POLITICAL PLATFORM OF THE ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH.
To give the Bible to the laity is to cast pearls before swine.—Cardinal Hosius. There is no other remedy for the evil but to put heretics to death.—Bellarmine. The laity have no jurisdiction and power over the clergy.—Council of Constance. Let the public-school system go to where it came from—the devil.—Freeman's Journal. We hate Protestantism; we detest it with our whole heart and soul.—Catholic Visitor. It is utterly wrong to circulate the Scriptures in the vulgar tongue.—Archbishop Ximenes. We are not advocates of religious freedom, and we repeat we are not.—Shepherd of the Valley. Religious liberty is merely endured until the opposite can be carried into effect.—Bishop O'Conner. God's tribunal and the Pope's tribunal are the same. All other powers are his subjects.—Muscovius. We will take this country and build our institutions over the grave of Protestantism.—Priest Hecker. There is, ere long, to be a state religion in this country, and that state religion is to be Roman Catholic.—Priest Hecker. There can be no religion without the inquisition, which is wisely designed for the promotion of the true faith.—Boston Pilot. The exemption of clerical persons has been instituted by the ordination of God and by canonical institutions.—Council of Trent. I would as soon administer the sacraments to a dog as to Catholics who send their children to the public schools.—Priest Walker. The Pope has redeemed the clergy from the obedience due to princes; therefore kings are no more the superiors of the clergy.—Bellarmine. We hold education to be a function of the church, not of the state; and in our case we do not accept the state as educator.—New York Tablet. We declare, affirm, define, and pronounce it necessary to salvation for every human creature to be subject to the Roman Pontiff.—Cardinal Manning. Accursed be those very crafty and deceitful societies called Bible societies, which thrust the Bible into the hands of inexperienced youth.—Pope Pius IX. As the church commands the spiritual part of man directly, she therefore commands the whole man and all that depends on man.—Civiltà Cattolica. The Pope has the right to pronounce sentence of deposition against any sovereign when required by the good of the spiritual order.—Brownson's Review. All those who take from the church of Rome, and from the See of St. Peter, one of the two swords, and allow only the spiritual, are branded for heretics.—Baronius. If the Catholics ever gain—which they surely will do, though at a distant day—an immense numerical superiority, religious freedom is at an end.—Archbishop of St. Louis. Heretics, schismatics, and rebels to the said Lord the Pope, or his aforesaid successors, I will, to the uttermost of my power, persecute and wage war with.—Bishops' Oath. What Father Walker says is only what has been said by the bishops all over the world, over and over again, in their pastorals, and we heartily endorse it.—New York Tablet. I do renounce and disown any allegiance as due to any heretical king, prince, or state named Protestant, or obedience to any of their inferior magistrates or officers.—Jesuits' Oath. Our school instruction must be purely materialistic. If the name of the Author of Christianity is mentioned at all, he must be spoken of as one of the men who figured prominently in history.—Western Watchman. No Bible shall be held or read except by priests. No Bible shall be sold without a license, except upon the pains and penalties of that mortal sin that is neither to be forgiven in this world or the next.—Council of Trent. Moreover we confirm and renew the decrees recited above, delivered in former times by apostolic authority, against the publication, distribution, reading, and possession of books of the holy Scriptures translated into the vulgar tongue.—Pope Gregory XVI.