACH transgressors thy ways, and let sinners be converted unto thee. Psalm 51:13.

O give them repentance to the acknowledging of the truth, the truth as it is in Jesus, the truth which is according to godliness, that they may recover themselves out of the snare of the devil. 2 Timothy 2:25. Ephesians 4:21. Titus 1:1. 2 Timothy 2:26.

Let those that are as sheep going astray return to Jesus Christ, the Shepherd and Bishop of our souls. 1 Peter 2:25.

Shew those fools their folly and misery, that have said in their hearts there is no God, and that are corrupt, and have done abominable work. Psalm 14:1.

Lord, maintain the honour of the scripture, the law and the testimony, and convince those who speak not according to that word, that it is because there is no light in them; magnify that word above all thy name; magnify the law, magnify the gospel, and make both honourable. Isaiah 8:20. Psalm 138:2. Isaiah 42:21.

Let those that will not be won by the word, be won by the conversation of Christians, which we beg may be such in every thing, that they who believe not may be convinced of all, and judged of all, and may be brought to worship God, and to report that God is with them of a truth. 1 Peter 3:1. 1 Corinthians 14:24, 25.

LORD, let thy spirit be poured out upon thy churches from on high, and then the wilderness shall become a fruitful field, then judgment shall return unto righteousness, and all the upright in heart shall follow it. Isaiah 32:15. Psalm 94:15.

Let what is wanting be set in order, and let every plant that is not of our heavenly Father’s planting, be plucked up. Titus 1:5. Matthew 15:13.

Let the Lord whom we seek come to his temple like a refiner’s fire, and fuller’s soap, and let him purify the sons of Levi, and all the seed of Israel, and purge them as gold and silver, that they may offer unto the Lord an offering in righteousness, pleasant to the Lord, as in the days of old, as in former years. Malachi 3:1-4.

Let pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father, flourish and prevail every where, that kingdom of God among men, which is not meat and drink, but righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost. O revive this work in the midst of the years, in the midst of the years make known, and let our times be times of reformation. James 1 (v. 27). Romans 14:17. Habakkuk 3:2. Hebrews 9:10.

F

LET all that set themselves, and take counsel together against the Lord, and against his anointed, that would break their bands asunder, and cast away their cords from them, imagine a vain thing. Let him that sits in heaven laugh at them, and have them in derision; speak unto them in thy wrath, and vex them in thy sore displeasure. Give them, O Lord: what wilt thou give them? give them a miscarrying womb, and dry breasts. Psalm 2:15. Hosea 9:14.

O our God, make them like a wheel, and as stubble before the wind; Fill their faces with shame, that they may seek thy name, O Lord, and that men may know, that thou whose name is JEHOVAH, art the most high over all the earth. Psalm 83:13, 16, 18.

Put them in fear, O Lord, that the nations may know themselves to be but men, and wherein the proud enemies of thy church deal proudly, make it to appear that thou art above them. Psalm 9:20. Exodus 18:11.

Let them be confounded and turned back that hate Zion, and be as the grass upon the house-tops, which withereth before it groweth up. Psalm 129:5, 6.

Let no weapon formed against thy church prosper, and let every tongue that riseth against it in judgment be condemned. Isaiah 54:17.

Make Jerusalem a burdensome stone for all people, and let all that burden themselves with it be cut in pieces, though all the people of the earth should be gathered together against it; so let all thine enemies perish, O Lord, but let them that love thee be as the sun when he goes forth in his strength. Zechariah 12:3. Judges 5 (v. 31).

Lord, let the man of sin be consumed with the spirit of thy mouth, and destroyed with the brightness of thy coming: And let those be undeceived that have been long under the power of strong delusions to believe a lie, and let them receive the truth in the love of it. 2 Thessalonians 2:3, 8, 11, 10.

Let Babylon fall, and sink like a mill-stone into the sea; And let the kings of the earth, that have given their power and honour to the beast, be wrought upon at length to bring it into the new Jerusalem. Revelation 18:2, 21. Revelation 17:17. Revelation 21:24.

WE desire in our prayers to remember them that are in bonds for the testimony of Jesus, as bound with them, and them which suffer adversity, as being ourselves also in the body. O send from above, and deliver them from those that hate them, and bring them forth into a large place. Hebrews 13:3. Psalm 18:16, 17, 19.

O let not the rod of the wicked rest upon the lot of the righteous, lest the righteous put forth their hands unto iniquity. Psalm 125:3.

Awake, awake, put on strength, O arm of the Lord; awake as in the ancient days, as in the generations of old, and make the depths of the sea a way for the ransomed of the Lord to pass over. Isaiah 51:9, 10.

For the oppression of the poor and the sighing of the needy, now do thou arise, O Lord, and set them in safety from them that puff at them. Psalm 12:5.

O strengthen the patience and faith of thy suffering saints, that they may hope and quietly wait for the salvation of the Lord. Revelation 13:10. Lamentations 3:26.

O let the year of thy redeemed come, and the year of recompences for the controversy of Zion. Isaiah 63:4. Isaiah 34:8.

O that the salvation of Israel were come out of Zion; and when the Lord bringeth back the captivity of his people, Jacob shall rejoice, and Israel shall be glad. Psalm 14:7.

O let not the oppressed return ashamed, but let the poor and needy praise thy name. Psalm 74:21.

Lord, arise, and have mercy upon Zion, and let the time to favour her, yea the set time come; yea let the Lord build up Zion, and appear in his glory. Lord, regard the prayer of the destitute, and do not despise their prayer. Psalm 102:13, 16, 17.

O Lord God, cease we beseech thee, by whom shall Jacob arise, for he is small! O cause thy face to shine upon that part of thy sanctuary that is desolate, for the Lord’s sake. Amos 7:5. Daniel 9:17.

Let the sorrowful sighing of thy prisoners come before thee, and according to the greatness of thy power preserve thou those that for thy name’s sake are appointed to die. Psalm 79:11.

Let those whose teachers are removed into corners, again see their teachers, though they have the bread of adversity, and the water of affliction. Isaiah 30:20.

THOU, Lord, art the governor among the nations: Who shall not fear thee, O King of nations? Thou sittest in the throne judging right; judge the world therefore in righteousness, and minister judgment to the people in uprightness. Psalm 22:28. Jeremiah 10:7. Psalm 9:4, 8.

Lord, hasten the time when thou wilt make wars to cease to the ends of the earth; when nation shall no more lift up sword against nation, nor kingdom against kingdom, but swords shall be beaten into plow-shares, and spears into pruning-hooks, and they shall not learn war any more. Psalm 46:9. Isaiah 2:4.

Make kings nursing fathers, and their queens nursing mothers to the Israel of God. Isaiah 49:23.

And in the days of these kings let the God of heaven set up a kingdom which shall never be destroyed, even the kingdom of the Redeemer. And whatever counsels there are in mens hearts, Lord, let thy counsel stand, and do thou fulfil the thoughts of thy heart unto all generations. Daniel 2:44. Proverbs 19:21. Psalm 33:11.

1. We must be thankful to God for His mercies to our land.

WE bless thee that thou hast planted us in a very fruitful hill, and hast not made the wilderness our habitation, or the barren land our dwelling, but our land yields her increase. Isaiah 5:1. Job 39:6. Psalm 85:12.

Lord, thou hast dealt favourably with our land; We have heard with our ears, and our fathers have told us what work thou didst for us in their days, and in the times of old: And as we have heard, so have we seen; for we have thought of thy loving-kindness, O God, in the midst of thy temple. Psalm 85:1. Psalm 44:1. Psalm 48:8, 9.

Thou hast given us a pleasant land, it is Immanuel’s land, it is a valley of vision, thou hast set up thy tabernacle among us, and thy sanctuary is in the midst of us. Jeremiah 3:19. Isaiah 8:8. Isaiah 22:1. Ezekiel 37:27, 26.

We dwell safely, under our own vines and fig-trees, and there is peace to him that goeth out, and to him that comes in. 1 Kings 4:25. 2 Chronicles 15:5.

And because the Lord loved our people, therefore he hath set a good government over us to do judgment and justice; to be a terror to evil doers, and a protection and praise to them that do well. 1 Kings 10:9. Romans 13:3.

2. We must be humbled before God for our national sins and provocations.

But we are a sinful people, a people laden with iniquity, a seed of evil doers; And a great deal of reason we have to sigh and cry for the abominations that are committed among us. Isaiah 1:4. Ezekiel 9:4.

Iniquity abounds among us, and the love of many is waxen cold. Matthew 24:12.

We have not been forsaken nor forgotten of our God, though our land be full of sin against the Holy One of Israel. Jeremiah 51:5.

3. We must pray earnestly for national mercies.

(a) For the favour of God to us, and the tokens of His presence among us, as that in which the happiness of our nation is bound up.

O the hope of Israel, the saviour thereof in time of trouble, be not thou as a stranger in our land, or a way-faring man that turns aside to tarry but for a night; but be thou always in the midst of us, we are called by thy name, O leave us not: Though our iniquities testify against us, yet do thou it for thy name’s sake; though our backslidings are many, and we have sinned against thee. Jeremiah 14:8, 9, 7.

Turn us to thee, O Lord God of hosts, and then cause thy face to shine, and we shall be saved. O stir up thy strength, and come and save us. Psalm 80:3, 2.

Shew us thy mercy, O Lord, and grant us thy salvation, yea let that salvation be nigh them that fear thee, that glory may dwell in our land: Let mercy and truth meet together, righteousness and peace kiss each other: Let truth spring out of the earth, and righteousness look down from heaven; yea let the Lord give that which is good: Let righteousness go before him, and set us in the way of his steps. Psalm 85:7, 9-13.

(b) For the continuance of the gospel among us, and the means of grace, and a national profession of Christ’s Holy religion.

O let the throne of Christ endure for ever, among us, even the place of thy sanctuary, that glorious high throne from the beginning. Psalm 45:6. Jeremiah 17:12.

Let our candlestick never be removed out of his place, though we have deserved it should, because we have left our first love. Never do to us as thou didst to thy place which was in Shiloh, where thou didst set thy name at the first. Revelation 2:4, 5. Jeremiah 7:12.

Let us never know what a famine of the word means; nor ever be put to wander from sea to sea, and from the river to the ends of the earth, to seek the word of God. Amos 8:11, 12.

Let wisdom and knowledge be the stability of our times and strength of salvation, and let the fear of the Lord be our treasure: Let the righteous flourish among us, and let there be those that shall fear thee in our land as long as the sun and moon endure throughout all generations, that there may be abundance of peace, and the children which shall be created may praise the Lord. Isaiah 33:6. Psalm 72:5, 7. Psalm 102:18.

(c) For the continuance of our outward peace and tranquillity, our liberty and plenty, for the prosperity of our trade, and a blessing upon the fruits of the earth.

Let God himself be a wall of fire round about us, and the glory in the midst of us, yea let his gospel be our glory, and upon all that glory let there be a defence; and create upon every dwelling-place of mount Zion, and upon her assemblies a cloud and smoke by day, and the shining of a flaming fire by night. Zechariah 2:5. Isaiah 4:5.

Peace be within our borders, and prosperity within our palaces, the prosperity both of merchandize and husbandry, that Zebulun may rejoice in his going out, and Issachar in his tents. Psalm 122:7. Deuteronomy 33:18.

Appoint salvation to us for walls and bulwarks, and in order to that let the gates be opened, that the righteous nation which keepeth the truth may enter in. Isaiah 26:1, 2.

Make our officers peace, and our exactors righteousness, let violence never be heard in our gates, wasting or destruction within our borders, but let our walls be called Salvation, and our gates Praise: Never let our land be termed Forsaken and Desolate, but let the Lord delight in us, and let our land be married to him. Isaiah 60:17, 18. Isaiah 62:4.

Let our peace be as a river, and in order to that, our righteousness as the waves of the sea: Let that righteousness abound among us which exalteth a nation, and deliver us from sin, which is a reproach to any people. Isaiah 48:18. Proverbs 14:34.

Never make our heavens as brass, and our earth as iron; nor take away thy corn in the season thereof, and thy wine in the season thereof, but give us rain moderately, the former and the later rain in due season, and reserve unto us the appointed works of harvest, giving us fair weather also in its season: Let our land yield her increase, and the trees their fruit; that we may eat bread to the full, and dwell in our land safely. Deuteronomy 28:23. Hosea 2:9. Joel 2:23. Jeremiah 5:24. Leviticus 26:4, 5.

Abundantly bless our provision, and satisfy our poor with bread, that they which have gathered it may eat and praise the Lord. Blow not thou upon it, for then when we look for much it will come to little, but bless our blessings, that all nations may call us blessed, and a delightsome land. Psalm 132:15. Isaiah 62:9. Haggai 1:9. Malachi 3:10, 12.

(d) For the success of all endeavours for the reformation of manners, the suppression of vice and profaneness, and the support of religion and virtue, and the bringing of them into reputation.

O let the wickedness of the wicked come to an end, but establish the just, O thou righteous God that triest the hearts and reins. Spirit many to rise up for thee against the evil doers, and to stand up for thee against the workers of iniquity. Psalm 7:9. Psalm 94:16.

Let the Redeemer come to Zion, and turn away ungodliness from Jacob; And let the filth of Jerusalem be purged from the midst thereof by the spirit of judgment, and the spirit of burning. Romans 11:26. Isaiah 4:4.

Let all iniquity stop her mouth, and let the infection of that plague be stayed, by executing judgment. Psalm 107:42. Psalm 106:30.

Let those that are striving against sin never be weary or faint in their minds. Hebrews 12:4, 3.

Cause the unclean spirit to pass out of the land, and turn to the people a pure language, that they may call on the name of the Lord. Zechariah 13:2. Zephaniah 3:9.

Make us high above all nations in praise and in name and in honour, by making us a holy people unto the Lord our God. Deuteronomy 26:19.

(e) For the healing of our unhappy divisions, and the making up of our breaches.

For the divisions that are among us, there are great searchings of heart; for there are three against two, and two against three in a house. But is the breach wide as the sea, which cannot be healed! Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there? Why then is not the health of the daughter of our people recovered? Lord, heal the breaches of our land, for because of them it shaketh. Judges 5:16. Luke 12:52. Lamentations 2:13. Jeremiah 8 (v. 22). Psalm 60:2.

We beg in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that there may be no divisions among us, but that we may be perfectly joined together in the same mind and in the same judgment. 1 Corinthians 1:10.

Now the God of patience and consolation grant us to be likeminded one towards another, according to Christ Jesus, that we may with one mind and one mouth glorify God, even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, and promote the common salvation. Romans 15:5, 6. Jude 3.

Lord, keep us from judging one another, and despising one another, and give us to follow after the things which make for peace,

and things wherewith one may edify another; that living in love and peace, the God of love and peace may be with us. Romans 14:3, 19. 2 Corinthians 13:11.

Let nothing be done through strife or vainglory, but every thing in lowliness of mind, and grant that our moderation may be known unto all men, because the Lord is at hand. Philippians 2:3. Philippians 4:5.

(f) For victory and success against our enemies abroad, that seek our ruin.

Rise, Lord, and let thine enemies be scattered, and let those that hate thee flee before thee, but return, O Lord, to the many thousands of thine Israel. Numbers 10:35, 36.

Give us help from trouble, for vain is the help of man; Through God let our forces do valiantly, yea let God himself tread down our enemies, and give them as dust to our sword, and as driven stubble to our bow. Psalm 60:11, 12. Isaiah 41:2.

Let us be a people saved by the Lord, as the shield of our help and the sword of our excellency; and make our enemies sensible that the Lord fighteth for us against them. Deuteronomy 33 (v. 29). Exodus 14:25.

Those who jeopard their lives for us in the high places of the field, teach their hands to war, and their fingers to fight, give them the shield of thy salvation, and let thy right hand hold them up, and cover their heads in the day of battle. Judges 5:18. Psalm 144:1. Psalm 18:35. Psalm 140:7.

(g) For all orders and degrees of men among us, and all we stand in any relation to.

1) For our sovereign lady the Queen, that God will protect her person, preserve her health, and continue her life and government long a publick blessing.

Give the queen thy judgments, O God, and thy righteousness, that she may judge the poor of the people, may save the children of the needy, and may break in pieces the oppressor. Psalm 72:1, 4.

Let her throne be established with righteousness, and upheld with mercy: Give her long life and length of days for ever and ever, and let her glory be great in thy salvation, and make her exceeding glad with thy countenance: Through the mercy of the most High let her not be moved. Proverbs 25:5. Proverbs 20:28. Psalm 21:4-7.

Clothe her enemies with shame, but upon herself let the crown flourish, and continue her long, very long a nursing mother to thine Israel. Psalm 132:18. Isaiah 49:23.

2) For the succession in the Protestant line, that a blessing may attend it, that the entail of the crown may prove a successful expedient for the establishing of peace and truth in our days, the securing of them to posterity, and the extinguishing the hopes of our popish adversaries, and all their aiders and abettors.

Lord, preserve to us the lamp which thou hast ordained for thine anointed, that the generation to come may know thee, even the children which shall be born, that they may set their hope in God, and keep his commandments. Psalm 132:17. Psalm 78:6, 7.

Let the Protestant succession abide before God for ever: O prepare mercy and truth which may preserve it, so will we sing praise unto thy name for ever. Thus let the Lord save Sion, and build the cities of Judah, and the seed of thy servants shall inherit it, and they that love thy name shall dwell therein. Psalm 61:7, 8. Psalm 69:35, 36.

Let their design who would make a captain to return into Egypt, be again defeated, and let not the deadly wound that hath been given to the beast be healed any more. Numbers 14:4. Revelation 13:11, 12.

Let our eyes see Jerusalem, the city of our solemnities, a quiet habitation, a tabernacle that shall not be taken down: Let none of the stakes thereof be removed, nor any of the cords thereof broken, but let the glorious Lord be unto us a place of broad waters and streams; for the Lord is our judge, the Lord is our lawgiver, the Lord is our king, he will save us. Isaiah 33:20, 21, 22.

3) For the privy counsellors, the ministers of state, the members of parliament, the ambassadors and envoys abroad, and all that are employed in the conduct of publick affairs.

Counsel our counsellors, and teach our senators wisdom: O give them a spirit of wisdom and understanding, a spirit of counsel and might, a spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the Lord, to make them of quick understanding in the fear of the Lord. Psalm 105:22. Isaiah 11:2, 3.

O remove not the speech of the trusty, nor take away the understanding of the aged, nor ever let the things that belong to the nation’s peace be hid from the eyes of those that are intrusted with the nation’s counsels. Job 12:20. Luke 19:42.

Make it to appear that thou standest in the congregation of the mighty, and judgest among the gods, and that when the princes of the people are gathered together, even the people of the God of Abraham, the God of Abraham himself is among them; And let the shields of the earth belong unto the Lord, that he may be greatly exalted. Psalm 82:1. Psalm 47:9.

Let those that be of us build the old waste places, and raise up the foundations of many generations, that they may be called the repairers of the breaches, and restorers of paths to dwell in. Isaiah 58:12.

4) For the magistrates, the judges and justices of peace in the several counties and corporations.

Make those that rule over us just, ruling in the fear of God; and let those that judge remember that they judge not for man, but for the Lord, who is with them in the judgment, that therefore the fear of the Lord may be upon them. 2 Samuel 23:3. 2 Chronicles 19:6, 7.

Make them able men, and men of truth, fearing God, and hating covetousness, that judgment may run down like a river, and righteousness as a mighty stream. Exodus 18:21. Amos 5:24.

Enable our magistrates to defend the poor and fatherless, to do justice for the afflicted and needy, to deliver the poor and needy, and to rid them out of the hand of the wicked; and let rulers never be a terror to good works, but to the evil. Psalm 82:3, 4. Romans 13:3. 1 Peter 2:14.

5) For all the ministers of God’s Holy word and sacraments, the masters of assemblies.

Teach thy ministers how they ought to behave themselves in the house of God, which is the church of the living God, that they may not preach themselves, but Christ Jesus the Lord, and may study to shew themselves approved to God, workmen that need not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth. 1 Timothy 3:15. 2 Corinthians 4:5. 2 Timothy 2:15.

Make them mighty in the scriptures, that from thence they may be thoroughly furnished for every good work, in doctrine shewing uncorruptness, gravity, and sincerity, and sound speech, which cannot be condemned. Acts 18:24. 2 Timothy 3:17. Titus 2:7, 8.

Enable them to give attendance to reading, to exhortation, to doctrine, to meditate upon these things, to give themselves to prayer and to the ministry of the word, to give themselves wholly to them; and to continue in them that they may both save themselves, and those that hear them. 1 Timothy 4:13, 15. Acts 6:4. 1 Timothy 4:15, 16.

Let utterance be given to them, that they may open their mouths boldly to make known the mystery of the gospel, that thereof they may speak as they ought to speak, as able ministers of the new testament, not of the letter, but of the spirit, and let them obtain mercy of the Lord to be faithful. Ephesians 6:19, 20. 2 Corinthians 3:6. 1 Corinthians 7:25.

Let the arms of their hands be made strong by the hands of the mighty God of Jacob; and let them be full of power by the spirit of the Lord of hosts, to shew thy people their transgressions, and the house of Jacob their sins. Genesis 49:24. Micah 3:8. Isaiah 58:1.

Make them sound in the faith, and enable them always to speak the things which become sound doctrine, with meekness instructing those that oppose themselves; and let not the servants of the Lord strive, but be gentle to all men, apt to teach. Titus 1:13. Titus 2:1. 2 Timothy 2:25, 24.

Make them good examples to the believers in word, in conversation, in charity, in spirit, in faith, in purity; and let them be clean, that bear the vessels of the Lord, and let HOLINESS TO THE LORD be written upon their foreheads. 1 Timothy 4:12. Isaiah 52:11. Exodus 28:36.

Lord, grant that they may not labour in vain, or spend their strength for nought, and in vain, but let the hand of the Lord be with them, that many may believe, and turn to the Lord. Isaiah 49:4. Acts 11:21.

6) For all the universities, schools, and nurseries of learning.

Let the schools of the prophets be replenished with every good gift and every perfect gift from above from the Father of lights. James 1:17.

Cast salt into those fountains, and heal the waters thereof, that from thence may issue streams which shall make glad the city of our God, the holy place of the tabernacles of the most High. 2 Kings 2:21. Psalm 46:4.

7) For the common people of the land.

Give grace to all the subjects of this land, that they may under the government God hath set over us, live quiet and peaceable lives in all godliness and honesty, dwelling together in unity, that the Lord may command a blessing upon us, even life for evermore. 1 Timothy 2:2. Psalm 133:1, 3.

Let all of every denomination that fear God and work righteousness be accepted of him; yea let such as love thy salvation say continually, The Lord be magnified that hath pleasure in the prosperity of his servants. Acts 10:35. Psalm 35:27.

8) For the several ages and conditions of men, as they stand in need of mercy and grace.

(a) For those that are young, and setting out in the world.

Lord, give to those that are young to remember their Creator in the days of their youth, that thereby they may be kept from the vanity which childhood and youth are subject to, and may be restrained from walking in the way of their heart, and in the sight of their eyes, by considering that for all these things God will bring them into judgment. Ecclesiastes 12:1. Ecclesiastes 11:10, 9.

Lord, make young people sober-minded, and let the word of God abide in them, that they may be strong, and may overcome the wicked one. Titus 2:6. 1 John 2:14.

From the womb of the morning let Christ have the dew of the youth, and let him be formed in the hearts of those that are young. Psalm 110:3. Galatians 4:19.

Keep those that are setting out in the world from the corruption that is in the world through lust; and give to those that have been well educated to hold fast the form of sound words, and to continue in the things which they have learned. 2 Peter 1:4. 2 Timothy 1:13. 2 Timothy 3:14.

(b) For those that are old, and are of long standing in profession.

There are some that are old disciples of Jesus Christ, Lord, give them still to bring forth fruit in old age, to shew that the Lord is upright, that he is their rock, and there is no unrighteousness in him. Now the evil days are come, and the years of which they say there is no pleasure in them, let thy comforts delight their souls. Acts 21:16. Psalm 92:14, 15. Ecclesiastes 12:1. Psalm 94:19.

Even to their old age be thou he, and to the hoary hairs do thou carry them, thou hast made, we beseech thee bear, yea do thou carry and deliver them. Isaiah 46:4.

Those whom thou hast taught from their youth up, and who have hitherto declared all thy wondrous works, now also when they are old and grey-headed leave them not, cast them not off in their old age, fail them not when their strength fails. Psalm 71:17, 18, 9.

Let every hoary head be a crown of glory to those that have it, being found in the way of righteousness, and give them to know whom they have believed. Proverbs 16:31. 2 Timothy 1:12.

(c) For those that are rich and prosperous in the world, some of whom perhaps need prayers as much as those that request them.

Lord keep those that are rich in the world from being highminded, and trusting in uncertain riches, and give them to trust in the living God, who giveth us richly all things to enjoy: That they may do good, and be rich in good works, ready to distribute, willing to communicate, that they may lay up in store for themselves a good security for the time to come. 1 Timothy 6:17, 18, 19.

Though it is hard for those that are rich to enter into the kingdom of heaven, yet with thee this is possible. Matthew 19:23, 26.

(d) For those that are poor and in affliction, for such we have always with us.

Lord, make those that are poor in the world rich in faith, and heirs of the kingdom, and give to them to receive the gospel. James 2:5. Matthew 11:5.

O that the poor of the flock may wait upon thee, and may know the word of the Lord. Zechariah 11:11.

Many are the troubles of the righteous, good Lord, deliver them out of them all, and though no affliction for the present seems to be joyous, but grievous, nevertheless afterward let it yield the peaceable fruit of righteousness to them that are exercised thereby. Psalm 34:19. Hebrews 12:11.

(e) For our enemies, and those that hate us.

Lord, give us to love our enemies, to bless them that curse us, and to pray for them that despitefully use us and persecute us. Matthew 5:44.

Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do; and lay not their malice against us to their charge, and work in us a disposition to forbear and forgive in love, as thou requirest we should when we pray. Luke 23:34. Acts 7:60. Colossians 3:13. Mark 11:25.

And grant that our ways may so please the Lord, that even our enemies may be at peace with us. Let the wolf and the lamb lie down together, and let there be none to hurt or destroy in all the holy mountain; let not Ephraim envy Judah, nor Judah vex Ephraim. Proverbs 16:7. Isaiah 11:6, 9, 13.

(f) For our friends, and those that love us.

And we wish for all those whom we love in the truth, that they may prosper, and be in health, especially that their souls may prosper. 3 John 1, 2.

The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with their spirits. Philemon (v. 25).

To Be Continued…