The Pope and the Clergy.
By James S. Bell
DURING the winter of 1853-54, the Senate of the United States was discussing the Nebraska Bill. A protest against the passage of that bill was sent to the Senate, signed by three thousand and fifty “clergymen” of New England. This memorial called out an earnest and curious debate, as the Senators felt the full force of the “astounding fact” that here was a body of men, in this age and country, claiming that they “were authorized by the Almighty, and in his name, to pronounce an authoritative judgment upon a political question pending before the Congress of the United States.” This debate on the clergymen’s memorial provoked the wrath of the entire fraternity. A public meeting of twenty-five clergymen of the city of Chicago was soon held to discuss the Senate debate. This body of clergy also sent in a protest “in the name of Almighty God,” and signed it “as ministers of the gospel of Jesus Christ,” and accompanied the protest with four resolutions. This second clergyman’s protest and resolutions were sent to Senator S. A. Douglas, whom these clergymen boldly accused of “want of courtesy and reverence toward man and God,” in his speeches on the first memorial. This was a grave charge for clergymen to prefer against Douglas, and it aroused the Little Giant. He replied to this charge and reviewed the debate on the memorial of the three thousand and fifty, and then paid his best respects to the protest and resolutions of the twenty-five Chicago clergymen. In pamphlet form I have his letter, dated Washington, April 6, 1854. Since reading many comments on the Pope’s late rescript on the political affairs of Ireland, I have re-read the letter of Senator Douglas to Protestant clergymen in this country, who tried to dictate to the Senators of the United States how they should vote on a political question. The claims of Leo XIII. are not any more extravagant or startling than the claims of Protestant clergy in this age and country. Have the clergy of to-day repudiated the high claim of “speaking in the name and by the authority of Almighty God”? This year there have been several great assemblies of “ministers” in New York and in Philadelphia, and I have carefully read the reports of their proceedings, but have failed to discern that the assumption of the divine prerogative of speaking by the authority of Almighty God, has been denied. Without this sweeping prerogative, the clergy know that their words are wicked. The Chicago clergy charged that “the whole tone and spirit of the debate” on the New England clergy’s memorial, was “an outrage upon the privileges of a large and respectable body of citizens,” and “upon the claims of the divine name, word, and institution.” They insisted on being recognized in their “office as ministers,” who had lost none of their prerogatives as citizens when “called of God” to be his vice-regents. But neither the New England three thousand and fifty, nor the Chicago twenty-five clergymen, approached the Senate of the United States in their capacity as citizens, whose right to petition either or both houses upon any subject of public interest pending before that body, never should be denied. They declared that they came before Congress as ministers, in the name of Almighty God, to pronounce “his will upon all points of moral and religious truth.” In this high character, the Government does not know them. Those New England clergymen, of different religious denominations, in “their official characters as ministers of Almighty God, and in his name, protested against the passage of the Nebraska Bill” as a “great moral wrong;” as a matter “exposing us to righteous judgment of the Almighty. The Senators who objected to this protest urged that the protest was not presented in the name of citizens, or human beings, nor in the name of any human authority or civil right. Its obnoxious feature was, the signers “assumed the divine prerogative and spoke to the Senate in the name of Almighty God.” This conduct was understood by Douglas and other Senators as “asserting a divine power in the clergy of this country higher than the obligations of the Constitution, and above the sovereignty of the people and of the States,” and, in virtue of this “divine power,” to command Senators how to vote on any question. In the eyes of Douglas, this assertion of a divine power in the clergy, when adopted and repeated by the Chicago clergymen in their protest and resolutions on behalf of their New England brethren, looked as if it was the “fixed and deliberate purpose” of all the clergy of different religious denominations, to “force an issue upon this point [divine authority] with the civil and political authorities of the republic.” The Chicago clergymen “removed all obscurity and avowed the purpose distinctly and boldly” in this resolution, sent up to the Senate of the United States:—
Resolved, That the ministry is the divinely appointed institution for the declaration and enforcement of God’s will upon all points of moral and religious truth; and that, as such, it is their duty to reprove, rebuke, and exhort, with all authority and doctrine.” Has the leopard changed his spots?78 Let the reader note that this bold resolution, so sweeping in its claim of authority, was adopted by a council of twenty-five Protestant clergymen of different denominations, assembled in Chicago in 1854. . . . Pius IX. had then been nearly eight years on his pontifical throne, reared upon the ruins of the throne of the Cæsars. That proud, shrewd, and power-grasping old monk must have been pleased at what he also considered a daring invasion of his prerogatives, when he read this resolution of the Chicago clergymen. And their sincerity in the reality of their “divine appointment” was revealed to the astonished old man, in the sending of this resolution to the Senate of the United States. . . . Cardinal Manning boldly asserted in the name of the Pope: “I am the sole, last, supreme judge of what is right and wrong.” Not much bolder than the resolution of the Chicago “divines.” The Pope interferes on the “moral bearings” of the affairs in Ireland now. Our Chicago “divinely appointed ministry” asserted before the Senate of the United States that “it is our duty to recognize the moral bearings of the conflicts of political parties, and to proclaim, in reference thereunto, the principle of inspired truth and obligation.” Whew! Whenever these “divinely appointed ministers” please to “declare in the name of Almighty God,” that a measure, passed by Congress, signed by the President, interpreted and sanctioned as constitutional by the Supreme Court, is, in their judgment, “immoral and unrighteous,” those who obey Congress expose themselves to the wrath of the Almighty. If this is not equal, in haughty arrogance, to any assumption of the divine prerogative ever uttered by any Pope of Rome, I know not how to distinguish between the pretensions of these divine functionaries. What say the present “ministry”? As an organized, “divinely appointed” body, those clergymen spoke “in the name of Almighty God,” to the constituted authorities of this young, free nation! Thirty-four years have passed away since Senator Douglas informed the clergy that “your claims for the supremacy of this divinely appointed institution are subversive of the fundamental principles upon which our whole republican system rests.” This clerical presumption makes its existence known in various ways, even in these days. As a “divinely appointed institution,” even this present year, it will propose to apply the test of inspired truth to each of the political contests, “and presume, in the name of God, “to exhort and rebuke with all authority.” With Douglas, I say: “I cannot, shall not, recognize in your divinely-appointed institution, the power either of prophecy or of revelation.” Douglas wrote his reply to the protest and resolution of the Chicago clergymen, in April, 1854. I can well remember his canvass of 1856, seeking the Democratic nomination for President. How much his bold repudiation of the arrogant claims of the “divinely appointed institution of the ministry,” as the one only competent tribunal to both “declare and enforce God’s will on all points of faith and morals,” had to do with the fierce opposition which Douglas had to endure until his death, June, 1861, cannot be estimated. The clergymen never forgave the man who questioned their assumption of the “divine prerogative of the Almighty God.” Senator Mason, of Virginia, in the debate on the New England Memorial, said that when men came before Congress as vice-regents of the Almighty, they came “as a class unknown to the Government—a class whom the Government does not mean to know in any form or shape.” Both Douglas and Mason have joined the “silent majority,” but their earnest, outspoken warnings remain on the national records for the instruction of other “constituted authorities.” The “Government does not mean to know” any class of men as the “vice-regents of the Almighty.” Has the “Government” changed its intentions? The other day, after the laying of the corner-stone of the great Papal university, with a great parade, in Washington, Mr. James Gibbons, not as a citizen, but as a prime minister of the Pope of Rome, decked out in gorgeous robes of red, as cardinal, head of the church in the United States, went to the White House to introduce his obedient servants, the bishops, to the President. After this service was performed, so great was the crowd, and so strong the desire to behold a live cardinal, that the said Gibbons was forced to hold a kind of informal reception in the famous east room. Senator Butler, of South Carolina, was right when he, in that public debate, charged those clergymen with assuming “to be the foremen of the jury which is to pronounce the verdict and judgment of God upon earth.” He saw their true disposition, their best-liked avocation, when he said they “would convert the lamb into the lion, going about in the form of agitators seeking whom they might devour,” hiding in their dark or red robes of hypocrisy. The Government cannot afford to know these men claiming to exercise the divine prerogative in any form or in any shape. Various are the forms or shapes of this “arrogant and insatiable priestcraft.”—James S. Bell, in Christian Leader.