Untitled article by C. M. S.

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Jun 9, 1910

Roman Purpose and American Liberties—No. 1

By C. M. S.

The greater religious bodies of the country are courting the smiles of the Roman Church in spite of her designs against the country, against its purposes, and against its institutions. Rome’s legitimate jurisdiction, as viewed by her, “is limited only by the boundaries of the world.” The Pope is reckoned a “domestic prince” in every nation of the world. It is the purpose of the hierarchy that the Pope shall be king over all kings; that all people and all religions shall ultimately be brought into subjection to him, and that by the use of bodily punishment if necessary. Protestants have long considered themselves outside the papal jurisdiction. Rome does not so regard them, as the following Catholic statement of the case will show:—

Baptized infidels, such as heretics and apostates usually are, also baptized schismatics, may be compelled, even by corporal punishment, to return to the Catholic faith and the unity of the church. The reason is, because these by baptism have become subject to the church; and therefore the church has jurisdiction over them, and the power of compelling them through appointed means to obedience, and to fulfil the obligations contracted in baptism.—Dens, Vol. II, No. 51, page 80.

It may be news to many Protestants to learn that they are considered subjects of the man-made spiritual king of the world—the Pope; but the foregoing is too plain to be misunderstood, and is corroborated by the following teaching of St. Augustine:—

In all points in which they [heretics] think with us [Catholics], they are also in communion with us—are severed from us only in those points in which

they dissent from us. What they have retained of the teaching of the church, they do not lose by severance from her; hence the power of conferring baptism may be found outside the church. Moreover, it is Christ himself who baptizes. The grace of the sacrament is wholly independent of the qualification of him who administers it.—“Universal Church History,” Alzog, page 424.

Through such reasoning does the Catholic Church claim the fealty of all who have acknowledged their Lord’s claims by taking part in the sacred ordinance of baptism. She does not even wait for the performance of that rite by individual preference or by Protestant clergymen, if the following from Hogan’s “Auricular Confession” (page 130) be true:—

I baptized more children than any clergyman in Philadelphia; among these were hundreds of Presbyterians, Episcopalians, Methodists, and Baptists, brought to me for that purpose by their Roman Catholic nurses, without the knowledge of their Protestant mothers.—Quoted in Cathcart’s “Papal System,” page 163.

How many other Catholic priests are doing the same thing may never be known; but to some such unwarranted mode of procedure as this must be attributed the wide discrepancy between the seventeen million adherents which they claim in this country, and the eleven million seven hundred ninety-five thousand which the statistician, Dr. H. K. Carroll, allows them. The moral obliquity revealed in such a transaction as that boasted of in the foregoing quotation is sufficiently apparent without further comment.

Claiming jurisdiction over all the world, claiming the unfaltering fealty of all who have been baptized in any church, a necessary step to the recognition and enforcement of her claims is the rehabilitation of the Inquisition. Many Protestants delude themselves with the idea that the Roman Church would not use that right-hand supporter of her sovereignty in the present enlightened age, even if she felt herself sufficiently powerful to protect herself in its use. Such persons are not conversant with the facts, and have become Rome’s apologists for an institution which she herself does not apologize for.

In a work entitled, “Plain Talk About the Protestantism of To-day,” by Monsignor Segur, published originally in France, translated into English, and published in both England and the United States, we find these words in reference to the Spanish Inquisition:—

That institution you may value as you choose; you are at liberty to condemn the abuses and the cruelties of which it has been guilty through the violence of political passions and the character of the Spaniard; yet one can not but acknowledge, in the terrible part taken by the clergy in its trials, the most legitimate and most natural exercise of ecclesiastical authority.—Part III, proposition VII, page 186.

Monsignor Segur does not hesitate to declare that the Inquisition was established by Roman Catholic governments as an “ecclesiastical institution,” thus plainly indicating that it had the sanction and approbation of the Catholic Church; and this work is circulated in the United States with the approval of the bishop of Boston, whose “imprimatur” appears on its title-page. It will be noted that he does not give Catholics permission to condemn the Inquisition as an institution, nor even the Spanish Inquisition as such. It is only the cruelties and abuses which he charges to “political passion” that they are at liberty to condemn. Of the institution itself there is no word of disapproval.

In a work entitled “Letters on the Spanish Inquisition,” by Comte Le Maistre, we find the following glowing tribute to that institution:—

The Inquisition is, in its very nature, good, mild, and preservative. It is the universal, indelible character of every ecclesiastical institution; you see it in Rome, and you can see it wherever the true church has power.—Page 22.

This writer, whose work is approvingly referred to by Cardinal Gibbons (“Faith of Our Fathers,” page 291), frankly admits that the Inquisition existed in Spain “by virtue of the bull of the sovereign pontiff.” Nevertheless, the cardinal, writing of the same institution, says:—

It was conceived, systematized, regulated in all its procedures and judgments, equipped with officers and powers, and its executions, fines, and confiscations were carried out by the royal authority alone, and not by the church.—“Faith of Our Fathers,” page 291.

Le Maistre was much nearer, both geographically and in point of time, to the institution of which he wrote than was the cardinal, Le Maistre’s work appearing in 1815. In view of the fact that Le Maistre’s book is recommended by the cardinal as “an impartial account of the Inquisition,” we must give credence to his statement of the case. The cardinal declares the Catholic Church should not be held accountable for the atrocities of the Spanish Inquisition because it was conducted by the state and not by the church. If this were true, it is also true that that state was a Catholic state, and the Inquisition in it could have been abolished by one word from the Pope. But no Pope ever uttered that word; no one was ever excommunicated for taking part in its cruel practises; and even to the present time the bishops of that church are required to take oath to “observe the laws of the Inquisition.”—“Dealings With the Inquisition,” Dr. Giacinto Achilli, page 74.

C. M. S.