p. 9 | Some of Its Earlier Supports by J. O. Corliss

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Dec 26, 1907

Some of Its Earlier Supports

By J. O. Corliss

Character of the Papacy—No. 5

Some of Its Earlier Supports

J. O. CORLISS

About the surest way to put one into leading-strings is to darken his vision. Put out one's eyes, and he sees no stumbling-block, because he walks in the blackest night. The blind always desire to be led, and they ask no questions about objects with which they do not come in contact. They follow the lead of any one, high or low, of any grade of intelligence, who volunteers to guide them in the way, because they are entirely helpless and dependent.

Very much after this sort were the people of the medieval ages. Having been refused the light which shines from God directly through his Word, in their inherent longing to be guided into a better existence they submitted to be led through midnight byways, not daring to question the breath of corruption which was constantly being wafted toward them, but continuously hoping that all would work at last for their eternal good. In justification of this latter statement, we quote from “The Pope and the Council,” page 291, as follows: “Paradoxical as it may sound, it is an historical fact that the more suspicious and scandalous the conduct of the popes—with their exemptions, privileges, indulgences, and the like, and the consequent confusion in the church—appeared to pious men, the more inclined they felt to take refuge from their doubts and

suspicions in the bosom of papal infallibility. Tested by simple Christian feeling, they would have been obliged to condemn this, and much else, as an abuse and heinous sin against the church. But that feeling had to contend with the notion, instilled into them from youth, that the pope is lord and master of the church, whom none may contradict or call to account.”

Thus were men blinded, and taught to regard themselves as mere herds of cattle belonging to the pope, with no will of their own, to be driven here and there as the head of the church dictated. Some, indeed, we are informed, were settled in the notion that the pope was a mysterious god upon earth, whose ways should not be too closely scrutinized, but whose voice was to be blindly followed, as though it came from heaven above.

Not only were men thus denied the right of conscience in spiritual affairs, but they also were forbidden the right of self-government in civil matters as well. Gregory VII, the first pope to undertake to depose kings, said, “To me is given power to bind and loose on earth and in heaven.”—Manzi, 20: 467. This Gregorian system, says Janus, “required the most complete immunity of the whole clergy from the secular power and civil courts. It served to create an immense army, exclusively belonging to the pope, and widely separated by common caste feelings and caste interests from the lay world.”—“The Pope and the Council,” page 155.

After the Reformation had wrought its wonderful change of sentiment in Europe regarding civil government, and absolute monarchy gave way to a constitutional form of sovereignty, the Gregorian theory fell somewhat under decay, among the laity; so much so that for thirty years prior to the great ecumenical council of 1870, there occasionally appeared printed discourses from influential quarters, modifying earlier divine claims of the papacy. To offset these Pius IX issued a Syllabus in December, 1864, which condemned, in all, eighty of these so-called heresies, and reasserted all the pretensions of medieval days. Following this the nations were notified that a world council for the ratification of these syllabic articles would be called to assemble in Rome at an early date.

Among other things condemned as heresies, which history has stated over and over again as true, this remarkable document affirmed it to be a wicked error to admit Protestants to equal political rights with Catholics, or even to permit Protestants to worship freely as they see fit. On the contrary, it affirms that the early doctrines of Jesuits, advocating suppression and coercion, are sacred obligations. Schneeman, in commenting on this, says that “the church will, of course, act with the greatest prudence in the use of her temporal and physical power, according to altered circumstances, and will not therefore at present adopt her medieval policy.”

The seventy-seventh proposition just referred to was directed against Bishop Ketteler, of Mayence, who, in a very popular work, attempted to show that the Catholic Church thoroughly respects freedom of conscience of all outside of her own communion, and would consider any coercion in their cases as immoral and utterly unlawful. It was also made plain by the bishop that Protestants had no need to fear regarding forcible coercions to the Catholic faith. Schrader, the Syllabus commentator, said that the bishop had fallen into that “forbidden liberalism,” which is accounted by the Roman Church as one of the “grossest errors of the day.” The Syllabus closes with the assertion that “they are in damnable error who regard the reconciliation of the pope with modern civilization as possible or desirable.”

It is easy to see from the foregoing that Rome has not changed, in any degree, her principles of intolerance. Her only hindrance in carrying out her ancient dogmas is the democratic attitude of constitutional rights in modern civil government. Let the papacy appear to modify its maxims to harmonize with popular institutions, and their educating forces, or let existing society modify its claims to meet apparent variation of papal demands, then, according to the Jesuit Schneeman, Rome might again dominate affairs of state according to her faith in her divine right to rule the world. Elements are even now stirring that will count heavily toward this result in the near future.

Of this phase we will have more to say later, but in this connection it will be well to call attention to another step of the papacy, by which it insured the entire support of its clergy. Finding that it needed all the support possible to sustain its claims of divine right before the world, a plan was launched by which the clergy would be deprived of home interests, and so become more fully devoted to the upbuilding of the papacy. The subject of celibacy had been broached in some important gatherings, notably the Council of Carthage (251), and the Council of Elvira, 313(?). But in a council held at Rome in 1074, Gregory VII pressed the matter so strongly that no ecclesiastic should be a married man, that the doctrine put forth tentatively and gradually, as a thing desirable, was then made an absolute law of the church.

This put into the hands of the hierarchy a most potent engine of ecclesiastical power, in that it put every priest in a special caste by himself, and made him entirely subservient to the interests of the supremacy of the church. It virtually divorced the priesthood from citizenship in all countries, by creating a great gulf between its popish ministers and the rest of humanity. Especially has this been the case to a large extent in the United States, where the fear has existed that, in view of the papacy's pronounced antagonism to modern civilization, if papists ever became strong enough politically, they would upset the Constitution.

In fact, the Civiltà Romana, a periodical produced by Jesuits, and at one time indorsed by a papal brief as an organ of the Church of Rome, maintained, as late as 1854, that it is necessary for the church to visit her opponents with fines, imprisonments, and scourgings, without which, it affirmed, she could not exist to the end of the world. See Vol. VII, page 603. It maintained, indeed, that, as an urgent necessity, in view of the unbelief of the present time, this work should be carried on through the old institution of the Inquisition, which it describes as “a sublime spectacle of social perfection.” See Vol. I, page 55.

But in this matter, as suggested by certain of their astute advisers, prudence will dictate that, for some time to come, the divine right assumed by the papacy will be permitted to lie dormant, adopting in the meantime a waiting attitude. Time alone can tell what will come, but we may be certain that out of the questions now agitating the Catholic world, there will be evolved a plan by which the power of the papacy will be felt as in days of old. The present outlook of the situation, however, will be considered in another paper.

Mountain View, Cal.