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The Roman Peril

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Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Nov 23, 1911

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 88, No. 47.

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The Roman Peril

The editorial in the Outlook for November 4, based upon the interview with Cardinal Gibbons published in the same issue, raises a question of the gravest importance to the religious and political future of this country. As one reason for expressing your belief that “the Roman Catholic Church is not a peril to American institutions; its growth in the United States is not a menace,” you refer to the declaration of Pope Leo XIII concerning the relation between the church and the state. As stated by Cardinal Gibbons, this doctrine is: “The Almighty has appointed the charge of the human race between two powers, the ecclesiastical and the civil; the one being set over divine, the other over human, things. Each in its kind is supreme, each has fixed limits within which it is contained, limits which are defined by the nature and special objects of the province of each. . . . Neither obeys the other within the limits to which each is restricted by its constitution.”
The average Protestant who is accustomed to accept official utterances in their obvious meaning, would conclude from this quotation that the separation of the church from the state was an established principle with the Papacy. But the Roman Catholic who is well informed concerning the interpretation and application of this principle, in both past and present history, knows that he can assent to this statement and yet maintain the subordination of the civil to the pontifical power.
It will be pertinent in this connection as throwing light upon this subject to refer to the syllabus issued by Pope Pius IX, in 1864, condemning “the principal errors of our time.” Among the “errors” thus condemned are these: “The church has not the power of availing herself of force or any direct or indirect temporal power.” (“Ecclesia vis inferendæ potestatem non habet, neque potestatem ullam temporalem directam vel indirectam.”—Prop. 24.) “The church ought to be separate from the state, and the state from the church.”—Prop. 55. According to the Jesuit Schrader, the condemnation of the “error” referred to in proposition 24 establishes this affirmative proposition: “The church has the power to apply external coercion (äusseren Zwang anzuwenden): she has also a temporal authority direct and indirect.”—“Der Papst und die Modernen Ideen,” Von P. Clemens Schrader, S. J., page 64. This remark is added by Schrader: “Not souls alone are subject to her authority.”
The assumption of the right by the present pontiff, Pope Pius X, to interfere in the affairs of the nations is a forcible comment upon, and an authoritative interpretation of, the principle stated by Leo XIII. In his encyclical letter dated May 24, 1911, the present Pope asserts his power to nullify a nation’s law in condemning the law of separation recently enacted in Portugal. The following extract from this letter is taken from the American Catholic Quarterly Review (Philadelphia) for July, 1911: “Wherefore, as a sense of our apostolic duty prompts, in view of this insolence and audacity of the enemies of God, that we should vigilantly guard the dignity and honor of religion and preserve the rights of the holy Catholic Church, we of our apostolic authority reprobate, condemn, and reject the law separating church and state in Portugal. . . . And whilst 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 their protest against the same law the bishops of Portugal declare: “Though the church does not and can not approve in theory or in principle of the doctrine which regards separation as a better régime and more in accordance with progress, it may, for all that, under special circumstances, hypothetically accept separation as tolerable and as a lesser evil. . . . If the formula, ‘A free church in a free state,’ does not represent the ideal, it may be tolerable.”—The Catholic Mind, July 8-22, 1911, page 232.
From these official utterances of recent date, it is perfectly clear that the Roman Catholic Church does not believe in the Protestant idea of the separation of church and state, and in the last analysis claims the right to interfere with the civil power when in its judgment the rights of the church are abridged. An appeal to history shows that this has been the consistent record of the Roman Catholic Church for many centuries.
That the interests of the state are to be treated as wholly subordinate to the interests of the Roman Catholic Church is the doctrine taught by a leading Roman Catholic paper in America. To quote: “For the forty-five years that we have been editing a Catholic paper, we have made it our invariable policy to follow the lead of the holy father in politics. We always declared that if the Pope wanted the States of the Church, or any other states, we wanted him to have them, and were willing to go any lengths to secure them to him. . . . The head of the church knows what he wants, and every Catholic should do his best to assist him in attaining it. . . . We care nothing for the opinions of Catholics in Europe or America when they are not in agreement with the views of the Vatican. We care nothing for the interests of Italy or any other country when the higher interests of the church and religion are at stake.”—Western Watchman (St. Louis), Sept. 21, 1911.
This is quite in harmony with the principle enunciated in an article in the Catholic World for July, 1870, Vol. II, page 439: “While the state has some rights, she has them only in virtue and by permission of the superior authority, and that authority can only be expressed through the church; that is, through the organic law infallibly announced and unchangeably asserted, regardless of temporal consequences.”
To the same effect is the argument made by Dr. O. A. Brownson, an American writer who abandoned Protestantism for Romanism. In his “Essays and Reviews” (New York, P. J. Kennedy and Sons) he uses this plain language: “She [the church] is, under God, the supreme judge of both laws [revealed and natural], which for her are but one law; and hence she takes cognizance, in her tribunals, of the breaches of the natural law as well as of the revealed, and has the right to take cognizance of its breaches by nations as well as of its breaches by individuals, by the prince as well as the subject, for it is the supreme law for both. The state is, therefore, only an inferior court, bound to receive the law from the supreme court [the church], and liable to have its decrees reversed on appeal.”—Page 284.
It requires no argument to show that the doctrine set forth in these remarkable utterances is utterly subversive of the American and Christian principle of the separation of church and state, as understood by Protestants, and yet they are the official declarations of the Papacy as interpreted by modern American Catholics.
In conclusion, I will call attention to some utterances by Leo XIII, in addition to the one quoted by Cardinal Gibbons. In his encyclical “Immortale Dei” of Nov. 7, 1885, is found this paragraph: “Every Catholic should rigidly adhere to the teachings of the Roman pontiff, especially in the matter of modern liberty, which, already, under the semblance of honesty of purpose, leads to destruction. We exhort all Catholics to devote careful attention to public matters, and take part in all municipal affairs and elections, and all public services, meetings, and gatherings. All Catholics must make themselves felt as active elements in daily political life in countries where they live. All Catholics should exert their power to cause the constitutions of states to be modeled on the principles of the true church.”—Cited in “Facing the Twentieth Century,” by James M. King, page 215.
From the letter of Pope Leo XIII to Cardinal Gibbons, dated Jan. 22, 1889, this extract is taken: “From the foregoing [paragraphs] it is manifest, beloved son, that we are not able to give approval to those views which, in their collective sense, are called by some ‘Americanism.’ For it would give rise to the suspicion that there are among you some who conceive and would have the church in America to be different from what it is in the rest of the world.”
The Roman Catholic Church in America must defend and act upon the principles established by the authoritative teachings of the Pope of Rome, or reject the ex cathedra utterances of the head of the church; but it has not repudiated these doctrines, neither will it dare to do so.
Inasmuch as semper eadem is the boast of the Papacy, I think I am fully warranted in affirming on the strength of the testimony already introduced (and much more is available) that the authoritative teachings of the Roman Catholic hierarchy on the relations of the church to the state are diametrically opposed to the views entertained by the founders of this nation, and destructive of political and religious liberty, and that therefore the growth of the Roman Catholic Church in this country is a peril to American institutions.