A Catholic Complaint by Editor

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Jun 28, 1883

A Catholic Complaint.

By Editor

A CATHOLIC priest in Wymore, Nebraska, has written a letter to us complaining of Mrs. White's articles on Luther, and advises us to get certain Catholic books, which he names, that we may know what they do believe. We have the books he mentions, a variety of Catholic Catechisms, and other publications of that Church; and the more we read them the more we are convinced that the safety of their system is in the course which they have so persistently pursued, namely, to keep the Bible out of the hands of the people.

We once gave a brief account of a lecture by "Father Gavazzi," and a Mr. O'Connor, writing from Napa, bitterly assailed us for publishing falsehoods about the Catholic Church. He denied most positively that they believed what Mr. Gavazzi ascribed to them. We took the Catholic work—"The Glories of Mary"—and proved a hundred times more than Mr. Gavazzi said, quoting from it the very words used by him. We then called upon Mr. O'Connor to take back his harsh and unjust expressions concerning us, but he failed to respond. We are not striking at a venture when we assail the doctrines of the Catholic Church, or accuse it of shockingly persecuting those who dared to brave its power when it, unfortunately for mankind, had power. And we have its own word, where policy will allow it to speak, that it would do the same to-day as it did five hundred years ago had not the power been taken away. We have no sympathy with that sentimental misnamed Protestantism which is ready to affiliate with Catholicism, as we see it at this day.