p. 12 | Misplaced Credit by C. M. S.

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · May 26, 1910

Misplaced Credit

By C. M. S.

IN Gonzaga Hall, Washington, D. C., on May 2, Representative J. M. Graham, of Illinois, delivered an address before a Roman Catholic organization, making some statements in regard to Catholicism and liberty which are worthy of note in the interests of historical accuracy at least. In attempting to prove the Roman Catholic Church the grantor and custodian of liberty, he said:—

Great Britain, although a monarchy, represents, beyond any doubt, the freest country in the civil sense. The great charter of liberties was won by Catholic England three hundred years before the advent of Reformation; it was wrung from King John by Catholic barons and the people, led by a Catholic archbishop, Stephen Langton.

But to the mind of the one who knows what is the history of the case, the question at once arises: Why does the learned gentleman attribute this to the Catholic Church? If that was the act of the Catholic Church, it places Pope Innocent III in a very remarkable and embarrassing situation. It can not be that Mr. Graham has drawn his data from either Catholic or Protestant history. No Protestant historian gives the Roman Catholic Church credit for the Magna Charta, and Dr. J. J. I. von Döllinger, who was considered a good Catholic authority until 1870, in his famous book, “The Pope and the Council,” the second edition of which was published in 1869, overthrows completely Mr. Graham’s contention. He says:—

Let us remember that the noble mother of European constitutions, the English Magna Charta, was visited with the severest anger of Pope Innocent III, who understood its importance well enough. He saw therein a contempt for the Apostolic See, a curtailing of royal prerogatives, and a disgrace to the English nation; he therefore pronounced it null and void, and excommunicated the English barons who obtained it.—“The Pope and the Council” (2d edition), pages 22, 23.

Is it possible that Mr. Graham would have us consider the act of the excommunicated barons as the authoritative act of the Catholic Church? If so, what becomes of the papal bull of Innocent III, condemning those same barons, excommunicating them in fact, and declaring null and void the charter which they “wrung” from King John? They can not both stand as the authoritative act, attitude, and policy of the Catholic Church.

More than that, Innocent III not only condemned and excommunicated the barons, who “wrung” the charter from King John, but he absolved King John from adherence to the charter after it had been “wrung” from him. Now this historic fact places in a real dilemma any one who would make such an assertion as that of Mr. Graham. He can choose which horn of it he will, but it is impossible to choose both at once. If the Catholic barons represented the Catholic Church in wringing the charter from King John, what becomes of Pope Innocent III? If Pope Innocent III represented the Catholic Church in that matter, how can the Catholic Church claim any credit for the Magna Charta?

It is certainly beyond question that Innocent III, and not the English Catholic barons, represented the true attitude of the Catholic Church, inasmuch as a similar attitude was taken by the church toward other national constitutions. For example, a successor of Innocent III has stigmatized the Austrian Constitution as an “unspeakable abomination.” And Leo XII, in 1824, wrote Louis XVIII, of France, objecting strongly to the French Constitution, pointing out what he considered its evil features, and urging him to expunge those articles of the charter which savored of liberalism. A similar attitude was assumed toward the Belgian Constitution in 1832, when Gregory XVI issued his famous encyclical, which pronounces freedom of conscience an “insane folly,” and “freedom of the press a pestiferous error, which can not be sufficiently detested.” Says Döllinger: “The Belgian Catholics have never been able to meet the reproach of being necessarily enemies to a constitution condemned as wicked by the Pope.”—“Pope and the Council,” page 25.

The same writer (page 26), concerning the attitude of Catholics toward the United States Constitution, says:—

In the United States, Catholics can not form a political party. There, too, as an American bishop has assured us, their situation is most unfavorable as regards political influence and admission to office, because it is always cast in their teeth by Protestants that they find their principles in papal pronouncements, and can not therefore honestly accept the common liberties and obligations of a free state, but always cherish an arrière pensée that if ever they become strong enough, they will upset the Constitution.

We have no desire to take away from any one any glory that might be due him for any advance this world has ever made; but certain it is that in the matter of the credit for the Magna Charta, Mr. Graham puts the credit where it does not belong, and does not correctly represent to the world the real attitude of the Catholic Church toward constitutions and charters that speak the will of the people.

C. M. S.