Protestantism's Return to Roman Worship
The gradual return of a large element in the Protestant churches to a form of worship almost identical with the Roman system from which the Protestant reformers came out, gives occasion to papal spokesmen to charge Protestants of this day with being ashamed to acknowledge in words what by their actions they virtually admit; that is, that they have been in the wrong. On this point the Catholic Mirror remarks:— The circumlocution resorted to by our separated brethren during a long period of years, by which they attempt to satisfy their consciences for a piece-meal restoration of the Catholic practises they once abandoned, is truly pitiable. The Mirror further says:— Communion, the confessional, Mass, priest's vestments, candles, sanctuary lamps, have all, one by one, through the mellowing influence of years and the effects of education, lost some of their popish and idolatrous significance, and have taken their places in Protestant church services, until we fancy it would take a quick-witted Catholic to tell that he was not in one of his own churches. Of many Protestant churches this is true, but it is not because those churches are growing more spiritual, but on the contrary because piety is on the wane, and there is a lapse from the godliness which characterized Protestantism in the days of the Reformers. A lapse from the true worship of God always leads either to atheism or to Rome.