“Liberty” Under Fire by C. S. L.

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Tacoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Nov 27, 1913

“Liberty” Under Fire

By C. S. L.

The Catholic Standard and Times, the foremost Catholic weekly published in America, under date of November 15, contained an interesting editorial write-up of nearly one and one-half columns, giving its opinion of the last issue of the Liberty magazine. The Christian Statesman, the National Reform organ, in a recent number, also contained a seven-column editorial review of the current issue of Liberty.

We are very sorry these periodicals have such unfavorable opinions of Liberty and its motives. It is difficult to please this Catholic editor. Liberty has openly opposed some of the purposes of the Catholics, and they have called its writers “blatant ranters” and “vituperious blasphemers.” Now when it volunteers to defend their rights, they call its writers hypocrites, and say we are “sugar-coating the poisonous pill;” that they can “discover the forked tail and the cloven feet coiled and hiding beneath the shadow of the overgarment;” and that Liberty, though it “can coo as gently as a sucking dove,” it is like the “crocodile” which “is ready to gobble the victim up the while he wipes tears from his eyes with his fore paw.”

This might sound amusing if it were intended for mere pleasantry, but it is written in all seriousness by this Catholic editor, in reference to an article in the current issue of Liberty, entitled “Catholics and Protestants Possess Equal Rights.” Because it was declared that we did not favor their purpose to obtain governmental recognition and public-school money for sectarian purposes and differed from them in questions concerning the relation of the church to the state, but held that as citizens in this country they were unqualifiedly entitled to the same rights and privileges in every particular as their Protestant neighbors, the Liberty magazine is called “a dangerous dissembler.”

The editor opens his lengthy article like this: “Liberty is the name borne by a recently founded candidate for the dimes of religious bigots and nativists. It is a production of the same intent as the Menace, but wiser in its methods. Their objective is the same—to batter at the citadel of the Catholic Church and endeavor to cripple it in its sublime mission.”

But the magazine Liberty had its birth in January, 1886, while the Catholic Standard and Times was born in December, 1895. When the editor of the Standard and Times learns that very many of Liberty’s readers are good Catholics, he may wish to modify his statement that the Liberty magazine is patronized only by “religious bigots and nativists.” Here is a statement from one prominent Roman Catholic from New York City who is not ashamed to read our magazine. He says: “I always read with a great deal of pleasure your magazine, particularly the issue for this month. Religion cannot be, or must not be, shoved down anybody’s throat in this country. I am a Catholic (may not be considered a good one), but I am an American first, last, and all the time. Roman Catholics must be taught to keep their hands off of a complete separation of church and state. We want and will accept of no religious party in this country. . . . Worship where you will, and do what you will, remember this is America, and Protestants and Jews are as good as Roman Catholics, and better if they obey the laws of the country. I wish you every success.”

Our experience has taught us that there are many thousands of American Catholics in this country who are just as large-hearted, liberal-minded, and favorable to the American principle of separation of church and state as is our Catholic friend from whose letter we have just quoted, and we are charitable enough to believe that the editor of the Catholic Standard and Times of Philadelphia and the editor of the Western Watchman do not represent the real sentiment of a large portion of the American native-bred Catholic people upon these subjects. No doubt, the editors of those journals will call this “specious charity,” as one did when we said that “Catholics and Protestants possess equal rights.”

The editor styles our article on “Freedom of Speech” “a charming specimen of that kind of rhetoric which is properly styled ‘glozing’—the deceitful compound which looks fair on the surface, but which is nauseous asafetida within. Here is a choice morsel of special pleaders’ casuistry,” and another “way of ‘whipping the devil around the stump.’”

The article on “Religious Liberty in the Philippines” did not please the Catholic editor; for he boldly declares: “The Philippines are in no sense ‘Protestant land.’ They are ‘Catholic land,’ and were brought to civilization by the Catholic Church. The Protestant missionaries there are intruders, and have no lawful business there. Their only hope is to proselytize.”

From this argument it is very evident that Protestants “are intruders, and have no lawful business” in America after “America shall become dominantly Catholic” and “the foremost Catholic nation in the world,” as the Catholic press has repeatedly stated.

The editor takes Liberty to task for asserting that “the American government was founded upon Bible principles of separation of church and state.” He says that “this government was not established on Bible principles. Thomas Jefferson, who had the main hand in framing it, was not a believer in Christianity; he believed rather the teachings of Tom Paine than those of Christ. Next, it was the Papacy that preserved the Bible. Were it not for the popes, these praters would not have any Bible to boast about.”

We will let Thomas Jefferson answer this argument himself. His writings still speak to us. In a letter written from Monticello, under date of Jan. 9, 1816, to Charles Thomson, by Thomas Jefferson, we have a clear expression of his religious faith as follows:—“I have made a wee little book, which I call the Philosophy of Jesus; it is a paradigm of his doctrines, made by cutting the texts out of the Book, and arranging them on the pages of a blank book, in a certain order of time or subject. A more beautiful and precious morsel of ethics I have never seen; it is a document in proof that I am a real Christian, that is to say, a disciple of Jesus.”—“Writings of Thomas Jefferson,” Vol. VII.

When Jefferson drew up his “act for establishing religious freedom” and “completely separating church and state,” he emphatically declared that “to propagate religion by coercions,” as was done under the old system of union of church and state, “was a departure from the plan of the holy Author of our religion,” who said, “Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s; and unto God the things that are God’s.”—Id., Vol. VIII, page 454 et seq.

Here is corroborative evidence: “Can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are the gift of God? That they are not to be violated but with his wrath? Indeed, I tremble for my country, when I reflect

that God is just; and that his justice cannot sleep forever.”—“Notes on Virginia,” by Jefferson.

Our government was founded upon the true and original Protestant and Scriptural idea of a total separation of church and state, and an indiscriminate equality of civil and religious privileges and rights of all its citizens before the law.

C. S. L.