Untitled article

Pacific Press Publishing Company · New York · February 8, 1894

For instance, in the Evangelist, of this city, a Presbyterian paper, whose editor speaks of Cardinal Gibbons as “Our Cardinal,” February 9, 1888, a Presbyterian D. D. of Princeton, described the papacy as—

The church of all races, ranks and classes, which gives signs of becoming American as well as Roman, and the only church fitted by its hold upon the working masses, to grapple with that labor problem before which our Protestant Christianity stands baffled to-day.

And in the North American Review for January, 1894, Bishop Doane, of the “Protestant” Episcopal Church, of Albany, in this State, strikes the same key to the following effect:—

The Roman Catholic Church throughout the world is really two or three absolutely distinct and different things. Whatever one may feel about the schism which it is, and the schisms it has caused; or, however deeply one may deplore the novelties with which it has overlaid the old faith (which, like all novelties, being on the top are the things most thought of and most dwelt on by her people), these are not matters for discussion here or now. In spite of these, she is to every intelligent mind an ancient and venerable portion of the Christian Church; and in her discharge of her ecclesiastical and religious duties, is to be protected and respected, teaching other Christians many lessons of devotion, consistency and courage, which we should do well to learn. Beside this, she is a factor in the lives of thousands of people, citizens of our country, who are kept from evil living by her ministrations and control; and when we consider the fact that the enormous majority of the crowded poor belong to her communion, that perhaps the most turbulent element in our citizenship owes at least a faint and nominal allegiance to her authority, that without the control of her priesthood, we should be powerless to deal, except by brute force, with great masses of the workingmen of America; we must certainly be ready to secure to her every opportunity for doing the legitimate work of a great Christian Church. Over and above this—and I say it with no unkindness—since an overwhelming proportion of the inmates of our institutions of reform consist of her people, it seems right to me, provided no money for the support of religious services come from the State funds, that her clergymen should have access to the inmates of these institutions under proper regulations. The Roman Church is also a beneficent institution, with multiplied and manifold orders and agencies of mercy and charity, in the support of which, and in their methods of administration, she is not only to be protected, but greatly admired and imitated by others.

And that such papers as the Independent and the Christian at Work, indorse it all, needs not to be proved by quotations.