Untitled article | AdventAI

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

“The Sovereign Pontiff.”

AN article in the February number of the North American Review on “Territorial Sovereignty and the Papacy,” by Mgr. O’Reilly should set American readers to doing some very earnest thinking. The purpose of it is to try to show that the pope ought to have a territory of his own, in which he should be absolutely independent of all civil authority. The idea appears to be that the pope should be situated so as to be a sort of father and arbiter for all mankind, and that he will not be looked up to as such by all the nations if he is in any manner subject to the government of any one nation. After referring to the complications with Italy growing out of the killing of Italians at New Orleans two years ago, Mgr. O’Reilly makes this startling proposition:—

The day may come when to avoid war between this country and Italy, a worse thing might be done than to invoke the peaceful mediation or arbitration of the sovereign pontiff.

It is difficult to imagine what “worse thing might be done” than to relinquish our own sovereignty as an independent nation, and give to the pope or to any other hierarch the power to meddle with our affairs, a power which once acquired would not be given up. The very term “sovereign pontiff,” used by Mgr. O’Reilly, a man who is very near the pope, is a pretty clear indication of the disposition to get and hold authority and power which has lodgment in the papal breast. It is a very human ambition, but it is one that develops vigorously in ecclesiastical circles and the American people cannot afford to subordinate the civil authority of the whole people as vested in their regularly chosen official representatives, to any ecclesiastical domination from any source, even to the extent of an “arbitration.” This is true if the ecclesiastical authority were part of ourselves; it is overwhelmingly true when such authority is outside of ourselves. The total separation of the State and the Church, any Church, in any form, or under any guise, is absolutely essential, and it is right along this line at the present time that “Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.” Even now efforts are being made in the United States to enforce religious observances by national law and constitutional amendments, and persecution of non-conformists has already begun in some quarters under State laws now in existence.—Midland (Mich.) Republican, Feb. 23, 1894.