thrills in this fantastic world!--I purchase a copy of the "Messenger
of the Sacred Heart", a magazine published in New York, the issue for
October, 1917. There are pages of advertisements of schools and
colleges with strange titles: "Immaculata Seminary", "Holy Cross
Academy", "Holy Ghost Institute", "Ladycliff", "Academy of Holy Child
Jesus". The leading article is by a Jesuit, on "The Spread of the
Apostleship of Prayer among the Young"; and then "Sister Clarissa"
writes a poem telling us "What are Sorrows"; and then we are given a
story called "Prayer for Daddy"; and then another Jesuit father tells
us about "The Hills that Jesus Loved". A third father tells us about
the "Eucharistic Propaganda"; and we learn that in July, 1917, it
distributed 11,699 beads, and caused the expenditure of 57,714 hours
of adoration; and then the faithful are given a form of letter which
they are to write to the Honorable Baker, Secretary of War, imploring
him to intimate to the French government that France should withdraw
from one of her advances in civilization, and join with mediaeval
America in exempting priests from being drafted to fight for their
country. And then there is a "Question Box"--just like the Hearst
newspapers, only instead of asking whether she should allow him to
kiss her before he has told her that he loves her, the reader asks
what is the Pauline Privilege, and what is the heroic Act, and is
Robert a saint's name, and if food remains in the teeth from the night
before, would it break the fast to swallow it before Holy Communion.
(No, I am not inventing this.)
I quoted the Episcopal Book of Common Prayer, and pointed out how
deftly the Church has managed to slip in a prayer for worldly
prosperity. But the Catholic Church does not show any squeamishness in
dealing with its "million imbeciles", its "rough, purblind mass".
There is a department of the little magazine entitled "Thanksgiving",
and a statement at the top that "the total number of Thanksgivings for
the month is 2,143,911." I am suspicious of that, as of German reports
of prisoners taken; but I give the statement as it stands, not going
through the list and picking out the crudest, but taking them as they
come, classified by states:
GENERAL FAVORS: For many of these favors Mass and
publication were promised, for others the Badge of
Promoter's Cross was used, for others the prayers of the
Associates had been asked.
Alabama--Jewelry found, relief from pain, protection during
storm.
Alaska--Safe return, goods found.
Arizona--Two recoveries, suitable boarding place, illness
averted, safe delivery.
British Honduras--Successful operation.
California--Seventeen recoveries, six situations, two
successful examinations, house rented, stocks sold, raise in
salary, return to religious duties, sight regained, medal
won, Baptism, preservation from disease, contract obtained,
success in business, hearing restored, Easter duty made,
happy death, automobile sold, mind restored, house found,
house rented, successful journey, business sold, quarrel
averted, return of friends, two successful operations.
And for all these miraculous performances the Catholic machine is
harvesting the price day by day--harvesting with that ancient fervor
which the Latin poet described as "auri sacra fames". As Christopher
Columbus wrote from Jamaica in 1503: "Gold is a wonderful thing. By
means of gold we can even get souls into Paradise."
#The Holy Roman Empire#
The system thus self-revealed you admit is appalling in its squalor;
but you say that at least it is milder and less perilous than the
Church which burned Giordano Bruno and John Huss. But the very essence
of the Catholic Church is that it does not change; #semper eadem# is
its motto: the same yesterday, today and forever--the same in
Washington as in Rome or Madrid--the same in a modern democracy as in
the Middle Ages. The Catholic Church is not primarily a religious
organization; it is a political organization, and proclaims the fact,
and defies those who would shut it up in the religious field. The Rev.
S.B. Smith, a Catholic doctor of divinity, explains in his "Elements
of Ecclesiastical Law":
Protestants contend that the entire power of the Church
consists in the right to teach and exhort, but not in the
right to command, rule, or govern; whence they infer that
she is not a perfect society or sovereign state. This theory
is false; for the Church, as was seen, is vested #Jure
divino# with power, (1) to make laws; (2) to define and
apply them #(potestas judicialis)#; (3) to punish those who
violate her laws #(potestas coercitiva)#.
And this is not one scholar's theory, but the formal and repeated
proclamation of infallible popes. Here is the "Syllabus of Errors",
issued by Pope Pius IX, Dec. 8th, 1864, declaring in substance that
The state has not the right to leave every man free to
profess and embrace whatever religion he shall deem true.
It has not the right to enact that the ecclesiastical power
shall require the permission of the civil power in order to
the exercise of its authority.
Then in the same Syllabus the rights and powers of the Church are
affirmed in substance:
She has the right to require the state not to leave every
man free to profess his own religion.
She has the right to exercise her power without the
permission or consent of the state.
She has the right of perpetuating the union of church and
state.
She has the right to require that the Catholic religion
shall be the only religion of the state, to the exclusion of
all others.
She has the right to prevent the state from granting the
public exercise of their own worship to persons immigrating
from it.
She has the power of requiring the state not to permit free
expression of opinion.
You see, the Holy Office is unrepentant and unchastened. You, who
think that liberty of conscience is the basis of civilization, ought
at least to know what the Catholic Church has to say about the matter.
Here is Mgr. Segur, in his "Plain Talk About Protestantism of Today",
a book published in Boston and extensively circulated by American
Catholics:
Freedom of thought is the soul of Protestantism; it is
likewise the soul of modern rationalism and philosophy. It
is one of those impossibilities which only the levity of a
superficial reason can regard as admissable. But a sound
mind, that does not feed on empty words, looks upon this
freedom of thought only as simply absurd, and, what is more,
as sinful.
You take the liberty of thinking, nevertheless; you feel safe because
the Law will protect you. But do you imagine that this "Law" applies
to your Catholic neighbors? Do you imagine that they are bound by the
restraints that bind #you#? Here is Pope Leo XIII, in his Encyclical
of 1890--and please remember that Leo XIII was the #beau ideal# of our
capitalist statesmen and editors, as wise and kind and gentle-souled a
pope as ever roasted a heretic. He says:
If the laws of the state are openly at variance with the
laws of God--if they inflict injury upon the Church--or set
at naught the authority of Jesus Christ which is vested in
the Supreme Pontiff, then indeed it becomes a duty to resist
them, a sin to render obedience.
And consider how many fields there are in which the laws of a
democratic state do and forever must contravene the "laws of God" as
interpreted by the Catholic Church. Consider for example, that the
Pope, in his decree #Ne Temere#, has declared that Catholics who are
married by civil authorities or by Protestant clergymen will be living
in "filthy concubinage"! Consider, in the same way, the problems of
education, burial, prison discipline, blasphemy, poor relief,
incorporation, mortmain, religious endowments, vows of celibacy. To
the above list, as given by Gladstone, one might add many issues, such
as birth control, which have arisen since his time.
What the Church means is to rule. Her literature is full of
expressions of that intention, set forth in the boldest and haughtiest
and most uncompromising manner. For example, Cardinal Manning, in the
Pro-Cathedral at Kensington, speaking in the name of the Pope:
I acknowledge no civil power; I am the subject of no prince;
I claim more than this--I claim to be the supreme judge and
director of the consciences of men--of the peasant that
tills the field, and of the prince that sits upon the
throne; of the household of privacy, and the legislator that
makes laws for kingdoms; I am the sole, last supreme judge
of what is right and wrong.
#Temporal Power#
What this means is, that here in our American democracy the Catholic
Church is a rebel; a prisoner of war who bides his time, watching for
the moment to rise in revolt, and meantime making no secret of his
intentions. The pious Leo XIII, addressing all true believers in
America, instructed them as to their attitude in captivity:
The Church amongst you, unopposed by the Constitution and
government of your nation, fettered by no hostile
legislation, protected against violence by the common laws
and the impartiality of the tribunals, is free to live and
act without hindrance. Yet, though all this is true, it
would be very erroneous to draw the conclusion that in
America is to be sought the type of the most desirable
status of the church, or that it would be universally lawful
or expedient for state and church to be, as in America,
dissevered and divorced. The fact that Catholicity with you
is in good condition, nay, is even enjoying a prosperous
growth, is by all means to be attributed to the fecundity
with which God has endowed His Church--But she would bring
forth more abundant fruits if, in addition to liberty, she
enjoyed the favor of the laws and patronage of the public
authority.
Accordingly, here is Father Phelan of St. Louis, addressing his flock
in the "Western Watchman", June 27,1913:
Tell us we are Catholics first and Americans or Englishmen
afterwards; of course we are. Tell us, in the conflict
between the church and the civil government we take the side
of the church; of course we do. Why, if the government of
the United States were at war with the church, we would say
tomorrow, To hell with the government of the United States;
and if the church and all the governments of the world were
at war, we would say, To hell with all the governments of
the world....Why is it that in this country, where we have
only seven per cent of the population, the Catholic church
is so much feared? She is loved by all her children and
feared by everybody. Why is it that the Pope has such
tremendous power? Why, the Pope is the ruler of the world.
All the emperors, all the kings, all the princes, all the
presidents of the world, are as these altar boys of mine.
The Pope is the ruler of the world.
You recall what I said at the outset about Power; the ability to
control the lives of other men, to give laws and moral codes, to shape
fashions and tastes, to be revered and regarded. Here is a man swollen
to bursting with this Power. Dressed in his holy robes, with his holy
incense in his nostrils, and the faces of the faithful gazing up at
him awe-stricken, hear him proclaim:
The Church gives no bonds for her good behavior. She is the
judge of her own rights and duties, and of the rights and
duties of the state.
And lest you think that an extreme example of ultramontanist
arrogance, listen to the Boston "Pilot", April 6, 1912, speaking for
Cardinal O'Connell, whose official organ it is:
It must be borne in mind that even though Cardinals Farley,
O'Connell and Gibbons are at heart patriotic Americans and
members of an American hierarchy, yet they are as cardinals
foreign princes of the blood, to whom the United States, as
one of the great powers of the world, is under an obligation
to concede the same honors that they receive abroad.
Thus, were Cardinal Farley to visit an American man-of-war,
he would be entitled to the salutes and to naval honors
reserved for a foreign royal personage, and at any official
entertainment at Washington the Cardinal will outrank not
merely every cabinet officer, the speaker of the house and
the vice-president, but also the foreign ambassadors, coming
immediately next to the chief magistrate himself.
Incidentally, it may be mentioned that when a royal
personage not of sovereign rank visits New York it is his
duty to make the first call on Cardinal Farley.
#Knights of Slavery#
Such is the worldly station of these apostles of the lowly Jesus. And
what is their attitude towards their brothers in God, the rank and
file of the membership, whose pennies grease the wheels of the
ecclesiastical machine? His Holiness, the Pope, sent over a delegate
to represent him in America, and at a convention of the Federation of
Catholic Societies held in New Orleans in November, 1910, this
gentleman, Diomede Falconio, delivered himself on the subject of
Capital and Labor. We have heard the slave-code of the Anglican
disciples of Jesus, the revolutionary carpenter; now let us hear the
slave-code of his Roman disciples:
Human society has its origin from God and is constituted of
two classes of people, the rich and the poor, which
respectively represent Capital and Labor.
Hence it follows that according to the ordinance of God,
human society is composed of superiors and subjects, masters
and servants, learned and unlettered, rich and poor, nobles
and plebeians.
And lest this should not be clear enough, the Pope sent a second
representative, Mgr. John Bonzano, who, speaking at a general meeting
of the German Catholic Central-Verein, St. Louis, 1917, declared:
One of the worst evils that may grow out of the European war
is the spreading of the doctrine of Socialism, and the
Catholic Church must be ready to counteract such doctrines.
We must be ready to prevent the spread of Socialism and to
work against it. As I understand, you have a society of
wealthy people in St. Louis ready for such a campaign. You
have experienced leaders who are masters in their kind of
work. They are always insistent to show that this wealth was
and is in close touch with the Church, and therefore it will
not fail.
This, you perceive, is the complete thesis of the present book, which
therefore no doubt will be entitled to the "Nihil Obstat" of the
"Censor Theolog.", and the "Imprimatur" of "Johannes Josephus,
Archiepiscopus Sti. Ludovici." No wonder that the "experienced
leaders" of America, our captains of industry and exploiters of labor,
are forced, whatever their own faith may be, to make use of this
system of subjection. A few years ago we read in our papers how a
Jewish millionaire of Baltimore was presenting a fortune to the
Catholic Church, to be used in its war upon Socialism. The late Mark
Hanna, the shrewdest and most far-seeing man that Big Business ever
brought into power, said that in twenty years there would be two
parties in America, a capitalist and a socialist; and that it would be
the Catholic church that would save the country from Socialism. That
prophecy was widely quoted, and sank into the souls of our steel and
railway and money magnates; from which time you might see, if you
watched political events, a new tone of deference to the Roman
Hierarchy on the part of our ruling classes. Today you cannot get an
expression of opinion hostile to Catholicism into any newspaper of
importance. The Associated Press does not handle news unfavorable to
the Church, and from top to bottom, the politician takes off his hat
when the Sacred Host goes by. Said Archbishop Quigley, speaking before
the children of the Mary Sodality:
I'd like to see the politician who would try to rule against
the church in Chicago. His reign would be short indeed.
#Priests and Police#
And how is it in our national capital, the palladium of our liberties?
As a means of demonstrating the power of the church and the
subservience of our politicians, the Catholics have invented what they
call the "Cardinal's Day Mass": An elaborate procession of high
ecclesiastics, dressed in gorgeous robes and jewels, through the
streets of Washington, accompanied by a small army of policemen, paid
by non-Catholic taxpayers. The Cardinal seats himself upon a throne,
and our political rulers make obeisance before him. On Sunday, January
14, 1917, there were present at this political mass the following
personages: Four cabinet members and their wives; the speaker of the
House; a large group of senators and representatives; a general of the
army and his wife; an admiral of the navy and his wife; the Chief
Justice of the Supreme Court and his wife, and another Justice of the
Supreme Court and his wife.
And understand that the church makes no secret of its purpose in
conducting such public exhibitions. Here is the pious Pope Leo XIII
again, in his Encyclical of Nov. 1, 1885:
All Catholics must make themselves felt as active elements
in daily political life in the countries where they live.
They must penetrate, wherever possible, in the
administration of civil affairs; must constantly exert the
utmost vigilance and energy to prevent the usages of liberty
from going beyond the limits fixed by God's law. All
Catholics should do all in their power to cause the
constitutions of states and legislation to be modeled on the
principles of the true Church.
And following these instructions, the Catholics are organized for
political work. There are the various Catholic Societies, such as the
Knights of Columbus, secret, oath-bound organizations, the military
arm of the Papal Power. These societies boast some three million
members, and control not less than that many votes. The one thing that
you can be certain about these votes is that on every public question,
of whatever nature, they will be cast on the side of ignorance and
reaction. Thus, it was the influence of the Catholic Societies which
put upon our national statute books the infamous law providing five
years imprisonment and five thousand dollars fine for the sending
through the mail of information about the prevention of conception. It
is their influence which keeps upon the statute-books of New York
state the infamous law which permits divorce only for infidelity, and
makes it "collusion" if both parties desire the divorce. It is these
societies which, in every city and town in America, are pushing and
plotting to get Catholics upon library boards, so that the public may
not have a chance to read scientific books; to get Catholics into the
public schools and on school-boards, so that children may not hear
about Galileo, Bruno, and Ferrer; to have Catholics in control of
police and on magistrates benches, so that priests who are caught in
brothels may not be exposed or punished.
You are shocked at this, you think it a vulgar jest, perhaps; but
during a period of "vice raids" in New York I was told by a captain of
police, himself a Catholic, that it was a common thing for them to get
priests in their net. "Of course," the official added, good-naturedly,
"we let them slip out." I understood that he had to do that; for the
Pope, in his "Motu Proprio" decree, has forbidden Catholics to bring a
priest into court for any civil crime whatsoever; he has forbidden
Catholic policemen to arrest, Catholic judges to try, and Catholic
law-makers to make laws affecting any priest of the Church of Rome.
And of course we know, upon the authority of a cardinal, that the Pope
is "the sole, last, supreme judge of what is right and wrong." He has
held that position for a thousand years and more; and wherever you
consult the police records throughout the thousand years, you find the
same entries concerning Catholic ecclesiastics. I turn to Riley's
"Illustrations of London Life from Original Documents," and I find in
the year 1385 a certain chaplain, whose name is considerately
suppressed, had a breviary stolen from him by a loose woman, because
he has not given her any money, either on that night or the one
previous. In 1320 John de Sloghtre, a priest, is put in the tower "for
being found wandering about the city against the peace", and Richard
Heyring, a priest, is indicted in the ward of Farringdon and in the
ward of Crepelgate "as being a bruiser and nightwalker." That this has
been going on for six hundred years is due, not to any special
corruption of the Catholic heart, but to the practice of clerical
celibacy, which is contrary to nature, a transgression of fundamental
instinct. It should be noted that the purpose of this transgression,
which pretends to be spiritual, is really economic; it was the means
whereby the church machine built up its power through the Middle Ages.
The priests had children then, as they have them today; but these
children not being recognized, the church machine remained the sole
heir of the property of its clergy.
#The Church Militant#
Knowing what we know today, we marvel that it was possible for Germany
to prepare through so many years for her assault on civilization, and
for England to have slept through it all. In exactly the same way, the
historian of a generation from now will marvel that America should
have slept, while the New Inquisition was planning to strangle her.
For we are told with the utmost explicitness precisely what is to be
done. We are to see wiped out these gains of civilization for which
our race has bled and agonized for many centuries; the very gains are
to serve as the means of their own destruction! Have we not heard Pope
Leo tell his faithful how to take advantage of what they find in
America--our easy-going trust, our quiet certainty of liberty, our
open-handed and open-homed and hail-fellow-well-met democracy?
We see the army being organized and drilled under our eyes; and we can
read upon its banners its purpose proclaimed. Just as the Prussian
military caste had its slogan "Deutschland ueber Alles!" so the
Knights of Slavery have their slogan: "Make America Catholic!"
Their attitude to democratic institutions is attested by the fact that
none of their conventions ever fails in its resolutions to "deeply
deplore the loss of the temporal power of Our Father, the Pope." Their
subjection to priestly domination is indicated by such resolutions as
this, bearing date of May 13th, 1914:
The Knights of Columbus of Texas in annual convention
assembled, prostrate at the feet of Your Holiness, present
filial regards with assurances of loyalty and obedience to
the Holy See and request the Papal blessing.
On June 10th, 1912, one T.J. Carey of Palestine, Texas, wrote to
Archbishop Bonzano, the Apostolic Delegate: "Must I, as a Catholic,
surrender my political freedom to the Church? And by this I mean the
right to vote for the Democratic, Socialist, or Republican parties
when and where I please?" The answer was: "You should submit to the
decisions of the Church, even at the cost of sacrificing political
principles." And to the same effect Mgr. Preston, in New York City,
Jan, 1, 1888: "The man who says, 'I will take my faith from Peter, but
I will not take my politics from Peter,' is not a true Catholic."
Such is the Papal machine; and not a day passes that it does not
discover some new scheme to advance the Papal glory; a "Catholic
battle-ship" in the United States navy; Catholic chaplains on all
ships of the navy; Catholic holidays--such as Columbus Day--to be
celebrated by all Protestants in America; thirty million dollars worth
of church property exempted from taxation in New York City; mission
bells to be set up at the expense of the state of California; state
support for parish schools--or, if this cannot be had, exemption of
Catholics from taxation for school purposes. So on through the list
which might continue for pages.