A Champion of Liberty by C. M. S.

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Dec 3, 1914

A Champion of Liberty

By C. M. S.

IN an address before the diocesan branch of the Federation of Catholic Societies in Boston on November 15, Cardinal O’Connell gave a strong address on religious liberty, even going so far as to criticize with considerable vehemence the policy and attitude of the American government and its representatives in Mexico toward the present government in Mexico. He is reported to have characterized the present conditions in Mexico as “disgraceful anarchy,” and to have condemned the agents of the Wilson administration in Mexico as “incapable.” In that country, the cardinal declared, a conspiracy has for two years deluged the country with blood, drained its material resources, and “spread atheism and anarchy over a land once happy and industrious.” His final appeal to the Catholic citizenship in this country reads:—

Every Catholic in the country should rise up and protest with all the legitimate power in his possession against the recognition of any government in Mexico or anywhere else in this continent which does not guarantee perfect freedom of religion as it is understood by the citizens of the United States.—Washington Post, Nov. 16, 1914.

If the cardinal’s pronouncement were taken seriously by the Catholic citizenship of this country, and the government should do what they demand, the United States would spring at once into a state of “splendid isolation” in the Western Hemisphere; for there is not another independent republic in either North or South America that is based upon the principles of religious liberty as they are expressed in the fundamental law of this land. Therefore the American government would refuse to recognize any independent nation in the Western Hemisphere. Not another nation guarantees freedom in religious faith and practice as it is guaranteed in the United States. This would be preaching religious liberty with a vengeance.

But the cardinal does not mean this; he does not really want this. If he did, he would be sanctioning the efforts of those elements in the South American nations that are seeking, against great odds, to bring about even a small degree of religious liberty in their respective countries. The attempt to amend the constitution of Peru so that the Roman Catholic Church would not be the only authorized or permitted religion in that country has been strenuously opposed by the leaders of that church in Peru. The American government has not been requested to withdraw recognition from Peru until she does amend her constitution in that particular.

For centuries the Roman Catholic Church was the only recognized or authorized church or religion in Mexico, and Protestants were persecuted, beaten, and killed for practicing and preaching evangelical Christianity in Mexico. There was no outcry then by any Roman Catholic cardinal, bishop, or priest against the recognition of Mexico until she should “guarantee perfect freedom of religion as it is understood by the citizens of the United States.”

But now the Roman Church is in difficulty in Mexico. Her political activities have made her persona non grata with the new régime. She has lately promised that she would cease such activities, but the new government seems not very deeply impressed with her promises. Many of her churches have been desecrated or closed, her priests and nuns maltreated, much of her property confiscated, and her processions hindered; and all this by a people whom she has had under her absolute control and dominance for centuries. As it was in the Philippines, in France, in Portugal, so is it today in Mexico. In the Philippines the Roman Church had the powerful United States government to come to its rescue, to pacify the natives, and permit the Roman Church to come again into its own. Now she desires the same nation to come to her rescue in Mexico, protect her from her own children, and help her to obtain control there again. The future of the Roman Church would look dark indeed to the cardinal if he did not feel that the church had the great Protestant nation America to come to her rescue from time to time and save her from herself in other lands.

Wherever the Roman Church has had complete control in a nation, her own course has killed her power and influence. Italy, the home of the Papacy, has stripped the Pope of his temporal power, and hampered him in other ways. France, “the eldest daughter of the church,” has repudiated the hierarchy, stripped the Papacy of its control, taken the ownership of its churches out of its hands, outlawed its institutions and associations, and expelled the members of its religious communities. Portugal has done the same, Spain has threatened, and Mexico has laid heavy and ruthless hands upon the church. Infidelity is now rife in all these lands, and the same conditions are rapidly developing in South America.

Only in countries that are established upon principles that are antipapal in nature is the Roman Church safe from her own children; and this ought to be a demonstration, even to the Roman hierarchy, that if America were made dominantly Catholic, the Roman Church would lose the strongest guaranty of its existence; and that if the whole world were under her dominance, it would spell her certain ruin.

We should be glad to see religious liberty in Mexico, and in every other country in the world; but its truest and most sincere advocates are those who practice it themselves, and are as ready to guarantee it to others as to plead for it in their own behalf. C. M. S.