Untitled article | AdventAI

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

They Will Not Confess: They Dare Not Deny.

THE Catholic journals in the United States neither made any reply to the specific charges formulated against the Catholic hierarchy in regard to its declared claims and purposes, nor do they attempt any defense of them. It is apparently quite impossible to extract from one of them either a denial of those claims on the one hand, or an acknowledgment that they are true on the other. The fact, of course, is that the organs of the hierarchy are in a dilemma and unwilling to impale themselves on either horn of it. If they should acknowledge as church canons, for example, the following, that, (1.) “The Roman Catholic Church has the right to deprive the civil authority of the entire government of public schools; (2,) That she has the right of perpetuating the union of Church and State; (3,) That she has the right to require that the Catholic religion shall be the only religion of the State, to the exclusion of all others, and (4,) That she has the right of requiring the State not to permit the free expression of opinion,”—if open acknowledgment were made of these, which are political claims of the hierarchy, by the Catholic journals, it might shock, to some extent, the sentiment of many Catholics who consider

themselves loyal American citizens; being themselves ignorant of the political policy and claims of the close corporation by which they are governed—the teaching church, the hierarchy. On the other hand the Catholic journals cannot deny what that hierarchy has openly proclaimed as canon law and the constitution of the papacy. They cannot be induced to respond to any challenge involving these facts, nor to admit any such information into their columns that might have the effect of opening the eyes of the millions, dupes of the hierarchy. They much prefer to remain doggedly silent, or whine for sympathy from non-Catholics quite as ignorant as millions of the hierarchy's own subjects of its aims and purposes. Rome ever wears a mask.—American Constitution.