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Is the Catholic Church

a Menace?

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Is the Catholic Church

a Menace?

BY

DUDLEY G. WOOTEN

New York

THE PAULIST PRESS

120 West 6oth Street



Copyright, 1915, by “The Missionary Society of

St. Paul the Apostle in the State

of New York.”



Is the Catholic Church a Menace?

HERE are prevalent in this country certain false

conceptions of the relations of our government

and institutions to the great subject of religion.

These erroneous ideas fall generally under two

heads, according as they are accepted and ad-

vanced by the two classes of persons who entertain them.

On the one hand is that large, nondescript class who love

to call themselves “ Free-thinkers ”—which for the most part
implies freedom from serious religious thought—and who as-
sert and claim to believe that the American people, in the

foundation of this Republic, adjured forever the sentiment of

religion as a factor in social and political life, and forbade its

recognition in any form whatsoever; in other words, that this

is by choice and constitution a nation without religious prin-

ciples, faith or hope. The men who hold to these extreme

views range in character and influence through all the grades

of mental and moral obliquity, from the intellectual cynic,

whose sneer at sacred things is a pitiful exhibition of de-

generate egotism, to the dangerous agitator whose rabid blas-

phemies reek with the filthy venom of rebellion against the

laws of God and man.

On the other hand there is the vast army of sectaries, so-

cieties, denominations, associations, leagues, fellowships and

fraternities, whose name is legion,. and whose warring creeds

have torn the “ seamless garment of the Faith ” into frag-

ments. With the zeal of the bigot and the pietistic cant of

Note.—The author is not a Catholic. He writes of the Church
from the point of view of a consistent American, an experienced

jurist, a careful and unbiased student of history.



4 IS THE CATHOLIC CHURCH A MENACE?

the Pharisee, the leaders of some of these discordant relig-

ionists, now, as in the beginning of the government, vehe-

mently proclaim that this is a Protestant nation, that “ popery
”

and “ papists ” have no place in the social and religious scheme

of American institutions, that Catholicism is hostile to civil

and political liberty, and that Catholics should be barred from

participation in the activities and aspirations of our national

life.

Both of these factional opinions are equally and funda-

mentally fallacious, and it is doubtful which of the two is the

more vicious in its motives, the more destructive in its

tendencies, or the more un-American in its essential antag-

onism to the true spirit of republican government.

The author of the Declaration of Independence did indeed

inaugurate in his native State the great movement in favor

of absolute religious equality and freedom, and to his cour-

ageous struggle the American people owe the universal con-

stitutional guarantees of liberty of conscience and worship that

now prevail throughout the United States. To his determined

efforts was due the adoption of the First Amendment to the

Federal Constitution, wherein it is provided that “ Congress

shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or

prohibiting the free exercise thereof; ” and he procured, after

many years of bitter opposition, from the so-called Anglican or

Episcopal Church the passage of the Virginia “ Statute for Re-

ligious Freedom,” which has served as the mother and the

model of similar legislation in all the other States. Jefferson

has given us in his Autobiography the reasons that impelled

him to make this the great object of his public life and labors.

He points out how the Congregationalists in New England,

the Presbyterians in the Middle Colonies, and the Episco-

palians in the South had built up by law and governmental

support a despotic monopoly of religious worship, taxing and

robbing the whole public to maintain their ecclesiastical priv-

ileges, persecuting and proscribing all other faiths and forms

of worship, and gradually establishing over the minds and

consciences of men an odious system of spiritual tyranny. Of



IS THE CATHOLIC CHURCH A MENACE? 5

the original thirteen colonies only three—Maryland, Pennsyl-
vania and Rhode Island—permitted the slightest liberty of
conscience or freedom of belief in religion. Maryland was a

Catholic colony, founded by the Calverts as a refuge for the

faithful driven to the New World by British bigotry and bru-

tality, and by them and the Carrolls it was ever maintained as

the home of absolute equality, toleration and freedom in mat-

ters of faith and devotion. Pennsylvania was settled mainly

by Quakers and Irish immigrants, and they were compelled

in self-defence to adopt and enforce a large measure of re-

ligious freedom. Rhode Island was the child of Puritan pro-

scription against the Baptists, and the exiled Roger Williams

proclaimed spiritual liberty as his declaration of independence

from the narrow and cruel bigotry of the New England fanat-

ics. But Maryland alone, and from the beginning, was always

religiously free, despite the repeated efforts of the Virginia

Episcopalians to stamp out her liberties.

It was against these intolerable burdens of ecclesiastical

oppression and spiritual slavery that Thomas Jefferson waged

an unrelenting warfare, and so well did he succeed that to-day

his standard of religious freedom is the accepted standard of

every American State. Perhaps its clearest and most com-

prehensive expression is contained in the Constitution of the

State of Washington, in the following words:

“ Absolute freedom of conscience in all matters of religious

sentiment, belief and worship shall be guaranteed to every in-

dividual, and no one shall be molested or disturbed in person

or property on account of religion, but the liberty of conscience

hereby secured shall not be so construed as to excuse acts of

licentiousness, or justify practices inconsistent with the peace

and safety of the State. No public money or property shall

be appropriated for or applied to any religious worship, exer-

cise, or instruction, or the support of any religious establish-

ment. No religious qualification shall be required for any

public office or employment, nor shall any person be incom-

petent as a witness or juror in consequence of his opinion

on matters of religion, nor be questioned in any court of jus-



6 IS THE CATHOLIC CHURCH A MENACE?

tice touching his religious belief to affect the weight of his

testimony” (Art. I., Sec. 11).

It should be remembered and emphasized that all of the

foregoing guarantees and prohibitions were called into being

and rendered necessary by the proscriptive and intolerant

laws, ordinances and practices of the Protestant colonies and

States in America. This is made clear by the historical

records, and by Jefferson’s own arguments as the father of re-

ligious freedom in the United States.

But this fixed policy of absolute neutrality towards the

various forms of religious belief and worship, so far as the

government and legislation are concerned, does not imply that

the American people are an irreligious or a non-religious

nation.

Constitutions, laws and institutions are the visible instru-

mentalities by which the body politic and social is controlled

and regulated in its organic functions; but antedating and

dominating these tangible agencies and expressions of govern-

ment are the inherited sentiment and character of the people

by and for whom the government exists. There is a “ spirit ”

politic and social, as well as a “ body ” politic and social, and

it is this higher and more intimate faculty that gives to

American nationality its distinctly religious character, in which

Christianity is the dominating force. America is indeed a

Christian land, by right of discovery, exploration, settlement

and inheritance. The whole system and theory of American

national life and thought are based upon Christian doctrine, and

have been developed by Christian policy and practice. The un-

derlying principles of our government and the cardinal virtues

of our social and political organization, are those which Chris-

tianity introduced into the world and first inculcated as the

fundamentals of civic righteousness and social stability. Co-

lumbus plowed unfriendly seas to seek new fields for the

Faith. The Catholic sovereigns of Spain who sent him west-

ward across the unknown Atlantic expressly commissioned him

to find new lands for God’s kingdom, and the funds that fur-

nished his voyages came from the treasury of the Church.



IS THE CATHOLIC CHURCH A MENACE? 7

The first Christian congregations organized within the terri-

tory that now comprises the United States were Catholic, and

the first Christian services celebrated in that territory were

those of that Faith. That was in the early part of the six-

teenth century, a hundred years before the Cavaliers landed

in Virginia or the Pilgrims in New England. The first mis-

sionaries in the New World were those from Catholic coun-

tries, and where they labored, Christianity meant mercy, peace

and preservation to the native tribes, instead of pillage, cruelty

and extermination.

But all other colonies and settlements on this continent

were likewise established to propagate the creed and in-

stitutions of Christianity. All of the original colonies char-

tered by English monarchs to explore and settle in this

country were required in so many words to provide by

law for the spread of Christianity, and to administer their

governments in accordance with its faith and practice. Every

one of the original thirteen States of the Union, both before

and after the separation from Great Britain, enacted as part

of its laws that the Christian religion should be the accepted

faith of its inhabitants, the source of political and personal

morality, the standard of public policy and police regulation,

and the indispensable basis of society and government.

Nearly every State that has since come into the Union has

declared to the same effect, and in those that have not, the

courts have held that the declaration is implied and under-

stood from the very nature of our institutions.

The Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, early in the last cen-

tury, decided: “Christianity, general Christianity, is and al-

ways has been a part of the common law of Pennsylvania; not

Christianity with an established church, and tithes, and

spiritual courts, but Christianity with liberty of conscience to

all men.” In the famous “ Girard Will Case ” the Supreme

Court of the United States held the same thing, and in the

recent case of Holy Trinity Church vs. United States, that

great tribunal, in an exhaustive opinion by Justice Brewer,

discusses the whole subject, and among other things declares:



8 IS THE CATHOLIC CHURCH A MENACE?

“ No purpose of action against religion can be imputed to

any legislation, of State or Nation, because this is a re-

ligious people.” After reviewing the laws, charters, consti-

tutions and judicial decisions of the American Union and its

several States from the inception of the government, the Court

further says: “There is no dissonance in these declarations.

There is a universal language pervading them all, having one

meaning: they affirm and reaffirm that this is a religious na-

tion. These are not individual sayings, declarations of private

persons; they are organic utterances, they speak the voice of

the entire people These, and many other matters that

might be noticed, add a volume of unofficial declarations to the

mass of organic utterances that this is a Christian nation.”

One of the most interesting and convincing judicial de-

cisions on the subject is that of the great Chancellor Kent,

delivering the judgment of the Supreme Court of New York,

in the case of People vs. Ruggles, in which he says: “The

people of this State, in common with the people of this coun-

try, profess the general doctrines of Christianity, as the rule

of their faith and practice; and to scandalize the Author of

these doctrines is not only, in a religious point of view, ex-

tremely impious, but, even in respect to the obligations due

to society, is a gross violation of decency and good order.

The free, equal and undisturbed enjoyment of religious

opinion, whatever it may be, and free and decent discussions

on any religious subject, are granted and secured; but to re-

vile, with malicious and blasphemous contempt, the religion

professed by almost the whole community, is an abuse of that

right. Nor are we bound by any expressions in the Constitu-

tion, as some have strangely supposed, either not to punish at

all, or to punish indiscriminately the like attacks upon the re-

ligion of Mahomet or of the Grand Lama; and for the plain

reason that we are a Christian people, and the morality of

the country is deeply ingrafted upon Christianity, and not

upon the doctrines of these impostors.” How far we have

drifted away from this sound and salutary standard of

American Christian sentiment, is daily demonstrated by the



IS THE CATHOLIC CHURCH A MENACE? 9

free dissemination of the indecent and blasphemous publica-

tions that are maintained for the sole purpose of reviling the

oldest and the only authentic representative of Christianity

in this Republic.

It is historically, legally, and fundamentally true, that no-

where in all the literature of our laws and constitutions, or in

any transaction of life or business, is there any recognition

of any other than the Christian religion. The infidel, the ra-

tionalist, the pantheist, the materialist, and the agnostic are

totally unknown to the institutions of this land, and the courts

have time and again decided that the only Supreme Ruler of

the Universe known to American jurisprudence and polity is

the God of the Old and the New Testaments—the Christian’s
God. It is not to be wondered at, as the logical consequence

of this situation, that the census statistics show that less than

two per cent of our population professes adhesion to any other

faith than that of Christianity. That is not to say, however,

that ninety-eight per cent of the population are Christians;

it merely means that only a negligible fraction openly avows

anti-Christian or non-Christian beliefs.

It is not the purpose of this pamphlet to deal with questions

of dogma and doctrine, as related to the spiritual side of re-

ligious belief and worship, for we have seen that those issues

belong to the domain of conscience, over which American

secular institutions are forbidden to exercise jurisdiction.

But the Christian character of our governmental institutions

and policies being firmly established, as above shown, the at-

titude and relations of the Catholic Church towards them be-

come clear, and are consonant with her historic teaching

and practice. Having been the pioneer of Christianity in

this Western World, and the founder of religious liberty

and toleration in the United States, she cannot occupy'

any other position than one of loyalty to the Christian!

principles that underlie the whole structure of our political!

and social constitution as a people. There has been no au-

thentic instance of any act, utterance or policy of the Church

in this country since the foundation of the Republic, or even



10 IS THE CATHOLIC CHURCH A MENACE?

before, in which there has been manifested, directly or in-

directly, covertly or openly, any other attitude towards the

laws, government and public policy of the United States, or

of any State, than that of complete and cheerful accord and

obedience. All that has been said, and is being said, to the

contrary, is baseless fabrication and malicious slander. In-

deed, upon examination it will be found that these attacks upon

the alleged hostility of the Church to American ideas and prin-

ciples of government are predicated upon some remote and

apochryphal incident of Old World experience, and not upon

anything that has been said, done or threatened by Catholi-

cism in our own country or within recent times.

And a further candid and critical investigation will almost

invariably disclose that the arguments and attacks against the

Church, on account of her supposed misdeeds or mistakes in

other countries and distant ages, are based upon absolute

falsehoods, absurd misconceptions, or exaggerated statements

by partisan historians and avowed enemies of Catholicism.

For the past four centuries there has been no limit to the men-

dacity, malice, prejudice and perversity of Protestant and

skeptical writers who have assumed to chronicle and condemn

the course and conduct of the “ Roman ” Church. About all of

the information on this subject that is current among nan-

Catholies is derived from these polluted sources. The foes of

the Church in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries actually

arrogated to themselves the invention of printing and the free-

dom of the press as the peculiar production of Protestantism,

and their servile imitators ever since have prostituted those

great agencies of knowledge and enlightenment to the basest

uses of religious bigotry and proscription. Hence, the man

who makes an assertion derogatory to the historic policies and

practices of Catholicism, must support it by less tainted testi-

mony than that derived from the historians of the so-called

Reformation and their successors, or from the literature of in-

fidelity and rationalism. Tried by the accepted tests of com-

petent and credible evidence, none of the loose libels and vin-

dictive accusations being circulated so freely by the purveyors



IS THE CATHOLIC CHURCH A MENACE? 11

of anti-Catholic literature, merit the serious consideration of

honest seekers after the truth. For example, no theme has

been so industriously exploited and so thoroughly distorted

by radical anti-Catholics as the “ temporal power of the Pope,”

and the people of the United States are being constantly

warned against that terrible and insidious menace to their

liberties and institutions. The whole subject is silly in the

extreme, and totally irrelevant to any existing or possible situ-

ation in this or any other country, but it is precisely that sort

of foolish and futile attack upon the Church that seems to

constitute the chief material for her calumniators; so it may

be worth while to notice it here, especially as it bears some-

what upon other aspects of the discussion in hand.

The temporal power of the Popes at this period of the

world’s history has only an academic interest anywhere, and it

never had or can have any meaning or applicability in the

United States. At no time or place did it ever have the signifi-

cance and scope sought to be attached to it by the ignorant

and distempered controversialists who make of it a “ mountain

of offence ” on the part of the Papacy. The authority of the

Head of the Church over temporal and secular affairs in for-

mer times was derived and exercised under two sources of

jurisdiction, the one strictly territorial, the other ancillary to

the functions and powers of the Church as recognized by the

Christian nations of Europe for more than a thousand years.

Briefly but correctly stated, those two aspects of temporal

power were as follows:

(1) The so-called Papal States, located in central Italy,

contiguous to Rome, with some provinces elsewhere, belonged

to the Sovereign Pontiff, in virtue of his sacred office, by gift

and cession from the various Christian monarchs of Europe,

as well as by actual purchase from the Papal revenues. Be-

ginning with Constantine, the secular founder of Catholic

Christendom, followed by Pepin and Charlemagne of France,

and a long line of loyal Catholic sovereigns of that and other

Continental countries, those States were transferred to the

Papacy as tokens of fealty to the Holy See, as voluntary con-



12 IS THE CATHOLIC CHURCH A MENACE?

tributions to the resources of the Church, and for the practical

purpose of securing the safety, dignity and independence of

the Popes amid the dangers and disorders of those turbulent

times. Over them the Papacy held and exercised absolute

dominion and ownership, as did the rulers of other nations

and states in that era; and their history for nearly fifteen

hundred years demonstrates that no countries in all Europe

were more prosperous and happy, or enjoyed in their govern-

ment and institutions a larger measure of wisdom, justice,

benevolence and freedom, than those same Papal States. More-

over, although this little group of commonwealths contained

a small area and limited resources, they furnished the nucleus

of a political, military and naval power that, in the hands of

the strong and capable Pontiffs of the middle centuries, was

able not only to withstand the invasion of the Moslem hordes

of Asia and Africa, but to curb and crush the lawlessness and

tyranny of European monarchies. More than once this terri-

torial sovereignty of the Popes saved Christianity from unholy

conquest and spoliation from without, and at home compelled

the haughty governments of Christendom to obey that rule of

right, reason and justice which the Church has ever maintained

to be the limit and the test of all lawful human power. The

civil and political revolutions in Italy during the nineteenth

century by degrees alienated and destroyed the jurisdiction of

the Papacy over the States of the Church, and finally, in 1870,

the last shred of territorial and temporal authority, so long

and so beneficially exercised by the Popes over those princi-

palities, was swept away, and the Vicar of Christ was driven

within the walls and gardens of the Vatican.

Thus the only real, tangible temporal power the Papacy ever

possessed is seen to have been very restricted in its territorial

jurisdiction, and founded upon the voluntary concessions of

the Christian rulers of Europe, as well as upon wise and salu-

tary considerations of both civil and religious policy. It has

ended; but it was never an evil influence nor evilly exerted,

and the manner of its extinction was in entire harmony with

the forcible confiscations and spoliations that have signalized



13IS THE CATHOLIC CHURCH A MENACE?

the supremacy of atheistical and anarchical ideas in certain

of the modern nations, from the contamination of which even

the American Republic has not escaped in recent years.

(2) The other aspect in which the Church, in the centuries

past, assumed and exercised a measure of control over secular

affairs and temporal institutions, presents a totally different

problem, and in its ultimate analysis involves fundamental and

far-reaching conceptions of Christianity in its relations to

human governments. From the time of Constantine to the

completion of what is called the Protestant Reformation,

Christianity was the one dominant religion of Europe, and its

sole and undisputed representative was the Catholic Church.

During that period all of the kingdoms of the Continent, and

Great Britain as well, professed and exhibited their loyalty to

the Roman See, and their sovereigns paid homage to the

spiritual authority of the Roman Pontiffs. In their temporal

capacities the nations of Christendom were separate and su-

preme within the limits of their respective dominions, but

internationally they all acknowledged a common allegiance to

the religious headship of the Papacy. By the fictions of

Feudalism their monarchs were “ cousins ” by courtesy, and

by the bond of Christian fellowship they were “ brothers in the

Faith.” Together they vied in service and fealty to the

Church; together they planned and prosecuted expeditions for

the discovery and acquisition of new territories for the king-

dom of God; and by their united resources and power they

organized and carried forward that wonderful series of chiv-

alric campaigns to rescue from Moslem desecration the birth-

place and the tomb of Christ.

It was perfectly natural and logical, then, that very early in

the history of this Christian fellowship of the nations, resort

should be made to the authority of the Church to settle inter-

national disputes, to accommodate personal controversies be-

tween rival monarchs, and to establish and enforce a code of

ethics and justice for the intercourse and conduct of the

Christian rulers of Europe. Their religion was the one in-

terest and influence to which they all acknowledged obedience,



14 IS THE CATHOLIC CHURCH A MENACE?

and its representative at Rome was the one potentate whose

supremacy they all revered, and to whom they could submit

their differences without compromise of dignity or loss of

prestige. Moreover, they had sought to insure his neutrality

and independence by investing him with supreme authority,

temporal and spiritual, in the Papal States where he held his

court. So it came about that the Popes were called upon to

act as final arbitrators in vexed matters of statecraft and

diplomacy between the various courts and countries of Europe,

and eventually they were appealed to in the domestic difficul-

ties and local problems of the several nations and their rulers.

This indirect but potent participation of the Papacy in the tem-

poral concerns of the European governments, was brought

about by the voluntary solicitation of the interested parties;

it was in its nature and scope purely disciplinary, advisory and

limited by the necessary conditions of all arbitrations between

sovereign contestants, and it ceased to have any effective

meaning with the destruction of Christian unity and fellowship

by the forces of Protestantism.

It thus appears, to the satisfaction of any sensible and un-

biased student, that the power of the Papacy in temporal

affairs, both immediate and intermediate, has ceased to be a

practical question, for that power is no longer exercised or

asserted anywhere, is not compatible with existing conditions

and circumstances even in the Old World, and was never a

possible contingency in this country. During the time when

the authority of the Church was evinced through Papal inter-

vention and arbitration, as above noticed, it exerted a tremend-

ous influence upon the national and international transactions

of all the Christian countries; for, besides the great moral

weight of a central and authoritative tribunal whose decrees

and acts were based upon the immutable rules of Divine jus-

tice and righteousness, the subtle terrors of ecclesiastical dis-

pleasure and the substantial disadvantages of formal excom-

munication were very real In that age of universal allegiance

to the authentic standards of Christian duty and fidelity. Cer-

tainly, no sufficient substitute has been afforded the modern



IS THE CATHOLIC CHURCH A MENACE? 15

nations; else many of the lamentable occurrences of this age

never would have been possible.

There is then left for our practical consideration the actual

and relevant facts bearing upon the present attitude of the

Church towards temporal and secular affairs, and more par-

ticularly in our own land. These may best be understood in

the light of past events. The exigencies of certain periods of

European development, the safety and protection of its own

existence and institutions in various critical emergencies, and

the personal qualities and public policies
1

of several of the

great Roman Pontiffs in the earlier centuries, all operated to

modify and sometimes to obscure the fundamental position

of the Papacy in its dealings with human governments; but in

the final analysis it will be found that the historic and authen-

tic attitude of Catholicism has always been substantially the

same in regard to the true and proper relations between

Church and State. The Catholic view upon this subject is

radically different from that asserted and put into practice by

the politico-religious system that was inaugurated in the six-

teenth and seventeenth centuries under the general name of

“ Protestantism,” and is much more in harmony with the

American conception of Christianity in connection with the

government and secular institutions of this Republic. This is

easily demonstrated by a recurrence to a few historical facts.

After the Decree of Milan, in 313 A. D., the relations be-

tween the Church and the imperial government began to take

definite shape. Constantine himself declared that the su-

preme ecclesiastical authority had the right to decide all ques-

tions between kings and emperors, and all disputes between

rulers and their subjects; but the Church did not readily as-

sent to nor assume this extraordinary function and responsi-

bility. She stood upon the canon of her Divine Founder:

“ Render unto Csesar the things that are Cassar’s, and to

God the things that are God’s.” It was thus early the fun-

damental tenet of both the Papal and the imperial govern-

ments that there should be absolute separation of Church and .

State, each independent and supreme in its own sphere, but



16 IS THE CATHOLIC CHURCH A MENACE?

coordinating and cooperating with each other in their respec-

tive fields of usefulness. That was the original Christian con-

ception, and after the lapse of all the intervening centuries,

and making allowance for changed conditions of social and

political organization, that is the present conception of the

Catholic Church in this country. Gregory the Great, who was

Pope in the latter part of the sixth century, the father of the

Mediaeval Papacy, and easily the dominant figure of his age,

held to that view, denying that the hierarchy had any right

to interfere with temporal institutions or the secular arm of

government, beyond the duty to protest against wickedness,

oppression and injustice. In fact, he counseled the submis-

sion of the ecclesiastical to the secular power in all matters

except those of spiritual faith and practice, upon the Apostolic

theory that the lawful ruler of the State represents God in the

domain of temporal jurisdiction. At the same time, he main-

tained that it was the corresponding duty of the State to pro-

tect the Church in her spiritual privileges, and in her rights

and integrity, as the organized representative of Christianity.

Accordingly, when the safety of Rome and the sovereignty of

the Papacy over its own estates in Italy and elsewhere were

threatened by the Lombards and Franks, and the secular

authorities refused to respond to the call for protection, he

did not hesitate to appoint civil governors in the Roman

provinces, to organize an army, to wage a war of defence, and

to make treaties of peace and settlement, without waiting for

the imperial sanction. He assumed this supreme power be-

cause of the practical necessities of the occasion, and by his

firmness, courage and wisdom, in that emergency, he undoubt-

edly saved the Church from an appalling peril, and made Rome

the religious and political capital of Christendom.

Again, in the latter part of the eleventh century, the great

Hildebrand—Gregory VII.—was compelled, by the exigencies
of his situation and the pressing demands for a reformation

in the Church, to assert and to enforce an extraordinary

authority over the secular governments of Europe; and his

haughty and imperious temper led him to go much further than



IS THE CATHOLIC CHURCH A MENACE? 17

any of his predecessors in the Papacy had gone, in assuming

a disciplinary power over human rulers. He came to the

Chair of Peter in the year 1073, in the midst of the most dis-

mal and disheartening period Christianity had ever known.

The conflicting forces of barbarism and feudalism had dis-

organized and degraded all departments of life. The fall of

the Carlovingian empire had left Europe the prey of chaos,

corruption and calamity, rendered more dire by other

national and international changes. The Church had not es-

caped the general depravity and demoralization, for the Em-

peror of Germany and other temporal rulers had usurped the

right to appoint ecclesiastical officers and to dispense religious

privileges, influenced, for the most part, by bribery and fa-

voritism. Many priests were living in open violation of their

vows of celibacy, and gross immorality pervaded every order

of society, civil and religious. In this crisis Hildebrand de-

termined to purge and purify the ecclesiastical system, and to

redeem the Church from this shameful condition. Henry IV.,

the German emperor, abetted by other sovereigns, defied the

Pope’s authority even in these matters of reform and discipline

within the Church. Gregory promptly excommunicated him

and his advisers, and absolved his subjects from all allegiance

to the emperor. This brought the defiant monarch across

the Alps, barefoot in the dead of winter, as a penitent suppli-

cant for the Papal pardon. Gregory justified his acts in this

and other similar instances upon two grounds: (1) Because

the preservation of the Faith and the integrity of the Church

demanded that the Head of the Church should enforce a re-

formation of existing abuses, and that as such Head he had

supreme power over any secular potentate who sought to in-

vade the spiritual jurisdiction of the Pope; (2) Because the

emperor, by his impious and corrupt conduct, as well as by

other acts of arbitrary oppression and injustice, had violated

the contract that existed between him and his subjects to rule

justly and righteously, and therefore the Church, as the forum

of conscience and the tribunal having peculiar supervision over

the obligations and consecration of Christian rulers, had the



18 S THE CATHOLIC CHURCH A MENACE?

authority to declare him no longer emperor, and to absolve

his people from their part of the mutual contract that always

exists between a sovereign and his subjects. In this last

ground we find an expression of the remarkable attitude which

the Papacy, partly of its own motion and partly at the solici-

tation of the Christian governments of Europe, assumed to-

wards the respective rights of the common people and their

royal rulers. Until the close of the reign of Charlemagne the

general position of the Papacy was that of implicit obedience

to temporal rulers in matters secular and governmental. After

that period there arose and developed into strong operation,

the view that all lawful monarchs, especially if they claim

to govern as Christian rulers should, are bound to govern

agreeably to a contract, express,or implied, between themselves

and their subjects, to rule reasonably, righteously and justly.

Every king and emperor in Europe in those days professed de-

votion to Christian ideals and principles, and they all sought

to wear their crov/ns at the hands and by the consecration of

the Papacy or its duly authorized legates. The ancient corona-

tion oaths of that era were all administered and solemnized

by the sanctions of the Church, and they all contained ex-

press provisions recognizing that the sovereign held his power

by the consent and for the welfare of his people, and the

solemn vow that he would rule justly and righteously. Hence,

when a monarch so conducted his government as to violate

these fundamental conditions and obligations of his sover-

eignty, it was considered to be a matter of such flagrant vio-

lence against his oath and consecration as to warrant inter-

vention and, if need be, summary correction by the Church.

Accordingly history relates a multitude of cases in which the

Popes intervened to compel despotic kings and corrupt em-

perors to respect the rights and liberties of their subjects, to

enforce the rule of righteousness and justice between contend-

ing factions and rival aspirants in nearly every country in

Europe, and generally to exercise over the temporal powers of

that age a corrective and compulsory influence in favor of tfie

;w&ak against the strong, the oppressed against the oppressors,



IS THE CATHOLIC CHURCH A MENACE? 19

and the just against the unjust. This wise and salutary pol-

icy constitutes one of the glories of Catholicism in the past,

and it indicates clearly the traditional and inherited temper

of the Church towards popular liberties and free government.

It is a significant fact, to be remembered by every Catholic,

that the first time in English history that the coronation oath

of an English king was so altered as to omit therefrom the

acknowledgment that the monarch holds his office “ by the

concurrent consent of his people,” and to substitute therefor

the declaration that he is king “ by right of inheritance,” was

when Edward VI., the son of Henry VIII., was crowned as the

first Protestant sovereign of Great Britain, in 1548. This vital

change from popular approval to hereditary absolutism was

made by Archbishop Cranmer, whom the “ Encyclopedia Rrit-

tanica ” calls “ the first Protestant primate of England.”

Returning to the policy of the Mediaeval Papac/, the next

great Pontiff after Gregory VII. was Innocent III., in many ways

the most admirable of all the Popes of that era, who ruled at

Rome in the years from 1198 to 1216. He added immensely to

the power of the Papacy, but in the direction of its spiritual

and ecclesiastical functions. He held to the same views in

reference to temporal powers as had been announced by

Gregory the Great in the sixth century, disaffirming the right

of the Church to intermeddle with secular matters. Later, in

the last years of the thirteenth and the early part of the four-

teenth centuries, Boniface VIII. and John XXII. reverted to

the stern and radical policies of Hildebrand, and became in-

volved in violent struggles with the reigning monarchs of

Europe. Their views and acts, however, like those of Gregory

VII., were largely colored and compelled by the practical neces-

sities and difficulties with which they had to deal, in endeavor-

ing to protect the Church from spoliation and oppression by

the rapacious rulers of England and France. The divergent

opinions upon the subject of the respective jurisdiction and

powers of the secular and ecclesiastical arms of government,

were advocated with more or less violence and radicalism

throughout the several centuries preceding the so-called Re-



20 IS THE CATHOLIC CHURCH A MENACE?

formation, both sides often going to extremes. It gradually

assumed the aspect outwardly of a struggle between imperial

and Papal power, between the spiritual and the material forces

of civilization, between Divine revelation and human reason.

But through it all the Church—when not drawn into the con-
test by the necessity of self-protection, or the voluntary so-

licitation of those who sought her authority as arbitrator, or

in the capacity of supreme judge in the forum of Christian

conscience—maintained her original position of disavowing any
right or policy of interfering with human governments in their

temporal and secular functions, and demanding absolute free-

dom from domination by earthly rulers in matters pertaining

to spiritual faith and practice. Ultimately she lost the

battle with the sinister forces of rationalism and imperialism,

and the heel of the State was placed upon the neck of the

Church. •Historically and logically considered, Protestantism

was the triumph of those forces, and its intellectual, moral

and religious merits were merely the superficial manifestations

of a revolution in civil, political and religious conceptions, the

final futility of which is now apparent in the discordant and

helpless condition to which it has brought the minds of men

in those countries that fell under its sway. In the name of

religious reformation it discarded the authority of the only

agency and representative of Christianity known among the

nations, and substituted therefor the variable and vagrant

opinions of mortal judgment, to be forced into an arbitrary and

artificial unity and harmony by the power of secular sover-

eignty; for let it be clearly understood that Protestantism

gained its ascendancy by the aid of the temporal powers, and

in whatsoever country it was accepted, it established and main-

tained its supremacy by the compulsion of governmental regu-

lation and support.

The “Thirty Years’ War,” which ended in 1648, accom-

plished the final destruction of Papal authority as the central

source of Christian unity and influence in Europe, and its re-

sults crowned the victory of the new politico-religious cult.

The Treaty of Westphalia, which closed the war, embodied



IS THE CATHOLIC CHURCH A MENACE? 21

the concrete ideas and policies of Protestantism, chief among

which was the startling declaration
—

“ The Religion of the

Prince is the Religion of the Land ” (“ cujus regio, ejus re-

ligio”). Here we have, for the first time in Christian his-

tory, the bold and brutal announcement that the state is the

centre and source of religious authority and spiritual light;

that kings are such by divine right; and that the Church of

Christ is a hydra-headed human institution, changing her faith

according to the variations of race and climate, and subject to

the frail and fluctuating rulership of as many earthly po-

tentates as there may be lands to govern and princes to

govern them. In all the long controversy of the preceding

centuries, as to the relative jurisdiction and powers of the im-

perial and Papal governments in their respective spheres, no

such audacious and impious contention had ever been advanced

by the most radical advocates of imperial supremacy. It

meant the complete merger, in each particular country, of tem-

poral and spiritual authority, with a secular sovereign as the

incarnation of both religious and political power. It neces-

sarily implied the destruction of all unity of religious belief,

all certainty and stability of moral and spiritual standards,

all reliable and binding authority in matters of faith and wor-

ship. Inasmuch as Protestantism also proposed to itself an

unlimited freedom of personal and private judgment in spiritual

concerns, there was thus presented the paradoxical problem of

how to accommodate the “ religion of the prince ”—which must
be the “ religion of the land ”—with the varying shapes and
shades of individual religious opinion among his subjects.

The attempt to carry into execution these two incompatible

propositions inevitably would lead to chaos and calamity.

The enforcement of the one involved the extinction of religious

liberty and freedom of worship; the indulgence of the other

must produce non-conformity, independentism, sectarian re-

volt and religious anarchy; while the joint effect of the two

must weaken the spiritual influence of religion in general, and

gradually destroy the efficiency and virtue of Christianity as

a moral, social and political force.



22 IS THE CATHOLIC CHURCH A MENACE?

Those are the consequences one would naturally and reason-

ably expect from the practical operation of the new system,

and the history of the last three hundred years in the Old

World proves conclusively that precisely those consequences

have ensued. Following the success of the boasted “ Refor-

mation,” each one of the countries in which Protestantism was

dominant adopted that form of belief as the “ religion of the

prince,” and therefore, “religion of the land;” and they pro-

ceeded to enforce its observance by all the pains and penalties

of disfranchisement, confiscation, persecution and proscription.

For the first time since its birth, Christianity, so-called,

found itself an institution of the State, governed by human

potentates and maintained by a rigorous system of govern-

mental despotism. There being no longer any common source

of authentic faith and doctrine in the domain of ethical and

spiritual truth, there could be no uniformity of international

morals nor any unity of national religion. The pride of intel-

lectual achievement, the speculations of human reason, the

corruptions of material and commercial cupidity, and the cruel

conceptions of imperial ambition usurped the mastery of men’s

minds and aspirations, growing apace with the centuries, until

we behold the present cataclysm in European civilization at

which the world stands aghast. In the view of the student of

the logic and philosophy of history, the climax has come in the

due order of events. It is the legitimate sequence of a sys-

tem of faith and morals in which the prerogatives and pre-

cepts of the Prince of Peace have been usurped and per-

verted by the princes of this world, and a war of materialism

and imperialism is wrecking the structure of a civilization

based upon no stronger foundation than human folly and

frailty.

Transplanted to America in the seventeenth century, Prot-

estantism began the same course in its relations to the civil

and political power that characterized its conduct in the older

countries of Europe. As before stated, all of the colonies in

what afterwards became the United States, except Lord Balti-

more’s colony in Maryland, were settled under Protestant con-



IS THE CATHOLIC CHURCH A MENACE? 23

trol, and without exception they established their religion as

that of the government, enforcing its code of morals and its

creed of worship by the severest legal penalties and restric-

tions. The odious system was finally swept away by Jeffer-

son and his colleagues in their triumphant struggle for civil

and religious liberty, and the American Republic was firmly

committed to the fixed and fundamental policy of the absolute

separation and independence of Church and State, each su-

preme in its own domain, but cooperating as coordinate agencies

in securing and advancing the prosperity, happiness and free-

dom of the whole country. That, as we have already seen,

was the primitive and positive principle and policy of Cathol-

icism in the days of Constantine and Gregory the Great, and

from it the Catholic Church in its corporate capacity has

never departed through all succeeding centuries, notwith-

standing that the individual views and temporary exigencies

of certain of the Pontiffs, amid the turbulent vicissitudes of

Mediaeval Europe, may sometimes have led to apparent modi-

fications and relaxations in the application of the doctrine.

Deprived of government support and enforcement, American

Protestantism was left to develop in the United States along

the lines of its fundamental concept—the right of private judg-
ment upon all questions of religious faith—and the inevitable
result has speedily followed, with cumulative confusion and

increasing loss of practical influence as the years go by. Ac-

cording to official statistics in the United States, the number

and variety of non-Catholic organizations having religious ob-

jects are amazing. Dr. H. K. Carroll, a Methodist clergyman,

was the Government expert in charge of the “ Division of

Churches ” in taking the Eleventh Census, and he has since

published a volume covering the statistics of 1890, 1900, 1906,

and 1910, entitled “The Religious Forces of the United

States,” which contains some curious and candid statements.

Among other observations, this Protestant minister says:
“ We scarcely appreciate our advantages. Our citizens are
free to choose a residence in any one of fifty States and Terri-

tories, and to move from one to another as often as they have



24 IS THE CATHOLIC CHURCH A MENACE?

a mind to. There is even a wider range for choice and change

in religion. One may be a pagan, a Jew, or a Christian, or

each in turn. If a Christian, he may be six kinds of an Ad-

ventist, twelve kinds of a Mennonite or Presbyterian, thirteen

kinds of a Baptist, sixteen kinds of a Lutheran, or seventeen

kinds of a Methodist. He may be a member of any one of 143

denominations, or of all in succession. If none of these suits

him, he still has a choice among 150 separate and independent

congregations, which have no denominational name, creed, or

connection.”

Now, when our courts and constitutions have declared, so

often and so emphatically, that Christianity is a part of the

common law and universal inheritance of this land and people,

they meant to say that Christianity is the foundation of our

civilization as a nation; that it furnishes the standard of

social righteousness, political justice, personal character and

public integrity; that its principles, practically applied in the

domain of ethics and morals, contain the true solution of all

the problems that may confront us—the satisfactory and
authoritative basis upon which to discuss and determine the

reasonable rights of all men, individually and socially, and of

government as the creature of man for the preservation of

organized society. They meant likewise to imply, as the neces-

sary predicate of the proposition, that there must be some

safe, stable and authoritative source of Christian principles

and policies—some standard of uniformity and authenticity for
true Christianity; and this quite aside from any question of

spiritual faith or religious worship, with which our government

refuses to meddle. Where can this source and standard be

found? It certainly will be a vain and fruitless quest to seek

it among the discordant and innumerable propagandists whom

Dr. Carroll has so graphically described; for t^y not only

reject any uniform Christian faith and practice in the purely

religious realm, but they utterly fail to offer any concrete and

harmonious conception of what Christianity means in its work-

able adaptation to individual, family, social and political life;

and in fact it would sometimes appear as if some of these



IS THE CATHOLIC CHURCH A MENACE? 25

sects and schisms espoused every heresy and vagary of social

and political radicalism, as a refuge against spiritual inanition

and a bid for sensational popularity.

Catholicism has always and everywhere claimed to be the

exclusive representative of Christianity, as that religion was

promulgated by its Divine Founder and committed to His

Church on earth; and its cardinal tenets and teachings have not

changed since it became the organized depositary of that Faith,

now nearly two thousand years ago. This is true, not only of

the sacrosanct and sacerdotal mission of the Church among

men, but also of her relations to the problems and principles

of man’s temporal interests as a member of human society and

a subject of secular government. Hence, intelligent, repre-

sentative and patriotic American Catholics claim—and in this
claim they are joined by a steadily increasing number of in-

telligent, patriotic, representative Americans who are not Cath-

olics either by inheritance or education—that the Catholic
Church stands for those things in the daily life of the people-

in their educational, social, industrial, domestic and political

interests and institutions, that come closest to the fundamental

principles of American government, and will promote and pro-

tect most effectively the ideas and ideals of American nation-

ality.

For this reason they believe and assert that so far from be-

ing a menace or a discordant force in the secular affairs of

the United States, the Catholic Church fulfills and is destined

to exhibit, in its temporal influence, precisely that function that

was contemplated in the constitutional and judicial declara-

tions quoted above, that “ Christianity is a part of the com-

mon law of the land.” In support of this belief and assertion

it is only necessary to call attention to a few of the historic

tenets and teachings of Catholic Christianity, as applied to

current questions of government and social science; for, upon

the fundamental issues of life and morals, the Church stands

now where she has always stood.

The pagan idea of life and its theory of government were

founded upon the conception of humanity as a mass—men as



26 IS THE CATHOLIC CHURCH A MENACE?

mechanical atoms in the constitution of society. The State or

the Government was the centre source of power under that

system, and the individual was absorbed into and dominated

by the central authority or those who controlled it. The Ro-

man law defined a person as “ a man endowed with a civil

status,” that is to say, with such rights as the civil authority

might confer upon him. Christianity exactly reversed these

ideas. Under the Christian system every man became a per-

son in the eye of the law as well as in the sight of God, with

all the rights that God gave him at the moment of creation.

The personality of man and his divinely conferred attributes

and sovereignty are the essential concepts of the Christian

scheme, as taught by the Catholic Church. Our Declaration

of Independence and all our organic laws embody precisely

the same conception of man and society and government, as

their very words expressly proclaim.

So that Catholicism maintains that whatsoever movement or

measure of reform or innovation proposes or tends to impair

or to destroy this personality of the citizen, or to absorb and

merge it into the sovereignty of the State, by any method of

socialistic paternalism, thereby denying to man his God-given

and inalienable rights, is not only un-American, but is also

pagan in its origin, anti-Christian in its conception, reactionary

and not progressive in its objects and effects.

Again, the personality of man being the fundamental prin-

ciple of Christianity, both as a religious belief and as a social

and political influence, the next step in the formation of society

is the recognition and preservation of the family tie. Marriage

in some form is the basis of the family, the source of all so-

cial growth, and the corner-stone of human governments.

Here, too, Christianity introduced a new rule into the world

—

a new note in the harmony of social and political life. Among

the pagan nations, and even under the ancient Hebrew govern-

ment, marriage was a loose and variable bond, dissoluble

upon slight provocation and for frivolous causes. But Christ

taught and enjoined the holy and indestructible character of

marriage, and the Church He established has maintained it as



IS THE CATHOLIC CHURCH A MENACE? 27

such throughout every succeeding age. Consonant with this

vital and inviolable tenet, Catholics hold that the sacrament

of marriage is the corner-stone of the Christian home and

family; the soul of Christian civilization, the citadel of social

purity and peace, the only safeguard of stable and righteous

government among men. That the stability of the marriage

tie is the basis of family life, and that this in turn is the only

foundation of national life and morals, is held by all Americans;

only the radical revolutionaries whose visionary and violent

schemes of regeneration and reform are the real menace to our

liberties and institutions deny it.

Upon the great and absorbing question of education, the

Church holds to views that are sometimes misunderstood or

misrepresented to her prejudice; but upon proper investiga-

tion it will be found that they are not only compatible with

the whole theory and structure of our civilization, but that

ultimately they embody the only sure and safe guarantee

for the preservation of American ideas and institutions.

The Catholic view is that education should promote

character—individual and national. Character is purely
a moral attribute—the concrete product of the sym-

metrical development of man’s mental, spiritual, and physical

nature. It has no necessary relation to nor dependence upon

mere intellectual culture, material prosperity, or physical well-

being, either as a personal quality or as the collective posses-

sion of a people or nation. A nation, like an individual, may

be brilliant, powerful, rich and resourceful, endowed with every

gift of material and mental achievement, and yet depraved or

defective in its morals and degraded or impoverished in its

ideals. It may boast all the trophies of intellectual and phy-

sical prowess, and still lack the essentials of happiness and

contentment and the blessings of equality and justice. The

moral virtue of character is the indispensable predicate of both

personal and social success in any true and Christian sense of

the word, and it follows that any system of education that

fails to develop and to give paramount importance to the

moral qualities of its pupils, falls far short of being a satis-



28 IS THE CATHOLIC CHURCH A MENACE?

factory or a salutary institution. Sensible and observant men

of all creeds, and of no creed at all, are fast coming to adopt

and to avow these opinions. It is only a question of time

and of a practicable method of change, when our much-vaunted

system of state education will undergo a radical revolution,

to conform its objects and results to the real purpose of char-

acter-building, instead of being merely a machine for turning

out so much morally-sterilized manhood and womanhood.

As the logical corollary of its position on education, Catho-

lic Christianity also contends for the truth that is so patent

in the pages of history, that a people may have a perfectly or-

ganized social system, with every rule and regulation of ma-

terial welfare, physical comfort and political order, and yet

possess no hope beyond its mechanical perfection, no ideal, no

higher destiny beyond the daily routine of toil and obedience,

no motive in life but the satisfaction of physical appetites

and necessities. Modern Socialism asks us to accept that kind

of civilization, as the acme of human achievement in the

sphere of social and political perfectibility. A more dismal

and monotonous system of hopeless, helpless, heartless degra-

dation and despotism it would be impossible to conceive.

Against this paralyzing propaganda the Catholic Church sets

its face like flint, and in so doing it is rendering one of the

most loyal, lasting and beneficent services to this Republic

that it is possible for any organization to perform.

In all of the leading matters thus briefly mentioned, it will

be discovered that Catholicism touches the very vitals of

present-day problems, and that its unyielding opposition to all

of the destructive and dangerous tendencies of the times, as

well as its steadfast adhesion to the cardinal principles of

American republican government, entitle it to be considered a

bulwark of domestic security, a champion of social equality

and justice, and a perpetual ally of political stability, authority

and peace.

And these facts are not being ignored by the great body of

American citizens, as is attested by the marvelous growth of

the Church in recent years. Dr. Carroll, the Methodist statis-



IS THE CATHOLIC CHURCH A MENACE? 29

tician above quoted, says in his book: “ The miracle of growth

is, of course, the Roman Catholic Church. It has been three

times as great as that of the Methodist group, and six times

as great as that of the Lutheran group.” Accordingly, the

Catholics outnumber vastly any other religious organization in

the United States, they lead all the rest in the extent and value

of their church property, in their schools, colleges, hospitals,

and all the agencies of social betterment and organized charity.

These accessions have not come from the ignorant, the credu-

lous and the superstitious classes, but mainly from the edu-

cated and ambitious citizens of this Republic, who love liberty

and law and a government that bases its claim to superiority

upon the fundamental doctrine that there can be no true free-

dom in any realm of thought or action without effective

authority to proclaim and maintain it. In this age of universal

unrest and innovation, amid the babel of doubt, debate and

confusion, the thinking, serious-minded, patriotic men and

women of this land are seeking for some sound and rational

basis of belief and judgment and justice, and they are finding

it in that Faith that “neither deceives nor can be deceived;”

that stretches back two thousand years, with line upon line

and precept upon precept enlightening the perplexities of the

present; and that enshrines in its sacred creed the immutable

belief in

“ One God, one law, one element,

And one far-off divine event,

To which the whole creation moves.”





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