Civil Liberty and the Papacy

“Render therefore unto Cesar the things which are Ccsar’s, and unto God the things that are G’od’s.’ — Matt. 22: 21.

THIS text clearly defines the proper relation between the church and the state, between things political and things spiritual. “My kingdom,” said Jesus, “is not of this world.” Cesar represents all government. His kingdom is of this world, and deals only with things seen and temporal. The kingdom of Christ, being not of this world, deals with things unseen and eternal. The two kingdoms are organically separate and distinct. Casar in his realm has a right to tribute and all other dues; Jesus in his realm has a right to all our love and loyalty. “The powers that be are ordained of God.”’ (Rom. 13: 1.) “Rulers are not a terror to good works, but to evil.””’ (Rom. 18: 3). “He is the minister of God to thee for good.” (Rom. 13: 4). God does not usurp the place of Cesar by investing his church or minister with political power; and Cesar has no right to usurp the place of God by putting himself up as the ruler of men’s consciences. Every man has a God-given right to worship according to the dictates of his own conscience. “To his own master he standeth or falleth.”’ (Rom. 14: 4,) “Every one shall give account of himself to God.” God deals with the individual face to face, and not with individuals through the organization, be that organization church or state. He saves the individual, not the organization as such, and no man or body of men has a right to come between the individual and his God. It ought to go without saying that no man or body of men has a right to take the place of God, and treat with men asGod. And yet the Papacy does that very thing. It has virtually dethroned both God and Cesar by declaring that it is both church and state, and that no one has a right to think or act. without its permission. Bear in mind, please, what I mean by the Papacy. Not the Roman Catholic people, who are as distinct from the Papacy as the slave is from his master. The Papacy is that organization whose head is at Rome, and whose thousand arms reach everywhere. It is composed, not of the people — they form no part of it — but of officials, called Pope, cardinal, bishop, priest, etc. Until 1870 the seat of power was in the Pope and the Councils, but since that date all power and authority are vested in the Pope himself, so that the Papacy of to-day is really the Pope. What he says is law; what he commands must be obeyed on pain of eternal damnation. No one can call him to account. The claim of the Papacy is that this one man, and he an old man approaching his dotage, is both church and State, both God and Cesar, that he is both spiritual and temporal ruler of all men, that he is subject to no government on earth, but all governments are by divine right subject to him. Nay, more; the tiara or triple crown, which the Pope wears, symbolizes that he is ruler of earth, heaven, and hell. He claims authority to bind and loose on earth and in heaven, to consign to hell all who refuse to acknowledge his authority. A more unlimited monarchy, a more perfect despotism never existed. Now the question for us to settle is not whether the Catholic people of this country believe in civil and religious liberty, but does the Papacy, of which the people form no part, and in which they have no voice but the voice of unquestioning obedience — does this Papacy believe in civil and religious liberty? And if it does not, what attitude does it bear to this government and our republican institutions?

Since the days of Gregory VIL., in the eleventh. century, the Papacy has been unchangeable in one respect, and that is in the claim that the Pope is the temporal and spiritual ruler of this world. Her methods for the realization of this ideal have changed a hundred times, but her purpose has been uniformly the same. Her ideal was reached when Henry IV. stood three days barefoot in the snow begging an audience of his holy majesty the Pope. To retain when held, and to regain when lost, this supreme power, has been the unchanging policy of the Papacy for seven hundred years. Has she changed? Is the Papacy in America different from the Papacy of history and of Europe? Has the lion been transformed into a lamb? Has despotism been converted into liberty-loving republicanism? We wish the facts warranted an affirmative answer; but they do not. The Papacy in its attitude toward civil and religious liberty is the same now that it was then. We are compelled by the facts in the case to believe that the Papacy of to-day and in this country is the enemy of religious liberty, civil liberty, mental liberty, and soul liberty. We beg you to hear in all coolness the proof of this assertion.

I. First, as to religious liberty. The Bible gives to every one the right to “search the Scriptures,” and decide for himself his relation to God, and God’s relation to him. Paul wrote to the Thessalonians: ‘I charge you, by the Lord, that this epistle be read to all the holy brethren.” (1 Thess. 5: 27.) And again to the Ephesians: “Take the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.” (Eph. 6: 17). Several of his Epistles are addressed “to all that call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.” Even the Jew was commanded to keep the law in his house, and read it to his children, Nowhere are the Scriptures committed to a special class for interpretation to others. All people have a right, not only to read, but to interpret it for themselves. Indeed it is more than a right, it is a duty which we cannot neglect without sin. “I speak as unto wise men,’’ says Paul, “Judge ye what I say.” (1 Cor. 10: 15.) “I speak unto you,” says Rome, “and you have no right to have any judgment of your own.” “Be ye ready,” says Peter, “to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you.” (1 Peter 3: 15.) Rome says: “Give your conscience over to the priest, and have no more concern about it.” The Bible not only gives authority to search its pages for the truth, but roes further, and commands us to try the teachers who come to us with a message, real or pretended, from God. “Beloved, believe not every spirit (referring to teachers) but try the spirits, whether they are of God; because many false prophets are gone out into the world.” (1 John 4: 1.) It is plain that the meaning is, we are to try these teachers by the revealed word of God. And Paul says: “Though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel to yon than that you have received, let him be accursed.” (Gal. 1: 8). Here the word of God is put above the teacher, though that teacher be an angel from heaven. To prohibit men from interpreting the Bible, or to compel them to receive the decision of councils rather than the Bible, is an infringement of religious liberty. Now, every Catholic must subscribe to the following: “I also receive the Holy Scriptures according to that sense which the holy mother church — to whom it belongs to judge of the true sense and interpretation of the Holy Scripture — did and doth hold. Nor will I ever take and interpret it otherwise than according to the unanimous consent of the fathers.” ‘The Holy Mother Church,” since 1870, simply means the Pope, and there is scarcely a text in the interpretation of which all ‘‘ the fathers” are agreed.

From compelling men to interpret the Scriptures as we please, there is but a step to compelling them to worship as we please. Full religious liberty means perfect liberty in our relation to God, to believe or not to believe, to worship or not to worship, or to worship in any form our conscience approves. In the realm of religious liberty suasion is the only weapon to be used. ‘ God alone is Lord of the Conscience.” The Christian has no more right to persecute the infidel than the infidel has to persecute the Christian.

This religious liberty is opposed by the Papacy with might and main. Pope Pius IX., in his encyclical letter of 1854, states clearly the Roman Catholic position: ‘ The absurd and erroneous dectrine or ravings in defense of liberty of conscience are a most pestilential error — a pest of all others most to be dreaded in the State.” This same Pope in 1864 anathematized “those who assert liberty of conscience and religious worship,” and “all such as maintain that the church may not employ force.” The present Pope, Leo XIII., in his encyclical of 1888, echoes the same sentiment: ‘‘ From this it follows, that greatly opposed to reason, and tending absolutely to pervert men’s minds, is that liberty of which we speak, in so far as it claims for itself the right of teaching what it pleases — a liberty which cannot be granted by the State without failing in its duty. And the more so, because the authority of the teacher has great weight with his hearers, who can rarely decide for themselves as to the truth or falsehood of the instruction given to them.” ... “To this society, the church, he intrusted all the truths which he had taught, that it might keep and guard them, and with lawful authority explain them; and at the same time he commanded all nations to hear the voice of the church, as if it were his own, threatening those who would not with everlasting perdition.”. .. “In faith, and in the teaching of morality, God made the church a partaker of his divine authority, and, through his divine help, she cannot be deceived. She is therefore the greatest and most safe teacher of mankind, with inviolable right to teach them.”

How does that accord with the Constitution of the United States which says: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof?” The two are as much opposed as light and darkness. The Constitution puts Cesar in his proper position. Government rules in matters of State, while the domain of conscience in the matters of religion is left entirely to God and the individual. The Papacy, on the other hand, declares through its first infallible Pope that such liberty of conscience is “a most pestileatial error — a pest of all others to be dreaded in the State.” We do not believe that the Papacy will ever overthrow our Constitution, and take from us religious liberty, because the Catholic people of this country are to a large extent more in sympathy with the Constitution than with the Papacy, but that does not alter the fact that the Constitution could not exist an hour, if the Papacy had the power to carry out its principles.

Cardinal Gibbons gives an interesting definition of religious liberty. “A man enjoys religious liberty,” he says, “when he possesses the free right of worshipping God according to the dictates of a RIGHT conscience, and of practicing a form of religion most in accordance with his duties to God.” One with half an eye can see in this definition room enough for another Inquisition with its racks and roasting, for the purpose of bringing men to a “right conscience,” and inducing them to “practice a form of religion most in accordance with their duties to God.” Ask the Cardinal what he means by’a “‘right conscience,” and he will say that it is a conscience which owns the authority and accepts the dogmas of the Roman Catholic Church. Ask him what is a form of religion most in accordance with the duties of men to God? And he must reply that it is the form sanctioned by the Roman Catholic Church. He dare not answer otherwise, for in the oath of allegiance which he took as Cardinal are these words: “Heretics, schismatics and rebels to our said Lord [the Pope], or his aforesaid successors, I will to my utmost persecute and oppose.” A little farther on in his book, the Cardinal again lays down the doctrine of religious liberty in its fulness, and, lest his readers should think that he has gotten it up for the occasion, he quotes it from “the great theologian Becanus.” And here it is: ‘“Religious liberty may be tolerated by a ruler, when it would do more harm to the State or to the community to repress it.” In other words, religious liberty is not a right, but a thing of policy to be granted, when it might do more harm to repress it than to grant it.. The history of the Roman Church proves that it always thinks it will do less harm to repress it, whenever it has the power. They evidently think that it would do more harm than good to try to repress it in America just at this time, so that their “Prince” must satisfy himself with the harmless amusement of dressing himself in his fancy robes and exhibiting himself at parties for the gratification of his society friends. In that way a few heretics may be attracted and won, while priest and nun do more serious work, till the time come, when it will do less harm to repress than to tolerate religious liberty.

Some writers of the present and recent days are not so careful in their utterances as our politic Cardinal. ‘ Religious liberty,” says Bishop O’Connor, “is merely endured until the opposite can be carried into effect without peril to the Catholic world.” The Archbishop of St. Louis puts it a little stronger: ‘“Heresy and unbelief are crimes, and in Christian countries, like Italy and Spain for instance, where all the people are Catholics, and where the Catholic religion is an essential part of the law of the land, they are punished as other crimes.” The Rambler, a London paper, delivers itself as follows: ‘‘ Religious liberty, in the sense of liberty possessed by every man to choose his religion, is one of the most wicked delusions ever foisted upon this age by the father of all deceit. The very name of liberty, except in the sense of a permission to do certain acts, ought to be banished from the domain of religion. No man has a right to choose his religion.” Mr. Louis Veuillot, a writer highly approved at Rome, explains the philosophy of the Roman Catholic position: “When there is a Protestant majority,” says he, “we claim religious liberty, because such is their principle; but, when we are in a majority, we refuse it, because that is our principle.”

We thank God for all the men among Roman Catholic people who have advocated religious toleration, when they had power to persecute. Such were Lord Baltimore and others who have adorned the records of Maryland history. But from what has been said it is clear that they were not in accord with the spirit of the Papacy then or now. The second Lord Baltimore was doubtless not sufficiently indoctrinated in Roman Catholic faith and exclusiveness, while he was a child. His father did not join the Roman Church until the 41st year of his age, and young Cecil did not have the advantage of a parochial school, where he would have been fortified in Roman Catholic dogma. It ought to be remembered also that the Governor of Maryland in 1649, when the act of toleration was passed, was a Protestant, and the majority of the council, by the suffrage of Lord Baltimore, were also Protestant. (Brown’s “Maryland,” p. 66.) Be that as it may, the act of Toleration did not confer religious liberty. It merely tolerated the existence of different sects. To speak against the Trinity, the Virgin Mary, or the Apostles; to call any one by the epithet of heretic, Puritan, Jesuit, Papist, etc., was punishable by fine. A Jew could not hold office. It was the kind of toleration that would arrest me for writing this book; the kind of toleration by which a Baptist preacher lies to-day in a Cuban jail for preaching against the Confessional. Nevertheless all praise to Baltimore and his Protestant associates for such an act of toleration. And we will not excuse the Puritans for their persecuting spirit manifested afterwards, though it must be confessed that they acted upon the principle couched in the act of Toleration that the right to permit implies the right to suppress. The birthplace of true religious liberty on this continent was Rhode Island. A writer in Johnson’s Cyclopedia does not put it too strongly, when he says: “To Rhode Island belongs the pre-eminent honor of being the first state in the world to incorporate in its organic law and to practice absolute religious liberty.’’ Full liberty to all, Jew, Infidel and Christian alike, with a prayer and an effort to bring all to a knowledge of “the truth as it is in Jesus’ was the policy of Roger Williams. Cherish the memory of the founders of this commonwealth, who, in spite of the Papacy, were tolerant of the existence of others who differed from them, though they would not allowa free expression of those differences; but thank God more for the perfect liberty of conscience we enjoy to-day.

II. We would naturally expect that the Papacy, which opposes religious liberty, would oppose with equal ardor all civil liberty. Such is the case. A distinction is made between the ecclesiastical and political power of the Papacy, in order to shield the church from the odium of butchering heretics. We are gravely told that the Roman Catholic Church never killed anybody. She simply condemned them, and turned them over to the secular arm for punishment. So that the secular arm, not the church, is to blame. On this principle the Roman government, not the Jews, is wholly responsible for the crucifixion of Jesus. They simply condemned him, and turned him over to the secular arm for punishment. Those who make this quibble know as well as any one that the Pope claims supremacy over all kings and rulers of the earth. Not a particle has he wavered in that claim since the eleventh century. Now the question to be answered is, Is the Papacy of to-day the enemy of civil liberty? That it has been in the past no sane man will deny. Has it changed? Can we expect better things of it now?

There are three things which mark the Papacy as the enemy of civil liberty.

1. The Pope claims that he is the temporal as well as spiritual ruler of the world. American Roman Catholic citizens are taught that they owe allegiance to the Pope; and, should there ever be a conflict between this government and the Papacy, that they should support the Papacy. All whom the Pope elevates to official positions take oath that they will “endeavor to preserve, defend, increase and advance the authority of the Pope.”” Bishop Gilmour, in his Lenten letter of 1873, declares that “we are Catholics first, and citizens next.” Cardinal McCloskey, of New York, struck the same note in the words, “They (the Catholics of the United States) are as strongly devoted to the sustenance and maintenance of the temporal power of the holy Father as Catholics in any part of the world; and if it should be necessary to prove it by acts, we are ready to do so.” Father Hecker said in 1870, “There is ere long to be a state religion in this country, and that religion is to be the Roman Catholic.” The hope of preserving our civil liberty lies in the fact that both Cardinal McCloskey and Father

Hecker are mistaken. We believe they are, and, therefore hope.

A Roman Catholic state religion means the suppression of all others. To prove that assertion, let me quote an extract from an able article in the Forum.

“When, in 1815, the King of Holland granted his new realm a constitution according freedom of worship, the bishops had it thrown out, because this spirit of freedom is directly opposed to the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church. When, in 1830, Belgium gave herself a constitution with modern liberties, Gregory XVI. condemned it on this account in a famous encyclical letter. In the concordat concluded with Spain by Pius IX., in 1850, one of the articles is as follows:

“<The Catholic religion shall be maintained as the exclusive religion of the realm in such sort that the practice of all other worship shall be forbidden and prevented.’

“In the concordat with the republic of Ecuador, in 1862, there is the following stipulation:

“‘¢ The Roman Catholic and apostolic religion is to continue to be the religion of the republic of Ecuador. Consequently no other worship may be practiced, nor any other sect tolerated in the republic.’

“When freedom of worship was proclaimed in Mexico, the encyclical letter of December 15, 1856, denounced it to the world as an abominable act, destined to corrupt men’s minds and root out the holy religion.”

In the same magazine for May is an article by a Roman Catholic bishop, in which occur the following words: “One whose lightest word is treasured up by millions of every clime, who look upon him as the guide of their conscience, must be above suspicion of any controlling influence; must be, not only in word, but in fact, supreme.” So you see the claim for the temporal supremacy of the Pope is not a dream of the past, but a reality of the present.

In a sermon, delivered not long ago, Cardinal Manning makes the Pope say: “I acknowledge no civil power; I am the subject of no prince, and I claim more than this: I claim to be the supreme judge and director of men — of the peasant that tills the field and of the prince that sits upon the throne.

I am the sole, last, supreme judge of what is right and wrong.”;

Lafayette, being a Roman Catholic, knew the spirit of the Papacy well enough to predict that “if the liberties of the American people are ever destroyed, they will fall by the hands of the Romish clergy.” But is not the present Pope, Leo XIIL., in sympathy with Republican institutions? Let him speak for himself. In his address to the pilgrims on the occasion of his jubilee, he declared that the great foe of the church to-day is universal suffrage. In his Encyclical of 1888 he uses -these words: “And, first, let us examine that liberty in individuals, which is so opposed to the virtue of religion, namely, the liberty of worship, as it is called, which rests on this principle, that every man is free, to profess, as he chooses, any religion or none.” ... ‘Justice, therefore, forbids, and reason forbids, the State to be godless, or to adopt a line of action which would end in godlessness, namely, to treat the various religions, as they call them, alike, and to bestow upon them promiscuously equal rights and privileges. Since then the profession of one religion is necessary in the State, that one must be professed which alone is true, and which can be recognized without difficulty, especially in Catholic States, because the marks of truth are, as it were, engraven upon it. This religion, therefore the rulers of the State must preserve and protect, if they would provide, as they should do, with prudence and usefulness for the good of the community.”

In this Encyclical Leo XIII. denounces “rule by the majority;”’ and one of the speakers in the Roman Catholic Layman’s Congress, which met in Baltimore, November, 1889, emphasized the same sentiment. Rule by the majority in this country means nothing more nor less than the Ballot Box. Take that from us, at the dictate of the Pope, and what else worth the having is there left? Nothing but a mass of wreck, with ‘His Holiness” enthroned upon the pile.

2. The opposition of the Papacy to a free press and free speech is another proof that it is the enemy of civil liberty. In 1864 Pope Pius IX. anathematized “all who maintain the liberty of the press and all advocates of free speech.” And he calls such liberty “the liberty of perdition.” In closing his Encyclical Leo XIII.

is equally emphatic. He says: ‘“From what has been said, it follows that it is in no way lawful to demand, to defend, or to grant unconditional freedom of thought, of speech, of writing, or of re-. ligion, as if they were so many rights which nature had given to man.”

Wherever the Papacy has the power, it is a gag upon lip and pen. Without freedom of speech our free institutions could not be maintained.

There lies open before me as I write a copy of the “Summa Theologia,” by Thomas Aquinas, which every Roman Catholic priest is expected to commit to memory. It is a rare - book in Protestant hands, but I am fortunate enough to have it through the kindness of a friend, who was for twenty-five years a Roman Catholic priest. On page 90 are these words: ‘‘Quouquam heeretici tolerandi non sunt ipso illorum demerito, usque tamen ad secundam correptionem expectandi sunt, ut ad sanamsedeant Ecclesie fidem; qui vero post secundam correptionem in suo errore obstinati permanent, non modo excommunicationis sententia, sed iliam seculoribus principibus exterminandi, tradenti sunt.” “Though heretics must not be tolerated because they deserve it, we must wait till they are twice admonished to come back and repent. But if, after a second admonition, they remain obstinate in their errors, they must not only be excommunicated, but they must be delivered to the secular power to be exterminated.”

Such is the spirit of the Papacy, not during the Dark Ages, but to-day, under the blaze of light in this nineteenth century. The claws and teeth have been extracted, but the tiger’s nature is there.

8. A third strong proof that the Papacy is the enemy of civil liberty is its determined and persistent opposition to our public schools. “It will be a glorious day for the Catholics of this country,” said the Catholic Telegram, of Cincinnati, “when, under the blows of justice and morality, our school system will be shivered to pieces.” With which sentiment we entirely agree. Such would bea glorious day for Romanism, but a dark day for our Republican institutions. The Papacy has believed in the education of her clergy, but never in the education of the masses. The golden age of her history was during the Dark Ages, when princes, unable to write their names, had to make their mark.

Rev. Josiah Strong truly says: “In her relation to the masses she has adhered to her own proverb — ‘ Ignorance is the mother of devotion.’ In Protestant countries, like Germany and the United States, where there is strong sentiment in favor of popular education, she has been compelled in self-defense to open schools of her own. But her real attitude toward the education of the masses should be infered from her course in those countries where she has or has had undisputed sway; and there she has kept the people in besotted ignorance. Instance her own Italy, where seventy-two per cent. of the population are illiterate, or Spain, where we find eighty per cent., or Mexico, where ninety-three per cent. belong to this class.”,

And even in America her parochial schools are more assiduous in teaching the value of relics, images, penance, invocation of saints and the doom of heretics, than they are in teaching science and history. Joseph Cook’s words as reported in the Boston Traveler, are not too strong: “As to the parochial schools themselves, it is well known that the instruction that Catholic children are given there is not such as to fit them for the duties of enlightened citizenship. Then again, the system is disposed to destroy our magnificent system of unsectarian public schools, upon which the hope of the republic depends. The instruction given in parochial schools is always sectarian, greatly mutilated, and generally misleading.

“For instance, I find that in all of them the statement is made that the Roman Catholic Church had nothing to do with the Inquisition or the massacre of St. Bartholomew. ‘The saddest thing I ever saw in Paris,’ said Bismarck, ‘ was a lot of mutilated text-books, doctored by Jesuit Priests.’ On the whole, the tone of these text-books is not only anti-American and anti-Protestant, but they are anti-cultured and anti-scholarly; and this is the rubbish that is crammed down the throats of Catholic children. By their own confession, the Catholic authorities have made up their minds to keep the people of this country in the same state of intellectual childhood as is found in Europe. Consider what this means to our country.”

The enemy of liberty of conscience, a free press, free speech and popular education, the three pillars on which this government stands, is the enemy of civil liberty, and we do not hesitate

to say that the only way for the Catholic Church of America to prove its loyalty to this government is to declare itself independent of the old man on the Tiber, and adapt itself to the spirit of our institutions. Until then we have a despotism in a republic, a foreign power alien to our institutions, ruling and controlling millions of the people of these United States.

Ill. The Roman Catholic Church is one of the worst enemies of soul liberty on earth. The Bible teaches us that in Jesus Christ we are free from the penalty of the law. We are not under law, but under grace. Romanism keeps its devotees in bondage to the law. Jesus said: “If the Son shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed.” “Not so,” says Romanism, “you must be made free also by penance, indulgence and purgatory.” The Bible teaches a full assurance of faith. Paul could say “I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed unto him against that day.’’ (2 Tim. 1: 12.) The Papacy tells us that we can know no such thing, but must live in mortal dread of being lost in hell.

Christ makes us dead unto the law, and alive unto him. Our Roman Catholic friends are still under law, and we come to them, in God’s name, with an emancipation proclamation for every one of them. Here it is: “There is therefore now no condemnation to them who are in Christ Jesus.” (Rom. 8: 1.) “Being justified by faith, let us have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.” (Rom. 5: 1.)