That the Holy Catholic Church is artfully constituted to subjugate
all secular and ecclesiastical power under its authority, and that its
object is not to advance the interests of moral goodness, but to acquire
temporal dominion, must be admitted by every one that fully comprehends
the principles upon which its religious Orders are organized. These
Orders were founded by Catholic saints and Bishops. They have been
confirmed by Popes and Councils. And though they have been suppressed,
on account of their corrupt tendency and political intrigues, in kingdom
after kingdom, yet in pontifical bulls they have been defended as being
the most useful and pious class of the Catholic community. They may
therefore be regarded as having been authoratively acknowledged to be
constituted in harmony with the principles and designs of the Catholic
Church. In fact they form the body of its organization, as the Pope does
its head, and the Councils do its members.
In investigating the intrinsic nature of these orders, we are naturally
led back to that period of their history which allowed them an
unembarrassed development. As they are sanctioned by a church which
claims the attribute of infallibility, whatever changes the advance of
civilization has effected in them, must be regarded as a mere prudent
accommodation to existing circumstances, to be tolerated no longer than
they are imperative. If in 1900 the Catholic Church gain the supremacy
in the United States which she hopes to gain, she will restore the
despotism and superstition which characterized her domination during the
dark ages. Pope Gregory XVI. in his Encyclical Epistle of 1832, says:
"Ever bearing in mind, the universal church suffers from every novelty,
as well as the admonition of Pope St. Agatho, that from what has been
regularly defined nothing can be taken away--no innovation introduced
there, no addition made, but that it must be preserved untouched as to
words and meaning."
The religious Orders consist of anchorites, monks, nuns and knights. The
anchorites in general lived separately, but sometimes in communities.
The nuns lived in perpetual solitude, as also did the monks, with the
exception of such as devoted themselves to the administration of the
public affairs of the church. The knights were soldiers of the cross,
instituted to defend and propagate the Romish faith by the force of
arms. The orders differed from one another chiefly in the style of their
dress, in degrees of rigidness of discipline, and in the assumption
of additional vows. They all assumed the vow of absolute poverty, of
perpetual celibacy, and of unconditional obedience to the rules of their
Order, and to the commands of their superior. Each member was subject
to the absolute authority of his superior, who resided in the monastery;
each superior to the absolute authority of his general, who resided at
Rome, and each general to the absolute authority of the Pope, who was
the head and the chief engineer of the whole machine. By means of this
machinery the monarchical power of the Pope has been, and is still,
although the machinery in some places is somewhat damaged, exerted in
every kingdom, in every republic, in every city, and over every Catholic
mind in Christendom.
When a novice assumed the monastic vows, he became the absolute
property, or chattel, of the institution which he entered, as
irreversibly as if he had signed, sealed, and delivered a deed conveying
to it his soul and body. By this act of piety he yielded up his personal
freedom, and became ironed with the shackles of an eternal slavery.
A culprit might hope for liberty when his time would expire, but the
recluse could only expect disenthralment by death. If disappointed
in finding the holiness which he fancied to hallow the place, or if,
relieved of the misanthropic gloom, the isolating superstition, or the
delusive representations which had induced him to enter the monastic
walls, he should escape, he was pursued, and if captured remanded back
by the civil authorities to the cold solitude of his prison house. Not
only have these cruel deeds been perpetrated in the dark ages, but
in this age of civilization--not only in despotic Europe, but in free
America. True, the civil authority in. Protestant countries has
not interfered, but Catholic ingenuity has discovered means equally
efficacious. How many escaped nuns have unaccountably disappeared from
society? What infamous means have Catholic priests adopted to fill their
nunneries? A young girl in Baltimore, who had just passed her sixteenth
year, was carried to a nunnery, and although her mother and relatives
invoked the interposition of the civil authorities, yet they were
unable to reclaim her, because she had arrived at age. Who that has any
conception of the numerous applications of distracted mothers at the
police station-houses of some of our large cities, for their children,
who have mysteriously disappeared; or that has read the account recently
published in the New York papers, (of the recovery of the body of a
young female who had been drowned, when in one day eight mothers called
at the dead-house to see if the corpse was not that of a daughter whom
each had missed), can avoid believing that if the nunneries were open to
public inspection, some of these mysteries might be resolved?
After the ceremonies were concluded which sepulchred the novice forever
in his monastic cloister, his thoughts, feelings, and desires were
henceforth to be regulated, not by the operations of the brain, but by
the rules of his Order. The most secret recesses of his mind were to
be opened to the inspection of his confessor. For the intrusion of a
natural thought he was liable to the infliction of the severest penalty;
and the voice of the superior was the only reason, the only conscience,
the only instinct he was at liberty to obey. Subjected to a systematic
course of rigid discipline adapted to paralyze reason, suppress
conscience and stifle instinct, he became a passionless, soulless,
mechanical automaton, as well formed to bless, pray and preach, as to
curse, forge and murder, and equally ready to do either at the mandate
of his superior.
When the superstition of the masses, the ignorance of princes, the
ambition of politicians, and the intrigues of the priesthood had favored
or cultivated the growth of Catholicism until it was matured into a
colossal monarchy, it was discovered that while its centre was in Rome,
its branches extended to every section of Christendom. Its monasteries
conveniently and strategetically located in different parts of the
world, its confessors penetrating the secret designs and wishes of
statesmen and princes, its spiritual advisers scrutinizing the conduct
of opulent and distinguished personagas, its spies, under the license
of Papal indulgences, professing all opinions, and entering all
associations and societies, and its agents in constant communication
with their superiors, their superiors with their generals, and their
generals with the Pope, and all acting in concert in every part of
Christendom toward the accomplishment of one grand design; the See of
Rome became the receptacle of accurate accounts of the condition, events
and characters of the various sections of the globe, and was capable of
improving every occurrence to its best advantage, and of commanding in
its support the power of every locality. As nothing was too great to
transcend its aspirations, so nothing was too minute to escape its
scrutiny. Monarchs, legislators, judges, jurists, statesmen, generals,
bankers, merchants, actors, schools, colleges, men, women, children--all
were objects which its spiritual machinery sought to control. Invisible,
but omniscient, the Pope was seen nowhere, while his power was felt
everywhere. He touched the secret springs of his machinery and the world
was roused to arms or silenced to submission; kings were astounded with
applauding subjects, or sat powerless on their thrones; armies rushed to
battle or grounded their arms; statesmen were blasted, none could tell
for what crime; miscreants were ennobled, none could tell for what
virtue; men's business or domestic affairs were disarranged, none could
tell for what cause. So sudden, secret and terrible were the revolutions
wrought in the fate of individuals and nations, that they seemed
like the vengeful interposition of Providence, and the mystery which
concealed the hidden cause led the ignorant and stupefied world to
interpret them, under the instruction of a crafty priesthood, as the
manifestations of divine wrath. When we calmly consider the disposition
of the Catholic organization, it seems that all the inventions of
ancient tyranny were condensed in it with improved malignancy. The
ambition of Caesar, which hurried him on to the destruction of the
liberties of his country, while he imagined the cold hand of his
departed mother clasped his heart; the jealousy of Commodus, who never
spared what he could suspect; the cruelty of Mithridates, who fed
on poison to escape the secret revenge of his injured subjects; the
inhumanity of Caligula, who wished the world had but one neck, that he
might cut off its disobedient head at one blow, are, indeed, terrible
examples of despotism, but they were limited to one nation, and left
reason and conscience unshackled. But in the Papal organization we find
a scrutiny which penetrated all secrets, a despotism that ironed reason
and conscience, an ambition that grasped heaven and earth, a malignity
that blasted for time and eternity--a policy in which all the elements
of bigotry, terror, malice, duplicity and obduracy were incorporated in
their most frightful proportion. Before this conception we might
well shudder, for its irons are secretly manacling our own limbs.
Its triumphs, written in the blood of the millions it has butchered,
commemorated by the monuments of ecclesiastical rubbish which it has
erected, seen in the gloom of superstition it has cast upon the world,
utter a solemn admonition to the freemen of America. Think not that the
present attainment in civilization is proof against this all-blasting
tree, whose sap is poison and whose fruit is death. Think of Egyptian,
Asiatic, Grecian civilization, and tremble lest their fate become
your own. Let not confidence beget an apathy that may close the eye of
vigilance, or enervate the powers of resistance. Listen to Pope Pius IX.
when he declares that "the Catholic religion, with its rights, ought to
be exclusively dominant, in such sort that every other worship shall
be banished and interdicted." Listen to Father Hecker, who says: "The
Catholic Church now numbers one-third of the American population, and
if its membership increase for the next thirty years, as it has for the
thirty years past, in 1900 Rome will have a majority, and be bound to
take the country and keep it." Read the statistics and learn the fearful
probability of the fulfillment of Hecker's prophesy. Then dream no more
that your liberties are safe.