"The Pope is of such dignity and highness, that he is not simply man, but, as it were, G.o.d, and the vicar of G.o.d. Hence the Pope is such supreme and sovereign dignity, that, properly speaking, he is not merely const.i.tuted in dignity, but is rather placed on the very summit of dignities. Hence, also, the Pope is rather father of fathers, and he alone can use this name, because he only can be called father of fathers: since he possesses the primacy over all, is truly greater than all, and the greatest of all. He is called most holy, because he is presumed to be such. On account of the excellency of his supreme dignity, he is called bishop of bishops, ordinary of ordinaries, universal bishop of the Church, bishop of diocesan, of the whole world, divine monarch, supreme emperor, and king of kings."
PETER DENS, of Maynooth College notoriety, whose "Theology" is the highest Catholic authority known this side of the Vatican at Rome, gives entire the Bull of Pope Sixtus V. against the King of Navarre and the Prince of Conde, whom he styles the _sons of wrath_. In this Bull, issued in the year 1585, he says:
"The authority given to Saint Peter and his successors, by the immense power of the eternal King, _excels all the power of earthly kings and princes_. It pa.s.seth uncontrollable sentence upon them all. And if it find any of them resisting G.o.d"s obedience, it takes more severe vengeance on them, casting them down from their thrones, however powerful they may be, and tumbling them down to the lowest parts of the earth, as the ministers of aspiring Lucifer."
Here is what _Daniel O"Connell_ said so late as 1843, and he was a true Catholic and a true exponent of this faith:
"You should do all in your power to carry out the intentions of His Holiness the Pope. Where you have the electoral franchise, give your votes to none but those who will a.s.sist you in so holy a struggle.
"I declare my most unequivocal submission to the Head of the Church, and to the hierarchy in its different orders. If the Bishop makes a declaration on this bill, I never would be heard speaking against it, but would submit at once unequivocally to that decision. They have only to decide, and I close my mouth: they have only to determine, and I obey. I wish it to be understood that _such is the duty of all Catholics_."--_Daniel O"Connell_, 1843.
Here comes one of the Pope"s organs in France:
"A heretic, examined and convicted by the Church, used to be delivered over to the secular power and punished with death.
Nothing has ever appeared to us more necessary. More than one hundred thousand persons perished in consequence of the heresy of Wickliffe; a still greater number for that of John Huss; and it would not be possible to calculate the bloodshed caused by Luther; and it is not yet over."--_Paris Univers._
"As for myself, what I regret, I frankly own, is that they did not burn John Huss sooner, and that they did not likewise burn Luther; this happened because there was not found some prince sufficiently politic to stir up a crusade against Protestants."--_Paris Univers._
But here is the Pope himself arguing with the authorities already quoted:
"The absurd or erroneous doctrines or ravings in defence of liberty of conscience, is a most pestilential error--a pest, of all others, most to be dreaded in a State."--_Encyclical Letter of Pope Pius IX., Aug._ 15, 1852.
Now, let us hear their organs in our own country:
"Heresy and unbelief are crimes, and in Christian countries, like Italy and Spain for instance, where all the people are Catholics, and where the Christian religion is an essential part of the law of the land, they are punished as other crimes."--_R. C. Archbishop of St. Louis._
"For our own part, we take this opportunity of expressing our hearty delight at the suppression of the Protestant chapel at Rome. This may be thought intolerant, but when, we would ask, _did we ever profess to be tolerant of Protestantism_, or favor the doctrine that Protestantism _ought to be tolerated_? On the contrary, we hate Protestantism--we detest it with our whole heart and soul, and we pray that our aversion to it may never decrease. We hold it meet that in the Eternal City no worship repugnant to _G.o.d_ should be tolerated, and we are sincerely glad that the enemies of truth are no longer allowed to meet together in the capital of the Christian world."--_Pittsburg Catholic Visitor_, 1848.
"No good government can exist without religion; and there can be no religion without an _Inquisition_, which is wisely designed for the promotion and protection of the true faith."--_Boston Pilot._
"You ask, if he (the Pope) were lord in the land, and you were in a minority, if not in numbers, yet in power, what would he do to you? That, we say, would entirely depend on circ.u.mstances. If it would _benefit the cause of Catholicism_, he would tolerate you--if expedient, he would imprison you--banish you--possibly, _hang you_--but be a.s.sured of one thing, he would never tolerate you for the sake of the _"glorious principles" of civil and religious liberty._"--_Rambler._
"Protestantism of every form has not and never can have any rights where Catholicity is triumphant."--_Brownson"s Quarterly Review._
"Let us dare to a.s.sert the truth in the face of the lying world, and, instead of pleading for our Church at the bar of the State, _summon the State itself to plead at the bar of the Church, its divinely const.i.tuted judge_."--_Ibid._
"I never think of publishing any thing in regard to the Church without submitting my articles to the Bishop for inspection, approval, and endors.e.m.e.nt."--_Ibid._
In view of the foregoing, and other facts and arguments which we will hereafter present, we cannot be mistaken in our views of Roman Catholicism. We cannot tamely surrender our dearest rights as Protestants, without a struggle. We cannot cry peace, peace, when there is no peace!
"Protestantism, of every kind, Catholicity inserts in her catalogue of moral sins; she endures it when and where she must; but she hates it, and directs all her energies to effect its destruction."--_St. Louis Shepherd of the Valley._
"Religious liberty, in the sense of a liberty possessed by every man to choose his religion, is one of the most wretched delusions ever foisted on this age by the father of deceit."--_The Rambler_, 1853.
"The Church is of necessity intolerant. Heresy she endures when and where she must, but she hates it, and directs all her energies to its destruction. If Catholics ever gain an immense numerical majority in this country, religious freedom is at an end. So say our enemies. So say we."--_Shepherd of the Valley._
"The liberty of heresy and unbelief is not a right.... All the rights the sects have, or can have, are derived from the State, and rest on expediency. As they have, in their character of sects hostile to the true religion, no rights under the law of nature or the law of G.o.d, they are neither wronged nor deprived of liberty, if the State refuses to grant them any rights at all."--_Brownson"s Review, Oct., 1853_, p. 456.
"The sorriest sight to us is a Catholic throwing up his cap, and shouting, "All hail, Democracy!""--_Ibid, October, 1852_, pp. 554-8.
"We think the "ma.s.ses" were never less happy, less respectable, and less respected, than they have been since the reformation, and particularly within the last fifty or one hundred years, since Lord Brougham caught the mania of teaching them to read and communicate the disease to a large proportion of the English nation; of which, in spite of all our talk, we are often the servile imitators."--_Shepherd of the Valley, Oct.
22, 1853._
THE CATHOLIC QUESTION--No. 3.
The Catholic Church supreme over all authorities--Meddling in Political Contests--Brownson"s Review and the Boston Pilot reflecting the sentiments of that Church--Protestants advocating Romanism--The Nashville Union in 1835.
The Anti-American, Foreign-loving, Catholic admirers of the Locofoco school of politics, everywhere seek to frighten native Protestant citizens with the bugbear cry of religious proscription. But let Americans and Protestants watch with increased vigilance both the Roman and Locofoco Jesuits around them. To call the d.a.m.nable and accursed system of political intrigue practised for past centuries by the Roman Church by the term _Religion_, is a solemn mockery of the hallowed word.
Religion teaches love and obedience to G.o.d, and the legally const.i.tuted authorities of the country. Romanism teaches fear of and obedience to a crowned potentate called the Pope, and opposition to all Protestant governments, as worthy to be cast down to h.e.l.l! The one tends to free and enn.o.ble the soul: the other to enslave and debauch every faculty of man"s nature which likens him to the Almighty! The one is republican: the other is barbaric, and at war with every principle of free government!
The American party does oppose and denounce Romanism _as a political system at war_ with American inst.i.tutions; and we here ask candid men to weigh the evidence we shall adduce to sustain this charge. We shall quote none other than Roman Catholic authority--the organs of Romanism--so as out of their own mouths to condemn them. Brownson"s Review is the accredited organ of Romanism in the United States. He ostentatiously parades the names of the Archbishops and Bishops on the cover of his Review, to give it the stamp of authority, and a.s.serts in the work:
"I NEVER THINK OF PUBLISHING ANY THING IN REGARD TO THE CHURCH WITHOUT SUBMITTING MY ARTICLES TO THE BISHOP FOR INSPECTION, APPROVAL, AND ENDORs.e.m.e.nT."
Let us then look to his pages for an exposition of the doctrines of his Church. In the January number for 1853, he says:
"For every Catholic at least, the Church is the supreme judge of the extent and limits of her power. She can be judged by no one; and this of itself implies her absolute supremacy, and that the temporal order must receive its laws from her."
The uniform practice of the Church of Rome has been, and still is, to a.s.sert her power--not in _words_, but in _deeds_--to GIVE OR TAKE AWAY CROWNS--to depose unG.o.dly rulers, and to absolve their subjects from their "horrible" OATHS OF ALLEGIANCE!
Again, in the July number for 1853, Brownson says:
"The Church is supreme, and you have no power except what you hold in subordination to her, either in spirituals or in temporals.... You no more have political than ecclesiastical independence. The Church alone, under G.o.d, is independent, and she defines both your powers and hers."
"They have heard it said from their youth up that the Church has nothing to do with politics; that she has received no mission in regard to the political order."
"In opposing the nonjuring bishops and priests, they believed they were only a.s.serting their national rights as men, or as the State, and were merely resisting the unwarrantable a.s.sumption of the spiritual power. If they had been distinctly taught that the political authority is always subordinate to the spiritual, and had grown up in the doctrine that the nation is not competent to define, in relation to the ecclesiastical power, its own rights--that the Church defines both its powers and her own, and that though the nation may be, and ought to be, independent in relation to other nations, it has, and can have, no independence in the face of the Church, the kingdom of G.o.d on earth: they would have seen at a glance that support of the civil authority against the spiritual, no matter in what manner, was the renunciation of their faith as Catholics, and the actual or virtual a.s.sertion of the supremacy of the temporal power."
In the same number, page 301, he says:
"She (the Church) has the right to judge who has, or has not, according to the law of G.o.d, the right to reign: whether the prince has, by his infidelity, his misdeeds, his tyranny and oppression, forfeited his trust, and lost his right to the allegiance of his subjects; and therefore whether they are still held to their allegiance, or are released from it by the law of G.o.d. If she have the right to judge, she has the right to p.r.o.nounce judgment, and order its execution: therefore to p.r.o.nounce sentence of deposition upon the prince who has forfeited his right to reign, and to declare his subjects absolved from their allegiance to him, and free to elect themselves a new sovereign."
We might multiply authorities of this kind on this point, to an almost indefinite extent, from the debate between Bishop Hughes and Mr.
Breckenridge, and the controversy between Hughes and Erastus Brooks, but it is wholly unnecessary.
As early as 1844, the Catholics took their stand as a body in the arena of political strife; and the ill.u.s.trious CLAY and the virtuous FRELINGHUYSEN were the victims of their particular hostility. Mr.
Frelinghuysen was the President of the Board of Foreign Missions, and this was made the _excuse_ for the bitter animosity of the Catholic press, and of the clergy and membership of the Catholic sect, against Mr. Clay. Brownson, in his July number for 1844, in the very heat of the contest, thus a.s.sailed Mr. Clay:
"He is ambitious, but short-sighted. He is abashed by no inconsistency, disturbed by no contradiction, and can defend, with a firm countenance, without the least misgiving, what everybody but himself sees to be a political fallacy or logical absurdity.... He is no more disturbed by being convinced of moral insensibility, than intellectual absurdity.... A man of rare abilities, but apparently void of both moral and intellectual conscience.... He is, therefore, a man whom no power under that of the Almighty can restrain; he must needs be the most dangerous man to be placed at the head of affairs it is possible to conceive."
The Boston Pilot, another Catholic organ, published under the eye of the Bishop, discloses _the same plot_, in its issue for the 31st of October, 1844, only six days before the election! Here is what this organ said:
"We say to all men in the United States, ent.i.tled to be naturalized, become citizens while you can--let nothing delay you for an hour--let no hindrance, short of mortal disease, banish you from the ballot-box. To those who are citizens, we say, vote your principles, whatever they may be--never desert them--do not be wheedled or terrified--but vote quietly, and un.o.btrusively. Leave to others the noisy warfare of words. Let your opinions be proved by your deliberate and determined action. We recommend you to no party; we condemn no candidate but one, and he is Theodore Frelinghuysen. We have nothing to say to him as a Whig--we have nothing to say to Mr. Clay or any other Whig, as such--but to the President of the American Board of Foreign Missions, the friend and patron of the Kirks and Cones, we have much to say. We hate his intolerance--we dislike his a.s.sociates--and shudder at the blackness and bitterness of that school of sectarians to which he belongs, and amongst whom he is regarded as an authority."
Protestants! do you hear that? Old Line Whigs! do you hear that? If so, do you think that Americans are warring upon civil and religious liberty, when they take an oath that they will rebuke such infamous sentiments? These appeals of Brownson, Hughes, and the Pilot, had the effect to defeat the Clay ticket in New York, and that State lost him his election. The Catholics were all at the polls, and voted for Polk and Dallas. On the 9th of November, 1844, Frelinghuysen wrote to Mr.