Entirely Too Familiar

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Jan 1888

FromThe American Sentinel, Vol. 3, No. 1.

Entirely Too Familiar.

The Christian Advocate says:— “An ill-constructed school-house in New York City collapses before its completion, burying its builders in its ruins and causing much of death and suffering. The Roman Catholic priest for whose parochial uses it was being erected is among the victims. Blame is laid on the ‘building inspector,’ by whose connivance or oversight illegal expedients were resorted to, which brought about this terrible accident. What is his defense? Simply this: He knew the priest had sufficient political influence to obtain a permit for any constructive irregularities he might choose to indulge in. Whether this be true or not is of less importance than the appalling fact—which none will deny—that such a charge may be brought against a priest without astonishing anyone. Roman Catholics justify the employment of all forces—moral and immoral—for the advancement of ‘the church’; and Protestants are so familiar with the intermeddling of Rome with politics that they are no longer shocked by them.”

Yes, Protestants are becoming entirely too familiar with the intermeddling of Rome with politics. In California one of the foremost preachers of the Methodist Church on the Pacific Coast—C. C. Stratton, D. D.—goes on a mission to Archbishop Riordon, to gain the co-operation of the Catholic Church in a matter entirely political. In New York City the leading Protestant divines organize for political work, and propose to ask Archbishop Corrigan to serve on the committee which they appoint, to make their move politically effective. In the same State the fashionable watering-place preachers gathered at Saratoga, get together in a meeting and pass a motion commissioning the National Reform Association to secure if possible a basis of agreement with the Roman Catholic authorities, by which the public schools of the nation shall be given into the control of the Roman Church wherever the Catholics are in the majority.

Yes, indeed, Protestants are becoming decidedly familiar with the intermeddling of Rome with politics. As greedy as these Protestant leaders are of political power, it is evident that they will be apt pupils, and under the tutorship of Archbishop Riordon, Archbishop Corrigan, Cardinal Gibbons, and the “Roman Catholic authorities” generally, we may rest perfectly assured that this familiarity will be rapidly and vastly increased. Nor does this familiarity at all seem to breed contempt on the part of these Protestant preacher-politicians; it seems rather to increase their admiration for the “well-favored harlot.”