Note and Comment

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Apr 2, 1908

“Pro-Romanism”

UNDER this title there has appeared in The Living Church a series of articles by the Bishop of Fond du Lac, an eminent leader of the Protestant Episcopal Church, who frankly admits a “Pro-Roman tendency” within his own communion. In one of these articles he says:—

There is much now to depress the most courageous and heroic of our brethren. The growing indifference to all religion is so great; the disbelief in the Bible, the church's authority, its traditions, is so increasing; the aggressive movement of the Boards to liberalize the church by an open pulpit and other methods is so attractive to the world; the sacrifice of principle to popularity in the divorce legislation, the observed diminishing spirituality of the church, the humbled condition of the clergy, the arrogance of the laity,—no wonder the work of Catholicizing the church is so slow. Then the attractiveness of Rome in its zeal and its devotion, their people's fuller realization of the supernatural, of the guardianship of the angels, the communion of saints, the devotion to the Blessed Sacrament (that pledge of Christ's abiding presence with his people)—all this must affect any devout soul. We are willing to confess that we believe our Lord loves the Roman communion in the United States, perhaps more than our own timid, unspiritual, uninstructed communion. It may also fairly be said that the errors in Rome, like those of the papal infallibility and supremacy, the modern dogma of the immaculate conception and that of indulgences, do not touch or scarcely hurt the spiritual life of the people; while our defects, and unbelief in the real presence and sacraments, do. No wonder the hearts of the clergy sometimes fail in the presence of our divisions and their own failures, and the arguments of the Roman Church loom large.

This is one more straightforward testimony to the lack of spiritual life and power in the professed church of Christ, and another proof of the increasing tendency to hope for an improvement by uniting with Rome. What will the end be?