“TOO MUCH LIBERTY,” SAYS THE POPE.
By L. A. S.
The clerical organ in Vienna, Die Information, states that the pope recently made an address to the Catholic bishops in which he touched on the subject of the cause of President McKinley’s assassination. The cause, he declared, was too much freedom. As this Catholic organ reported him, “President McKinley was a victim of the excessive freedom granted to the people of the United States.” And what is this “excessive freedom”? let us ask. The fundamental law of the nation—the Constitution—is its charter of liberty, and in this charter it is provided:— “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, or abridging the freedom of speech or of the press.”—Article 1, Amendments to the Constitution. In this part of the Constitution, which is known as its “Bill of Rights,” it is further specified that the people shall be “secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures;” that “a presentment or indictment of a grand jury” shall be necessary to hold an individual for trial on a charge, of felony, except in the military service; that no person shall be twice “put in jeopardy of life or limb” for the same offense; nor be compelled to be a witness against himself; nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law; that every person arrested for crime shall “enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial” by an impartial jury; that “excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines be imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted,” etc. All these safeguards of the public liberties were defined not by the imagination of evils that might come, but by the history of those that had been. The framers of the Constitution simply enumerated the ways in which human rights had been trampled on by the despotic governments of the old world, and declared that the repetition of these evils should not be under the government of the new republic. The black stain of this despotism was then fresh upon the pages of history, and was vividly before the minds of our forefathers while they were building the great bulwark of our freedom. And this despotism which they sought to exclude forever from the shores of this country was that of the lands which had been so long dominated by the papacy—that power which is to-day what it was then, according to its own admission and boast. The papacy did not believe then in “too much liberty,” and no more does it believe in American liberty now. We may trace this liberty further back and get more exactly at the reason of the papal feeling against it. Before the Constitution was framed, there had gone forth from the revolting colonists a “Declaration of Independence,” which asserted that all men possessed by gift from their Creator “certain unalienable rights,” with which no government could justly interfere, but which it was the proper purpose of civil government to preserve. But whence came this assertion of the doctrine of inalienable rights? Whence but from the great Reformation that had swept over Europe shortly before, proclaiming the doctrine of justification by faith, and thus asserting the right as well as the duty of every man to think for himself? The right to think for one’s self means nothing without the right to act for one’s self in harmony with one’s convictions of right and duty; and this meant to our forefathers the right to religious freedom, which in turn meant that there was a sphere in which the individual was free from all authority save that of God; which meant that with religious freedom and all that was essential thereto neither pope nor king could rightfully interfere; which meant that there was a sphere of “certain unalienable rights” possessed by every man; which meant that just government must recognize these rights; which meant that just government was not a monarchy, but a republic. Thus it appears that the “excess of liberty” which the pope beholds in America is a direct outgrowth of the Reformation, which so greatly curtailed the truly excessive liberty of the popes. It is not strange that the Roman pontiff is opposed to American liberty. He has been careful, however, about expressing his opposition, but deems the present occasion an opportune one to voice his sentiments and lend his influence to help forward a possible movement away from this liberty, back toward the old order of things for which the papacy has always stood. But no one who values the principles and doctrines of Protestantism will be willing to surrender in any degree the freedom guaranteed to men under the Declaration of Independence and the national Constitution. L. A. S.