The New Cardinals by William Warren Prescott

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Nov 30, 1911

The New Cardinals

By William Warren Prescott

The Significance of the Pope's Choice

Much interest has been aroused among both Protestants and Roman Catholics, by the official announcement that Pope Pius X had selected three members of the hierarchy in America to be the recipients of the red hat. Comment upon this action has been wide-spread and of quite a diverse character, varying with the standpoint of the writers and their attitude toward the Roman Church. Of course, the Roman Catholic press has been very jubilant, and columns of the most fulsome eulogy of the three prelates selected have been printed.

Although neither the people nor the clergy have the least voice in the selection of these cardinals who exercise such a controlling voice in the affairs of the church, yet so thoroughly have they been educated in the spirit of subserviency to the absolutely monarchical power in their church that they accept this appointment of Americans to the college of cardinals as a gracious favor on the part of the Pope, which calls forth most humble expressions of gratitude, although they well know that the membership of the curia is still overwhelmingly Italian, and that Italian influence will continue to dominate all branches of their church.

In its comment upon “the new American cardinals,” the Outlook of November 11 analyzes the situation with quite a clear perception of the significance of the selection made by Pope Pius X. There appeared in these columns last week an article which took direct issue with some recent utterances in the Outlook that appeared to us to be altogether unjustifiable commendation of the Roman Catholic Church; and we, therefore, take satisfaction in presenting extracts from an editorial in its very next issue dealing with the Pope’s most recent appointments:—

There has been a growing feeling that a branch of the Roman Catholic Church so powerful as that in America, ought to have more adequate representation in the councils of the church, and it has been the belief of many well-informed people that Cardinal Gibbons would not have been left the only American cardinal so many years if it had not been for the distrust of American influence on the part of many of the Italian cardinals, who have constituted a kind of close corporation.

The appointment of three additional American cardinals is therefore a matter of moment in the history of the Roman Catholic Church in America; but the appointments will hardly give satisfaction to those Americans, either within or without the church, who desire to see it in a position to play a great part in the healthy development of American life. Of the three new cardinals, one, Mgr. Falconio, is an Italian by birth who entered the Franciscan order in 1860, and succeeded Cardinal Martinelli in 1902 as papal delegate to the United States. His relations with our government are unofficial; he is a man of tact and ability; but Mgr. Falconio hardly represents the Catholic Church in this country. Archbishop Farley, of New York, another of the three appointees, is an admirable administrator, a man of kindly nature and benignant spirit, who has the respect of the Protestant community as well as of his own people, but who is not, in a large sense of the word, a leader. Archbishop O’Connell, of Boston, is a younger man of vigor and ability, but is a representative of the reactionary spirit in the church. He is the most prominent American representative of the Spanish influence in the Vatican, the chief exponent of which is Cardinal Merry del Val, whose hatred of all things American is a matter of general knowledge, . . . [and] is an aggressive leader of the narrow school within his own church, an aristocratic ecclesiastic in a democratic community. . . .

Protestants and many Catholics will regret that the Pope has missed a great opportunity of elevating to the college of cardinals those Roman Catholic ecclesiastics in this country upon whom the American people, without regard to religious differences, look as religious statesmen and natural leaders in the movement for the brotherhood of man.

It is evident that the Outlook attempts to deal with the Roman Catholic Church on the basis that certain members of the hierarchy in America whom it regards as of progressive spirit, really represent Roman Catholicism; but any one who is familiar with the history of the Roman Catholic Church ought to know that it has been the uniform policy of the Italian hierarchy, the ruling power in Romanism, either to ignore or to crush every progressive movement in any country, and that when one weighs the question of the growth of Roman Catholic influence in the United States, he must take into consideration, not the utterances of the most liberal-minded representatives of that church who stand for what Pope Leo XIII condemned as “Americanism,” but the official utterances of the Italian rulers, whose well-defined policy is to maintain the medieval views of the Papacy, and to enforce them in every land. The encyclical of Pope Pius X, dated May 24, 1911, condemning the law of separation in Portugal, is a fresh illustration of the papal claim to a divine right to nullify the laws of any nation which appear to be prejudicial to the interests of Rome. In this encyclical Pius X, following the example of the medieval popes, thus asserts his superiority over all civil government:—

While we complain in the strongest manner that a law of this kind should be passed, sanctioned, and brought forward in public, and solemnly expostulate with all who have prepared it or taken part in the work, we proclaim and announce that whatsoever it contains contrary to the inviolable rights of the church is null and void, and is to be so held.

In order to maintain this ultramontane theory of the Papacy which gives to the Pope the place of God on earth, such members of the hierarchy are appointed to the college of cardinals as are in sympathy with the extreme claims of the Papacy, while those who believe that the world has outgrown the papal absolutism of the dark ages, are entirely ignored. There is a significance in these facts which ought not to escape the attention of those who attempt to forecast the influence of the Roman Catholic Church upon the institutions of this country.

The spirit in which the Outlook’s reference to the selection of candidates for the red hat is received in Roman Catholic circles, may be judged by a brief extract from an editorial in the Catholic Standard and Times (Philadelphia) of Nov. 18, 1911. Referring personally to Dr. Lyman Abbott, the editor-in-chief of the Outlook, this paper editorially declares that—

he allows the magazine of which he is the chief editor to interfere in the Holy Father’s official business, and lecture him upon the men whom he has chosen to be cardinals, and whom he has passed over, in the exercise of his spiritual authority, in the coolest manner possible! The language of the article in which this insult is offered to the Pope is, without exception, the most freezingly cynical that ever was printed. It is the worst example of bad taste that ever emanated from a printing-office, implying a right to criticize the action of a pope in the government of the church, on the part of critics who always emphatically repudiated the right of the Papacy to regulate even its own etiquette in the reception of American visitors [referring to the Fairbanks-Roosevelt-Vatican incident].

It is plain from this extract that the defenders of the Papacy regard any criticism of the Pope in the same light as a devoted Christian would regard a slurring reference to the Ruler of the universe. Perhaps this may suggest to the Outlook how much freedom of the press would remain in this country if the principles of Roman Catholicism should have full sway.

The signs of the times which indicate the policy and purpose of the Roman Catholic hierarchy in America have become so plain that he may run who reads them. No longer are we left to deduce from general principles what would be the probable course of the papal representatives in this country. We have a large number of concrete examples from which to draw our conclusions, and it seems astonishing that so many observers, whose intelligence can not be discredited, should fail to understand the meaning of these things. The only explanation of such a situation is found in the fact that there is an intelligence more than human, and a cunning of the supernatural order displayed, in directing the movements of the Papacy, and in so craftily hiding the real issues involved that black is made to appear white, and the kingdom of Satan is substituted for the kingdom of God. It is in the light of the sure word of prophecy that the working of the “mystery of iniquity” can be clearly seen. W. W. P.