Will Rome Rule America? by F. M. W.

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Dec 1, 1910

Will Rome Rule America?

By F. M. W.

This question is agitating many thoughtful minds at the present time. The growth of Roman Catholic influence, and its increasing power in the political, social, and industrial life of the nation, are leading many to ask, What will be the outcome of the future?

The November number of Current Literature, in discussing this problem of the Catholic Church, says:—

Roman Catholicism in America is at high tide. New York is now the strongest Catholic city in the world, and the United States has become the fourth Catholic power, being surpassed only by France, Austria, and Italy.

Catholics themselves are alive to the glorious prospect which they feel this country presents. Cardinal Vincenzo Vanutelli, the Pope’s personal representative at the Eucharistic Congress, said this of the United States:—

The Holy Father is coming more and more to regard your wonderful United States as the favorite daughter of the church. Catholicism has here made more wonderful strides than anywhere else in the world. Your bishops, priests, and teachers have built up a magnificent church organization. Under your government of freedom and personal liberty, the church and its individuals have prospered splendidly. Your country is amazing to a stranger; but no less amazing is its Catholicism.

Speaking of the growth of Catholicism in the United States, and particularly of its progress in New York City, Father Bernard Vaughan said, in a recent sermon in New York City:—

You yourselves are witnesses of the matchless, the miraculous growth and output of the church. Take New York. Only two hundred years ago—two hundred members of Christ’s Church, one priest, and one poor little chapel, on whose ground I stood and prayed last night; and to-day an archbishop, with two auxiliary bishops, twenty-eight hundred priests, three thousand churches and chapels, something like six hundred or seven hundred schools, and a population growing to the limit of four million—in the original limits of one priest’s entire district.

Try to restrain the growth of the church. You may do it when you have held up the falls of Niagara; when, with an extinguisher, you have quenched the forest fire; when, my brethren, with a little shovel you have flung back the mountain avalanche. She goes on for ever and ever, with the charmed life, not of the fabulous talisman, but of the glowing promise of her Founder. Not even the gates of hell can prevail against her.

Many leading Protestants view with alarm this wonderful growth of Rome, and see in it a menace to future liberty. Before the Pittsburg Conference of Free Methodists, Bishop Walter Sellew recently expressed himself thus with reference to this subject:—

My heart is greatly grieved at spiritual conditions as they exist generally in the world. I am not at all optimistic. I have tried to be, but I can not be. The spirit of Protestantism in the United States is in decay. At the Catholic Eucharistic Conference of the world, held recently in Montreal, three hundred thousand persons slept out-of-doors. Protestantism is dying out, and will soon be a thing of the past. At the World’s Missionary Convention held at Edinburgh, one prominent man said that in ten years from now delegates from the Catholic Church would have seats in our missionary conventions, and would be welcome. No one had backbone enough to oppose the idea except a few, who weakly inserted ‘noes.’

Conversely, there are to be found leading Protestants who scout the idea of Catholic growth, and criticize unsparingly the claim of Rome that she has accomplished so much for the countries which she has controlled. Recently the Presbyterian Ministers’ Association of New York City severely criticized the statements of Father Vaughan, and in a resolution passed in protest, declared:—

We would cite as samples of Roman Catholic influence in elevating countries where that church has long had absolute domination, the conditions in Spain and France, in the South American nations, and in Italy, until Mazzini and Victor Emmanuel secured civil liberty, and ushered in the modern and better Italy by fighting and triumphing over the papal power. Our nation was born a Protestant nation, several of the original thirteen colonies being exclusively Protestant, and it has attained its present high place as a Protestant nation; and until the Roman Church can cite some nation that has arisen under Catholicism as rapidly and gloriously as ours, Father Vaughan’s pronunciamento needs no refutation.

The severest criticism of the Roman Catholic contention of its beneficent influence in Catholic countries is found in a recent sermon delivered by Rev. Dr. Charles F. Aked, a prominent Baptist minister of New York City:—

The facts of history attest such things as these: The priest has been a curse in every country in which the priest has enjoyed special privilege and power. Rome is the most relentless foe of freedom and democracy the world has ever seen. Rome is a spiritual tyranny. It secures a lordship over the conscience, and it degrades the intellect while enslaving it. It weakens the sense of personal responsibility, and in this way, so far from contributing to the prosperity and greatness of a nation, it does injury to the commonwealth by reducing individual initiative, self-reliance, and will.

The American people have established and maintained, under circumstances of stress and strain and unheard-of difficulties bequeathed by nations of the Old World, a stable government; and wherever our flag is flying, is the home of freedom. This is our inheritance from the men whom Rome would have strangled or roasted alive. Kings and priests, said the Quaker poet, to liberty and God are false in turn. We are proud of the Protestant blood that is in our veins, and the Protestant spirit which moves within us. Plymouth Rock stands for more in the life of this nation than the Roman Catholic Church.

This criticism is a just one, and accords fully with the conditions which exist in countries under Roman influence.

We are not left to idle speculation as to the part Romanism will play in the future of the United States and of Europe. The prophecy of God’s Word, as recorded in Revelation 13, plainly declares there will come a time when, in the New World as well as in the Old, the spirit of Romanism will be the chief controlling factor in the destinies of men. There will come a time when Protestantism will so far depart from the glorious principles which brought it into existence, that it will reach forth its hand to grasp the hand of Romanism. Under this twofold union the United States of America, which for the last twelve decades has held before all the nations of the world the beacon-light of liberty, will turn its back upon its past experience, repudiate the principles for which it has fought and bled, declare that stable government without church domination is a failure, and bow in servile obedience to the papal hierarchy. This is the prediction of the prophetic Word.

That the tide has already strongly set

in toward the accomplishment of this result, many thoughtful observers in every quarter are recognizing. Before the die is cast, before the union is consummated, before the United States shall take the final steps in the repudiation of right principles, let us seek, so far as our influence shall extend, by voice and pen, and godly, earnest living, to reveal to our fellow men the way of truth. If we can not withstand the overwhelming tide, we may serve to check for a little time its progress, and may warn our fellows, so that some of them shall see and recognize the right, and thus escape the disaster which will inevitably follow in the wake of the rejection of God and his truth. F. M. W.