Is The Klan Anti-Catholic?
The Catholic colony of Maryland, under the Calverts, was composed of
a most excellent type of freedom-loving Englishmen. Cardinal Gibbons,
who recently passed to his reward, was a fine example of this type.
These people were seeking, as were so many others who then came to
America, liberation from tyranny, bigotry, and intolerance. They
brought with them a spirit not unlike that of the Cavaliers to the
south of them, to whom their destiny was to be indissolubly linked by
ties that remain unbroken to this day. These brave Catholic settlers in
the wilderness, many of whom were people of refinement and education,
invested themselves whole-heartedly in the early development of our
country. No well-informed student of American history doubts that their
large contributions to our American nation have seldom enough been
sufficiently recognized.
[Illustration: Klankrest--Home Donated to William Joseph Simmons by
Klansmen of the Nation "As a Token of Love and Esteem."]
In the great battle of Long Island, in the summer of 1776, Washington
stood upon an eminence and watched the Maryland brigade as it strove to
cut its way through the encircling forces of the British. "Good God,
what brave fellows I must this day lose," he said, as he observed their
desperate position. Later in the day, when he saw them fall, like the
leaves of Autumn, he is said to have wept over the loss of the very
elite of his army. Of such stuff as this were the Maryland Catholics
in the American Revolution. The historian, John Fiske, describes that
terrible and unhappy day (Battle of Long Island, 1776) as follows: "In
this noble struggle, the highest honors were won by the brigade of
Maryland men, commanded by Smallwood, and throughout the war we shall
find this honorable distinction of Maryland for the personal gallantry
of her troops fully sustained, until in the last pitched battle, at
Eutaw Springs, we see them driving the finest infantry of England at
the point of the bayonets."
Just a word more with reference to this sort of American Catholic. In
the spring of 1921 a distinguished assembly of educators and savants,
representing nearly every country, assembled with the University
alumni to celebrate the hundredth anniversary of the founding of the
University of Virginia. The opening prayer of the first public meeting
was offered by the Catholic Bishop of Richmond. In that invocation the
Bishop returned thanks to Almighty God for that great deed of Thomas
Jefferson which led to the separation of Church and State in Virginia.
To such Catholics as these all true Americans, whatever their religious
beliefs, are bound by ties so indissoluble as to make perfect our
fellowship in Americanism. It is to this section of Roman Catholic
believers, no matter what their ancestry may be, that the Klan makes
especial appeal for understanding and co-operation.
Catholic Maryland won for herself the high distinction of being among
the three colonies which permitted and protected religious freedom.
So we can acclaim the Catholic colonists as among the very first to
realize the full meaning of Americanism, not only as to the outward
things of government, but also as to the inner things of the human
soul. It should not be forgotten, too, that these same advocates of
political liberty and freedom of conscience were themselves grossly
offended and injured for a time in their own colony by a period of
Protestant oppression. American history is a strange, strange story. To
understand our America of the present, and her problems, we must look
deep into the records of the past. With an unbiased mind we must set
ourselves to seek out the truth.
In the State of Maryland one still finds in remote hamlets the original
Catholic edifices, with their sacred symbols, gracing the countryside.
Wherever we find such an American Catholic church, the American public
school is seen in the immediate vicinity. When the American Catholic in
Maryland, or in any other state, goes to the ballot-box, he votes as an
American citizen, not being under ecclesiastical control. We members of
the Ku Klux Klan, positively insist upon making this distinction among
Catholics. We ask, and who can say that we ask too much, that our whole
Catholic population bring its American citizenship up to these high
standards set by the original American Catholics. When this is done, we
shall surely find the greatest pleasure in rendering to the Catholic
Church that full measure of esteem which shall be its due.
During the past two generations great submerging waves of European
immigrants have rolled in upon us. One wave brought with it loyalty
to the German Kaiser and treason to America. Another wave threatened
to smother our working people with the noxious poison of Bolshevism.
Still another sought to make a bitter animosity toward England and
the British Empire the main-spring of all its political and social
activities in America. Is there anything remarkable, anything
inexplicable, about the fact that millions of illiterate peasants
from the more backward parts of Europe, if they happen to be Roman
Catholics, should continue among us their backward European methods?
The peasantry of Poland were, until the Great War, practically a
serf population. Why deny the most evident facts? They are still, in
general, verminous and insanitary, illiterate and stupid. The theory
that they can quickly be made into Americans is the thought of a
fool. The view that their church can conduct itself like the American
Catholic church in Maryland is equally ridiculous.
This immigrant element has been misused in two ways. Its clergy has
kept it ignorant of America by keeping its children out of our public
schools; and it has been used in our elections as a mass vote by those
who exercise control over its votes through the political power of the
church.
With reference to the public schools our American position is as simple
as it can possibly be. Having established the public-school system
as the veritable cornerstone of the nation's democracy, we request,
in the most brotherly spirit, all our immigrant peoples to give it
whole-hearted support. We invite their children to sit beside our
own children and receive the education needed to insure their good
citizenship, their self-support, and their self-respect. And then there
are those who say that we of the Klan hate the immigrant and seek to
deny him his rights!
These immigrant children, sitting side by side in the same school, will
be received as guests in one another's homes. They will form those deep
and lasting friendships which will make for true social unity. When we
open our arms and our hearts to receive them and to give them all we
have, it is they who reject us. They deny themselves the best gift we
can possibly offer--a free public education. How often are we Americans
made unhappy--sometimes, I fear, a bit displeased--when we see on one
side of the street a beautiful, spacious and sanitary public-school
building, and on the other side of the street a poorly constructed,
insanitary and overcrowded parochial school. Our own children go to
the public school. The immigrant children go to the parochial school.
Our own children are taught by teachers carefully selected and trained
for their service. In the overcrowded and insanitary parochial school
the teaching is usually of a standard incomparably lower; often it is
unworthy to be called education. Has the world ever presented a more
curious and perplexing problem than we have here? We see American
citizens of property and influence anxious to tax themselves in order
to present to the child of the Sicilian, Hungarian, or Polish peasant
the best common-school education in all the world. And then we see,
to our unutterable amazement, this peasant serf, or city wastrel,
misled by his clergy, rejecting the only worthy means we have of making
Americans out of his children. To an average American this whole
situation is both perplexing and distressing.
As regards the use of the Catholic vote in elections, the facts, while
startling enough, are more easily understood. In 1917, to mention a
single instance, all the country watched the Catholic church of New
York City defeat one of its own distinguished members, Mr. Mitchell,
for Mayor. No informed person longer seeks to deny the political
influence of the Catholic church. Very recently Archbishop Hayes, of
New York, personally directed the New York police to break up a public
meeting called in the Town Hall by American citizens. The police
appeared before the meeting began and actually went so far as to
prevent its beginning. The law could not have been violated because no
chance was given to violate the law. Archbishop Hayes simply decided
that he would not permit this meeting, which had nothing whatever to
do with any church or religious issue. So he ordered the doors of
the building which had been hired for the purpose to be locked and
the crowd driven away by the police. All we can say to our Catholic
fellow citizens is just this: DO NOT FORCE US TO RESIST YOU. If you
take direct control of the police power out of the hands of the duly
constituted officers of government, then we, as Americans, must
eventually resist your police power in defense of our liberty. Gifted
with an infinite desire for peace and with great patience, we shall
wait until we do not dare to wait longer. Meanwhile we plead with you
daily: Do but accept the basic principles of our Americanism and all
arguments, all unpleasantness, will vanish in a single hour.
In a democracy the separation of church and state implies much more
than the abolition of state support of the church. Separation of
church and state must mean with us that the individual citizen shall
permit neither the state to interfere with his religious worship nor
the church to interfere with his duties as a citizen. Only a developed
political mind can understand the nature of this very modern duality
of attitude. The outward separation is, after all, largely a form of
law. The inward separation, the state of mind, is the true source of
the freedom both of the church and the state. When the individual
walks into his church he must enter with his body and his mind free to
worship according to the dictates of his conscience. When he enters the
voting-booth, when he enters the court-room, when he opens his mouth to
mix his thoughts with his fellow citizens as regards things political,
mind and mouth and hand must be free from the control of the church.
To understand our problem fully we must never forget the platitude
that our immigrant people are not Americans. They are Europeans.
Immigrant Catholics are European Catholics. In almost every country of
Continental Europe there is a Catholic party. The Catholic political
party of Germany, of France, of Italy, of Belgium, of Austria, or
of Hungary, seeks to win the elections and control the government
outright. Again, to repeat myself, is there anything strange about the
fact that when these immigrants form themselves into enormous foreign
communities in our great cities or industrial districts they should act
here just as they act in Europe? I do not think so. It is all simple
enough. Its outward effects, at least, are as easily understood as a
Mississippi flood or a San Francisco earthquake. We must either put an
end to this thing or this thing will put an end to our democracy. We
can not have a Hungarian, a Polish, an Italian, or an Irish peasant
Catholic party among us and still preserve the political system of our
American nation which has been created by three centuries of democratic
evolution. A political system run by sectarian ecclesiastics and an
Anglo-Saxon bill of rights can not live on the same soil. In these
things there can be no compromise. To surrender an inch is to surrender
all and yield to the executioner.
As regards this whole matter, our American humility and false modesty
has already worked us great harm. These matters must at last be dragged
into the open and publicly discussed. Hence this exceedingly plain
statement. If some of our citizens wish their children to attend
parochial schools, then we want those parochial schools properly
inspected. We would like to know what textbooks are being used. The
public ought to know just how much education, and what manner of
education, the fourteen-year old immigrant boy or girl is possessed of
when he leaves school. What does this boy or girl know about himself?
How much reading and writing and arithmetic has he laid hold of? What
has he learned of American history and American institutions? We
Americans of all sections confess, not without shame, that we have
not as yet done nearly enough for public education. But the means we
have provided we wish to have used; the standards we have set, none too
high, we wish to have regarded; and what we are seeking to do for the
immigrant we would like to have fully appreciated.
We seek for all our more recent immigrant peoples such a blending with
our people as shall find in religion and the church no hindrance to
Americanism. We expect, that, more and more, we shall be united by the
lasting bonds of a common patriotism, a common morality, and common
social ideals. We crave the development among us of such a Catholic
church as will not make intermarriage with those of other faiths
impossible or difficult. To throw such a chasm between our young people
as is never bridged by the marriage tie would be a lasting curse to our
country. Let us seek by every means to make all Christians ready for
that more perfect unity of the entire Christian church which should
ever be an ideal with all of us.
The reader will find repeated again in this book, until it perhaps
wearies him, a certain expression. This statement represents something
which I have made fundamental in all my thinking. We Americans must
approach this and similar tasks in a spirit of the utmost fellowship
and gentleness. Our every act must partake of kindliness and
consideration. We expect to find, side by side with us in this matter,
the American part of the Catholic church. Together we shall work out
the problem and then forget it. This difficulty is, after all, but a
passing phase of our complex social process. In a generation it will
have been left behind us. The difficulties, even the tragedies, of
one century often furnishes amusement to the historians of the next.
So let us, in this thing, take thought of the morrow, too. May the
execution of the policy we have declared be everywhere so inwrought
with honorable motive and worthy purpose that presently none shall have
the slightest cause to be against us or deny to us that fellowship and
affection we seek to win from every American.