Proud of American Liberty by C. M. S.

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Tacoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Oct 13, 1910

Proud of American Liberty

By C. M. S.

CARDINAL VINCENZO VANNUTELLI, the papal legate to the Eucharistic Congress at Montreal, made a tour through Canada and the United States after the close of the congress. One feature of his journey, which seems peculiar in this land of education and enlightenment, was the kneeling of immense crowds of American citizens wherever he appeared in public, beseeching his blessing as if he were a veritable God, and kissing his ring, the symbol of his authority. In Montreal, in Winnipeg, in Minneapolis, in St. Paul, in Washington City, in Philadelphia, and in Baltimore this strange spectacle, this recrudescence of medievalism, was strikingly in evidence.

The inappropriateness of such demonstrations in a free government ought to be apparent to every thoughtful American. He who kneels to another and kisses the symbol of that other's authority, by so doing, declares his complete subjection to that individual in all that he represents. Cardinal Vannutelli represents the Pope of Rome, and all the claims of the church at the head of which he stands. That church and its head stand for the complete control of the whole world in all things, spiritual and temporal. He who kneels before the papal legate and kisses his ring, acquiesces in all the claims of the Papacy, whose he is, and whom he is here to represent. Can American citizens, having declared allegiance to the government of the United States, kneel before the representative of a foreign power, and kiss the symbol of his authority, thereby recognizing his claim to the rulership of this nation,—can they do this, and still be loyal citizens of the United States?—It is impossible; there can not be two rulers at the same time over the same territory. “No man can serve two masters,” declares our Lord.

If the Pope's authority be recognized, and his claims are to be admitted, he is the real ruler of our country, and of every country that admits his claim. But that is wholly antagonistic to the principles of popular government. The Pope is not a president of a republic. He is a monarch, the head of a theocratic monarchy. Admit his pretensions, and there is no rule in the world but his. The whole purpose of the great eucharistic congresses, as expressed by the Pope and by his legate, is to bring the whole world into submission and obedience to the “supreme pastor,” the “vicar of Christ.” Eucharistic congresses are being used as “convert-makers” to that end. When that purpose shall have been accomplished, republics and constitutional monarchies will be no more; and the Pope will be sole monarch, with no constitution to hamper him in the accomplishment of his will, and kings will

be mere satraps, under appointment, or subject to dismissal, from the Vatican.

Such is the policy and the unyielding purpose of the Papacy, and no man can kneel to the papal legate, and kiss the symbol of his authority, without, in that act, granting all that the Papacy claims and demands. Are Americans ready to yield all they have striven for these one hundred thirty-four years, and admit the claims and the pretensions of a ruler beyond the sea, and submit again to “taxation without representation”? If “taxation without representation” was tyranny then, can it be liberty now?

It is beside the point to argue that the Pope's claim is a claim of fealty in spiritual things only. The Papacy admits no such distinction. That power whose representative was willing to drench Europe in blood, if thereby he might restore the temporal sovereignty of the Pope, makes the proud boast that her purpose never changes. The purpose to rule over the kings of the earth, to reign as a temporal sovereign, is rooted as deep in the heart of the Papacy to-day as at any point in the history of that organization; and it augurs ill for the future of the American continent and American independence when the representative of that power can make a triumphal procession through Canada and the United States, and see thousands on thousands in every city he enters falling on their knees before him, and kissing the symbol of his authority.

In the city of St. Louis, where such a demonstration was made, the cardinal legate, in addressing four hundred youths at the Christian Brothers’ College, advised his hearers thus: “Be proud that in America you are free to practise your faith unmolested; and that this country is not like those lands in which they have proscribed the faith, and made limitations to the duties of conscience.”

As a matter of fact, there is no proscription of the Catholic faith in any land in all the world. But France, tired of church dominance and church dictation in matters civil as well as in matters religious, has broken off diplomatic relations with the Vatican, and left Catholicism practically where it is in this country. Spain, weary of the same conditions, is going in the same way. The Catholic religion has not been proscribed in either of those countries. In fact, in Spain, until the present year, the Catholic religion was the only one that had not been proscribed. With the field all to herself for centuries in France, Spain, and Portugal, her arrogant intolerance has become so unbearable that her own children, nurtured on her knees, have turned against her. This attitude on the part of those nations ought to be sufficient warning to the people of all North America to cause them to repudiate her claims, and look with dread on all her advances toward the peoples of this continent.

If Catholic Americans should “be proud” that in America they can practise their faith unmolested, they should also remember that they owe that privilege to the principles of liberty and equality engrafted in the Constitution of the nation. They ought to “be proud” also that every other citizen has the same privilege. That ought to be a greater and a broader cause of pride (if we can call it that) than the mere fact that they themselves have that privilege; for in France, Spain, and Portugal for hundreds of years the members of the Catholic Church have been free to exercise their faith, and no one else has. The result has been a condition which the church now deprecates.

The American principle is the true one—it is better even for Catholics; and yet the freedom of speech, of the press, and of religion which this nation guarantees to all its citizens, has been most strongly denounced by the “supreme pastor” of the Catholic Church. It was Pope Pius IX who, in 1864, in an encyclical issued December 8, reiterated the statement of Pope Gregory XVI, that the idea of religious liberty was insanity. Pius IX, in that encyclical, declared the idea of religious liberty to be “that erroneous opinion most pernicious to the Catholic Church and to the salvation of souls.” Yet the carrying out of the principles of the Papacy in that matter has made for the Catholic Church itself, in France, Spain, and Portugal, conditions which harass her very soul. If the papal legate finds in America conditions of which Catholic citizens ought to “be proud,” it would be worth his while to study the principles which have brought those conditions about. But he will not find those principles in the encyclical of Gregory XVI nor of Pius IX. They are not found indigenous anywhere in the soil of the Papacy. They are found in the Constitution of the United States, and we wish they might remain there to the end of time, so that even Catholics might say, to the end of the world, “Here we have liberty to worship God according to the dictates of our own consciences, untrammeled, unhindered, unmolested.”

C. M. S.