Pope Leo and Religious Liberty
A NOTEWORTHY thing about Pope Leo is the favorable impression which seems to have been made by his personality on Protestants and Catholics alike. In the minds of many who have no sympathy with papal doctrines, the pope himself is invested with an atmosphere of spirituality and saintliness; and by this the pope has no doubt gained much for the papacy. People are prone to lose sight of principles in looking at the person who represents them. There are many good people in the Catholic Church, but they are good in spite of the principles of the religion they profess. That the papacy is the greatest enemy of civil and religious liberty, is a fact that should never be lost sight of in the luster which may pertain to individual Catholics. Religious liberty, says Cardinal Gibbons in his book, “The Faith of Our Fathers,” is liberty to worship God according to “the dictates of a right conscience.” And a right conscience, in the papal view, is one which conforms to the doctrines The whole history of the papacy conforms to this idea of religious freedom. The fact is mentioned, however, in connection with statements called out by the pope’s illness, that in 1891 the present pontiff erected in the church of St. John Lateran a monument to Pope Innocent III, whose reign was marked by the fiercest persecution of “heretics,”—an act which would not indicate a very mild attitude on Leo’s part toward heretics of the present day.