Rome and Good Citizenship by S. B. H.

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Tacoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Oct 19, 1911

Rome and Good Citizenship

By S. B. H.

THE Washington Post of September 22 reports President Taft as having made the following statement in a speech at Kalamazoo, Mich.:— “At Nazareth College he spoke of the tenets of the Catholic Church, which he said are loyalty to constituted authority and love of country. ‘The better the Catholic, the better the American,’ he said.”

Suppose we view this last statement which the President is alleged to have made, “The better the Catholic, the better the American,” in the light of the following statements:—

Pope Leo XIII, in his encyclical of June 20, 1888, on “Human Liberty,” said:— “From what has been said, it follows that it is quite unlawful to demand, defend, or grant unconditionally freedom of thought, of speech, of writing, or of worship, as if these were so many rights given by nature to man.”

Pope Boniface VIII, in his famous bull “Unam Sanctam,” said:— “In this church and in its power are two swords,—to wit, a spiritual and a temporal,—and this we are taught by the words of the gospel. . . . Both, therefore, the spiritual and material swords are in the power of the church, the latter indeed to be used for the church, the former by the church, the one by the priest, the other by the hands of kings and soldiers, but by the will and sufferance of the priest. It is fitting, moreover, that one sword should be under the other, and the temporal authority subject to the spiritual power. . . . We, moreover, proclaim, declare, and pronounce that it is altogether necessary for salvation for every human being to be subject to the Roman pontiff.”

Pius IX, in his syllabus of 1864, condemned as heretical the proposition, “The church must be separate from the state, and the state from the church.”

Pope Leo XIII, in an encyclical, made the following statement:— “We exhort all Catholics who would devote careful attention to public matters, to take an active part in all municipal affairs and elections, and to further the principles of the church in all public services, meetings, and gatherings. All Catholics must make themselves felt as active elements in daily political life in the countries where they live. They must penetrate wherever possible in the administration of civil affairs; must constantly exert their utmost vigilance and energy to prevent the usages of liberty from going beyond the limits fixed by God’s law. All Catholics should do all in their power to cause the constitutions of States, and legislation, to be modeled after the principles of the true church. All Catholic writers and journalists should never for an instant lose from view the above prescriptions. All Catholics should redouble their submission to authority, and unite their whole heart, soul, and body, and mind in the defense of the church.”

These utterances have never been amended nor repealed by the Catholic Church, and so we are justified in believing that they continue to be the voice of the church. As an evidence that these principles continue to reflect the attitude of the Roman Catholic Church, we have but to point to the struggles made in Portugal and Spain in behalf of religious liberty. It seems plain that the good Catholic must subscribe to the principles mentioned above; but, in so doing, he is far from being an exponent of the principles of American citizenship. America stands for the absolute separation of church and state. The matter should stand, The better the Catholic, the worse the American.

S. B. H.