Significant Catholic Utterances by C. S. L.

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Oct 30, 1913

Significant Catholic Utterances

By C. S. L.

At the recent national convention of the American Federation of Catholic Societies, it was reported that the federation had been flooded with letters asking it to use its efforts to have papers of the type of the Menace excluded from the mails.

“As will be remembered, federation had up this matter with the Postmaster-General and Attorney-General of the United States, and the conclusion was reached that no law could be enacted under our federal Constitution to stop the circulation of literature containing general violent criticisms of any particular faith. . . . Since no federal law can be enacted, it is proposed to have State laws passed by which such scurrilous and slanderous publications could be brought to time.”—Bulletin of A. F. of C. S., Vol. VII, No. 9, September, 1913.

We can see clearly from this that the Catholics deliberately propose to take from the American people, through adverse legislation in the State legislatures where they are in power, the liberties granted under the Constitution of the United States.

Another important statement found in the Catholic Bulletin is very significant. It is as follows:—

“The A. F. of C. S. has always publicly protested against the seizing of the civil sovereignty of the Pope and the infringement of the rights belonging to the Catholic Church. . . . ‘We protest against the impious spoliation of the church in her rights of property and in her liberty of action, and we demand and will continue to demand the absolute independence of the Holy See.’ . . . Let us renew our protest and send out a message from this convention to the Catholic federations and societies all over the world requesting them to uphold unflinchingly before their rulers the rightful claims of the Holy See, and let us ask all Catholics to pray that God might restore the vicar of Christ to a full and absolute independence of any civil government.”

The above instruction was given to the Catholics in private conference, but when Archbishop Ireland delivered an address to the public at the same convention, which he knew would be published to all the world, he no longer indulged in the esoteric doctrines, but in the exoteric teachings of the church, and set forth the following:—

“Church and state cover separate and distinct zones of thought and action: the church busies itself with the spiritual, the state with the temporal. The church and state are built for different purposes,—the church for heaven, the state for earth.

“The line of demarcation between the two jurisdictions was traced by the unerring finger of him who is the Master of both: the law of God is, ‘Render to Cæsar the things that are Cæsar’s; and to God the things that are God’s.’

“I rehearse a vital dogma of Catholic faith with regard to mutual relations of church and state. . . . The position of the Catholic Church, consequently of Catholics, towards the nation or state, is defined in clearest terms by the highest authority of the church. What is to be feared from the Catholic Church? To priest, to bishop, or to Pope, who—I am willing to consider the hypothesis—should attempt to rule in matters civil and political, to influence the citizen beyond the range of their own orbit of jurisdiction, that of the things of God, the answer is quickly made: Back to your own sphere of rights and duties—back to the things of God! Or, in like manner, should the state, or its officials, in law or in act, step beyond the frontier of temporal jurisdiction and dare lay hands on things spiritual and divine, the answer is: Beware! touch not the things which God has reserved to his duly appointed representatives in the spiritual order. . . . The partition of jurisdiction into the spiritual and temporal is a principle of Catholicism. . . . Religious freedom was barred by law in the colonies—Protestant creeds warring one with the other, all warring with the Catholic . . . save in Maryland while reigned there the spirit of the Catholic Lord Baltimore.”

This is a good sample of the exoteric teachings of the Catholic Church in flat contradiction to her esoteric dogmas. In the face of the past history of the Papacy, Archbishop Ireland said:—

“Into the past ages I do not now hold the field-glass of scrutiny, although, were I to do so, I were readily able to descry glorious work done by the Papacy, and to the wondering eye of a more modern world show it to have been ever the guardian of personal and social rights, ever the foster-mother of popular liberty and popular justice, ever the resplendent mirror of Him of whom it was written: ‘He passed by, doing good.’”

But how will Archbishop Ireland harmonize his statements with the following doctrines of his church? “That it is necessary to separate church and state is a thesis absolutely false,—a most pernicious error.”—Pope Pius X, in Encyclical to Bishops of France, Feb. 11, 1906. Again in the Syllabus of Pope Pius IX, Dec. 8, 1864, the following propositions are strenuously condemned as “errors of our time:”—

“Every man is free to embrace and profess the religion he believes true, guided by the light of reason.

“The church has not the power of availing herself of force or any direct or indirect temporal power.

“The church ought to be separated from the state, and the state from the church.

“Civil laws may and must be independent of divine and ecclesiastical authority.

“In the present day it is no longer expedient that the Catholic religion shall be held as the only religion of the state, or to the exclusion of all other modes of worship.

“Whence it has been wisely provided by law, in some countries called Catholic, that persons coming to reside therein shall enjoy the public exercise of their own worship.”

This is the double doctrine of Rome taught in a most beguiling way to deceive an uninformed public.

C. S. L.