Untitled article by W. H. M.

Pacific Press Publishing Company · New York · January 7, 1892

FromThe American Sentinel, Vol. 7, No. 1

Apply the Principles.

By W. H. M.

A CORRESPONDENT of the Examiner writing in reference to the Roman Catholic Church and the State of New Jersey, says:—

The State has no right to inquire into religious belief that it may defend it and propagate it. The State has no right to take public funds that it may teach a church catechism or celebrate the mass. The State has no right, by its strong arm, to make any one remain in the confines of the Romish Church. If the Romish Church should erect buildings, and pay teachers from its own funds, it could not have a more distinctively church reformatory than it has to-day in the New Jersey State reform school. Policies and politics have turned their backs upon fundamental principles. In this little State there is a virtual alliance of Church and State; the Commonwealth has become an annex of the Church. When the various religious bodies of the State entered their formal protest against this public outrage, the statesmen of all grades dwindled into politicians and had no ears. In Pennsylvania, New York, Massachusetts, the same attack has been made, with partial success. . . . Rome, as a political institution, making attack upon the foundation beliefs of the Republic, must be opposed and defeated. The people must be trained up to this high resolve; the public schools shall not be changed into parochial schools, the State institutions shall not be changed into church institutions.

These would be most creditable expressions if only they were given as general principles and not as partisan utterances. They are principles and apply with the same force to the Protestant Church as a whole, or to any denomination of that Church, as they do to the Roman Catholic Church. Those who give such reasons as these for their opposition to Roman Catholic domination must acknowledge them as of universal application, or confess themselves

partisan denominationalists engaged in a contest for temporal success only. This is what they are. Let them confess it! Certainly the State may not rightfully propagate any religious belief, or inquire into it with a view to discriminate either for or against it,—whether it be Roman Catholic or Protestant. The State has no more right to use the public funds to teach the Protestant religion in the New Jersey State reform school, or the Indian schools, or any other schools, than to teach the Roman Catholic religion in the same schools. The State has no more right to enforce the “American Sunday” than the Roman Catholic Sunday, or the Continental Sunday. The State may not be a partisan of any religious belief, or any religious denomination, or any form of religion. Those who undertake a partisanship in religious affairs and attempt to make them questions of political policy show themselves by this to have turned their backs on the fundamental principles of civil justice and religious truth.

W. H. M.