Rome on the Potomac by G. Lawson Smith

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Feb 11, 1913

Rome on the Potomac

By G. Lawson Smith

Rome on the Potomac

What the Papal Hierarchy Is Doing at the American Capital

By G. Lawson Smith

In a recent issue of the Washington Post, one of the leading newspapers of the country, appeared this very significant heading and the editorial paragraph which follows:

“WE MAY LIVE TO SEE THE VATICAN AT BROOKLAND”

“As such an eventuality would mean that we were to enter upon a period of political intrigue and wire-pulling by the myrmidons of the Papacy such as has so long cursed many of the leading capitals of Europe, it may be worth while for the American people to pause a moment in their wild greed for gain, to look about them and consider what this new and most vital menace to our institutions may mean.”

The map above shows the sites of the cathedrals, churches, and principal colleges only. There are scores of other papal concerns in the Capital, including academies and convents, orphan asylums, etc. This array as shown on the diagram, shows how completely they occupy the Capital. Note the churches adjoining the Senate office building and the House office building.

Washington, like the old Rome of Italy, is already studded and flanked by the churches, the convents, the monasteries, the resorts of priests, the schools and colleges, of the Papacy. But the average reader may never have heard of the “Brookland” mentioned by the leading newspaper of the Capital. He may never have heard, either, that there is any prospect of the removal of the Vatican—the Roman pontiff’s official residence—from its ancient site on

the Tiber. What the Post really means is this: That the pope and his belongings, such as the people of Italy will permit him to remove, will be removed here, as the new center of the papal power, and the locality in which ecclesiastical Rome now finds her chief source of graft.

“Brookland” is the name of the chief papal settlement or colony, in or near the city of Washington. It comprises a large acreage on a commanding site at the eastern borders of the city, and not far from the Capitol building. The location is plainly shown on the accompanying map. Already the district is partly built over with the typical institutions of the Roman cult,—with structures representing an expenditure of several million dollars. Immense additions, amounting to over $2,000,000—it is currently rumored here—are now planned or under construction. On the whole it is, without doubt, the most extensive plant yet erected on this continent for the further perpetuation of Roman Catholicism in the world.

The land was formerly the homestead of a good old American family of the Protestant variety. On the death of the owner, some years ago, the property went to two daughters who were “taken into camp” by some of the astute artists of the Papacy, with a transfer of their land as a partial consideration for the favors they were to receive in this world and the next from the “holy” men who conducted the negotiations. Rome got the land all right,—and those two sisters got the “experience.” They were even “received” by the pope at the Vatican in Rome as a mark of his appreciation of their goodness. But the sisters soon became aware that they had made one of those slips like the fellow who has

been up against a green-goods game, and they promptly recanted their professed allegiance to Rome, got clear out of the whole mess, and one of them wrote a book which gave the whole snap away. In said book, she gave it as her candid opinion that the priests of Rome in this country as everywhere else, are most concerned with the accumulation of wealth, by which they calculate on acquiring the power here which they so much covet.

Her book had only a restricted circulation; but it would make good reading for some of the people of this country who are ignorantly coquetting with the oily agents of the Papacy, and who affect to see no harm in the aggressive propaganda which they are pushing day and night in every part of the United States at this time. Some of the buildings already completed at Brookland are sufficiently palatial to serve as a papal residence in a pinch; but it is understood that among those now planned is to be a sumptuous palace specially designed for the pontiff, so that he may find a fitting place of refuge in his new dominions when the time comes for Italy to

banish the Papacy from Rome as the most troublesome problem in her affairs.

In the bald statement, “We may live to see the Vatican at Brookland,” the Washington Post had these facts in mind. It was probably not unmindful also of the other fact, that this country is now the main field of operations of the Papacy, as well as the most fruitful source of its revenues. While the tendencies in Europe are to discredit the Roman hierarchy, as shown by the recent movements in Portugal, Italy, France, and Spain,—all nominally papal countries,—we have extended to this power the glad hand of welcome as if we were only too anxious to have its tremendous influences more fully mixed up in our internal affairs.

More Than All Other Religious Denominations

The simple truth is that the Papacy, by its sworn agents, who owe their first and strongest allegiance always to their master in Rome,—now holds the most commanding sites in and around the American Capitol; that of the Brookland plant being equal in all respects to the elevation on which the Capitol itself is built. It may be of at least passing interest to some of the people of the United States to learn that there stands in the name of this Italian hierarchy, within the boundaries of the District of Columbia, more real property and buildings than are owned here by all the other religious denominations combined. It is perfectly clear that there has been, from the foundation of the republic, a deliberate and well-conceived design on the part of the agents of the Papacy to gain a foothold in this Capital similar to the one which she so long held in the capital of Italy,—and from which she has sent out her emissaries to lay tribute for the Papacy upon every land and every people among whom she could effect an inroad. It must be somewhat disheartening to the hierarchy—the exceedingly gratifying to its opponents—to note the steady depreciation of its stock on the theological exchanges of the old world; and to realize that in Rome herself, where the work of the Roman high priest was law for a thousand years, the people now rule, and a Jew who is also the head of the masonic order in Italy, is mayor of the city of the seven hills. Is it to be expected that this nation is to go backward like a crab, while Italy, the ancient prey of the Roman priestcraft, goes steadily forward? Are we going to admit into our political veins all the virulent evils of church-and-state union of the ancient world, when their former victims are purging their systems of these deadly poisons, and finding antidotes which shall relegate them to the rear forever?

From the attitude of the last two administrations here, and the “rope” which they so freely gave to the agents of Rome, it has often looked as if we were courting the fate which has overtaken every nation on the globe that has given full rein to the behests of that priestcraft. Roosevelt pandered to Rome, and Taft has done the same thing. It is not a little surprising to contemplate the fact that the mild and unassuming McKinley began to lay the way for recent developments along this line by his instructions to Taft when he was in the Philippines. In constructing the government there, Taft was the easy tool of the friars, and he had the authority of McKinley to throw to a class—whom the people of the islands had learned to detest, from years of oppression and cruelty—most of the fruits of the victory which we had justly won against Spain, that mother of intolerance and bigotry.

Read Senate Document 190, and see what Taft learned of the lives of the friars in an investigation which he set on foot in the hope of giving them a first-class coat of whitewash before the world they had scandalized and defied for several generations. Then consider how he paid the Vatican 20,000,000 good American dollars for the friar lands which had been taken from the natives, and how he turned the schools of the islands over to this same discredited class, with the flattering comment that they, the friars, were the best people to civilize the islands.

Appointments

Taft also promoted Justice White, of Louisiana, to the chief-justiceship of the United States Supreme Court, claiming that he had to do so because White was the next in order of succession. Many take a very different view of the matter, since Justice White is a Roman Catholic—closely allied to the Jesuits if not himself a member of the order—and a close friend and companion of Judge McKenna, another Catholic in the Supreme Court. There was a persistent rumor here during the campaign, that the elevation of White was simply part of the deal by which Taft was to make sure of the papal vote to secure him a second term in the White House. The rumor went further, and said that it was largely due to Taft’s papal entanglements that he was so utterly discredited and so hopelessly defeated when the election came round.

Ever since the days of the American Protective Association, and what was known as “Know-Nothingism,” there have been a few enlightened men in the United States, who have discerned the real drift and purposes of the Romish priesthood, and who have had no illusions respecting the motives of their insidious activities. But, in spite of this fact, the average citizen has been blind to their purpose, and their power has steadily increased until they are now able, through their numbers and the solidarity of their organization, to exercise a commanding influence in every national political convention, and in those of many of the states, also in the elections of nearly all cities and states except in the greater part of the South. They dominate the political parties, and secure on demand whatever political favors they may covet,—which means everything in sight.

Instances in Point

Theodore Roosevelt has declared in public that he expected to see the time when a Roman Catholic would be elected president. Of course, he said this to curry favor with the papal vote.

President Taft has made it one of his regular habits to “flock” with the adherents of the Papacy on all public and private occasions, and to attend each year what they call their “Pan-American Thanksgiving services,” in one of the leading papal churches of the city. As president of the United States, he has been subservient to the papal power ever since he has been in office,—beginning the service when he was under the direction of the lamented McKinley.

Despite his denials, it is still believed by the best informed men in the country, that his aide, Major Archie Butt, carried a political message to the pope at Rome, and that he was bearing back a political message from the pope to Mr. Taft when he perished in the Atlantic Ocean with so many others.

On all possible occasions, Mr. Taft grants the most extraordinary privileges to any and every papal applicant. He allows Cardinal Gibbons and his cohorts to assemble for their religious services, called “field-masses,” in the grounds of the White House and the Washington monument. It is currently asserted that fully 50 per cent of the government’s employees here are papists. It would be difficult to get authentic information on this point. But it is a certainty that they are extremely active in securing government jobs for their young men and young women. They not only see all the papists in the House and Senate for this purpose, but they find plenty of other members who are willing to assist them in return for promised favors from their papal constituents at election time.

An Ambassador

The pope’s legate here has become under the present state of things a full-fledged ambassador of the pope toward this government; and his office is called, even in the newspapers, the “Papal Legation.” Falconio, the recently retired legate who was lately relieved by an amiable young Jesuit named Bonzano, made it a regular habit to urge legislation upon Congress which was favorable to his master at Rome,—to work against everything that was going on in the Congress which did not suit him. And he also made his visits to the White House and the members of the Cabinet, just as if he were the properly accredited ambassador of a civil power, instead of merely a personal agent of the pope, whose real religious functions were to see that the maximum amount of Peter’s pence was paid over to the Papacy by its collectors in this country.

Only a short time ago, a big demand was made on the Indian Affairs Committee of the Senate by the papal agents who have obtained practical control of the Indian schools, and have them taught by the nuns dressed in their full religious regalia. The demand was for an extra large appropriation which the papal agents hoped, as usual, to spend as they pleased. Members of the committee objected to the scheme; and a few days later a professor of the papal university here—who is also a priest who stands high in the councils of the cardinals—came before the committee with a list of twenty congressional districts which he declared were controlled entirely by the papists, and would be handed over to the Democrats in the next election unless the appropriations demanded were made without further delay. It is hardly necessary to add that the bluff worked like a charm, the papists got the money they wanted, and the nuns go right on in their order garbs, teaching the Indians that there is no means of saving their souls except through the help of the papal agents.

A few days ago at the church of St. Patrick, Priest Russell took a slip of paper from his “question box” and read to his congregation this query: “Is it true that the Papacy is trying to get entire control of the American government and nation?” Priest Russell made quick reply to this question, and said that any report of the kind was sheer nonsense,—or words to that effect. Then he added that he would give $1,000 for any proof that the Papacy had any such designs. The action of the papal professor with the twenty congressional districts up his sleeve is no proof, of course; nor is the glib abuse of everything non-papal by the papal press; nor the actions and talk of the wonderful “prince of the blood,” O’Connell, the Boston cardinal, who became so exalted over his elevation to the red hat that he started out to take precedence of everything and everybody on earth. Priest Russell knows perfectly well that his only aim in life—just like every one of the papal agents in this country—is to wield all possible political power, and to use the club of the papal theology at all points where it is strong enough,—to force political action which will strengthen the hold of the Papacy upon every branch and feature of American life that may yield more government money to satisfy their demands.

This point is well illustrated in the case of a papal hospital in this city. It is called Providence Hospital, and there is just about as much “providence” about it as about the other concerns that are operated by the papal agents. This hospital was begun at the time of the Civil War, and Congress gave $60,000 to have it erected. The land was given as a gift to the government; but it was worked around in some way so that it became the property of an order of Roman Catholic nuns. Their next move was to get a regular endowment from the government for the operation of the place, and it is receiving to-day the sum of $1,200 every month in the year on the pretext that it gives care and treatment to the indigent poor of the District of Columbia. As a matter of fact it does no such thing, and it is a practical impossibility to get any patient admitted to the poor wards who is not a Roman Catholic—there is always plenty of room for those who can pay the highest market price, and for such indigent as the priests have their own reasons for wanting to take care of. This sum of $1,200 per month is paid to the institution each month out of the public funds, and no accounting is ever made of the way it is used, or of whom it benefits. Of course, it is not a political pull which enables the priests of Rome to get hold of all such soft snaps as this. O, no!

Strategic Importance

In studying the chart of Washington with the papal holdings plainly marked by disks, the reader should not fail to note the strategic importance of most of the larger sites. That of Brookland, for instance, commands entirely the east and north approaches to the Capital city. With papal cannon planted on the heights of Brookland, the House and Senate buildings, the office buildings of both, and the Supreme Court would be directly under the fire of these guns. They would also have complete command of all lines of railroad, and all wagon roads coming into the city from those directions; while their fire could also sweep the White House and every departmental building in the city.

On the west and south the city would be equally at the mercy of the papal guns on the heights of the Georgetown University. From these elevated points, all the roads coming in from Maryland and Virginia, and the bridges of the Potomac River, could be swept by the papal fire. But, of course, the papists have no desire or expectation of any aggressions upon the public peace of this nation—O, no,—of course not. Take this nice, peaceful, and confiding bit of language used not so long ago by one of the pope’s close friends at Rome, the noted Cardinal Capel:

“The time is not far away,” said the cardinal, speaking evidently as a papal prophet, “when the Roman Catholic Church of the republic of the United States, at the order of the pope, will refuse to pay their school tax, and will send bullets to the breasts of the government agents rather than pay it. It will come as quick as the click of a trigger, and will be obeyed, of course, as coming from God Himself.”

Those gentle souls who think there is nothing wrong about the purposes of Rome toward this country, will naturally say that the cardinal never said any such thing; and if you prove it to them they will insist that it was only a joke, said in the humor of one of the holy men who can do and say no wrong. The same if you give these dear creatures this bold assertion of the Catholic World, of Chicago:

“Education must be controlled by Catholic authorities even to war and bloodshed.”

None knows better than William Jennings Bryan how the papal priests are eating the heart out of American institutions; and yet he sends his son to the papal university here as a help toward getting the presidential nomination again in 1916. It was with the same thing in mind, perhaps, that he made it known at the Baltimore convention that he was perfectly willing to accept O’Gorman, of New York, as democratic candidate for vice-president. He knows perfectly well that O’Gorman is the sworn tool of the Papacy, and that he is working constantly with the other Roman Catholics in Congress to bring about those things which the Papacy wants. But these fellows now make so much noise in all political conventions that the aspiring souls of candidates are oppressed with the notion that a nomination may depend upon their support.

The George Washington University here is making an up-hill struggle for existence. But it has one of the best law schools in the country, and one would have thought, naturally, that so patriotic a citizen as Mr. Bryan would have sent his son there instead of making him the associate of the open enemies of the American public schools, and of the very men—many of them of foreign birth—who are sworn to do all in their power to bring this government entirely under control of the Roman hierarchy. All such Americans are playing into the hands of the republic’s foes, and putting money into the papal coffers for the strengthening of the “Pope’s Militia,” the other name for the Knights of Columbus.

Now there is a scheme on foot here to secure a huge appropriation for the building of an immigrant station in Chicago. It is a papal plot pure and simple. All the money would be handled by the Irish papal contractors and grafters of the windy city; and the immigrant station would be, practically, for the exclusive use of their own kind. Every true American citizen should write to his congressman or senator, asking that he give no support to this scheme, but that he will oppose it by every means in his power.

A Special Census

Another plot which they are expecting to work through, has received the endorsement of Mr. Taft. This is nothing more nor less than the authorization of the government for the papal agents to make a special census of the papal membership and property in the country, at the government’s expense. That such a thing should be demanded, is a proof of the hold which these men are getting on the affairs of the nation. We have carefully investigated the matter, and have the official proofs that the facts in the last census, respecting all papal affairs, were submitted to the highest officials of the hierarchy here and elsewhere; that they approved of all the data before and after it was tabulated for use in the final sheets of the census returns; and that their only purpose in getting up a census of their own is to pad the figures in order to give them an importance to which they are not entitled, and, incidentally, to put in their hands a fund from the treasury which they will be enabled to distribute at will among their henchmen. This miserable plot should be protested against by every citizen who has the welfare of his country at heart.

The ease with which they got $100,000 for the “Columbus statue,” has emboldened the papists to look for more of the same kind of money under any and every pretext which they are able to scare up. Since it has been conclusively proved by the researches of Prof. Hyland C. Kirk, and others, that Christopher Columbus was a Spanish Jew, the men in Rome who make “saints” to order are hesitating about his canonization. But the original project was to get as many of the states as possible to set aside a day each year for Columbus Day, then canonize the discoverer, and have it so that a large part of the country was celebrating one of the regular papal saint days with the gusto of a small Spanish town in the days when Rome ruled supreme in that benighted land. Now that the cat is out of the bag, and it is common knowledge that Columbus never set foot on the American continent,—that he was not, indeed, the discoverer of America,—it is in order for all the states which established the Columbus Day to please the papal agents, to repeal the act and have done with the entire sickly sham.

Statistics

In the special figures compiled by the Census Bureau in 1906, it appears that there are in the United States 12,079,142 Roman Catholics, with 11,881 cathedrals and churches, with seating capacity for 4,494,377. Of the total, 43,778 were given as residing in the District of Columbia, and, of course, mostly holding government jobs or keeping saloons. The same tables give the amount of papal property in this district as $1,259,550. But, since special efforts have been made in all parts of the nation to raise funds for the upbuilding of the plant here, it is not unlikely that the papal holdings now amount to nearly as much again.

In conclusion, let us recall the oft repeated words of General Lafayette, the Frenchman who came over here to assist the colonies in their struggle for liberty: “It is my opinion that if the liberties of this country are ever destroyed, it will be by the subtlety of the Roman Catholic Jesuit priests; for they are the most crafty and dangerous enemies of civil and religious liberty. They have instigated most of the wars in Europe.” Lafayette was reared in the papal fold; but he had no illusions as to the character of the “religious” orders which have more recently been banished from the soil of France. He was a freemason, and while in this country attended the Protestant church entirely.

Then take this utterance of Cardinal Gibbons, who sets himself up as an oracle to denounce every generous impulse and ambition of the American people. Speaking of the public schools, he said: “They are an imperfect and vicious system of education which undermines the religion of youth.” Better no religion at all, say dear cardinal, than the kind you teach in your parochial schools.