Rome’s Control of the Press
THE wide publicity which is given nowadays to Catholic events, great and small, in the public press, is explained by the view, for which there seems to be strong proof, that the Catholic Church has full control of the Associated Press, the newspaper organization through which most of the news dispatches are received. Commenting on the immense amount of newspaper space given to accounts of the sickness and death of Pope Leo and the election of his successor, the Northwestern Christian Advocate mentions that “a few weeks ago two Methodist bishops, Foster and Hurst, died,” yet although “both were greater scholars than Leo XIII,” and Bishop Foster was “one of the most eminent preachers and eloquent orators America has produced,” “of the death of one not a line was sent out by the Associated Press, and scarcely a dozen lines concerning the other.” While “the Baptist and Methodist churches in the United States together outnumber the Roman Catholics,” “these churches do not receive one-tenth the notice given to Roman Catholic events.” Another thing which Rome is doing in this same line of work is to secure the elimination from public libraries and school text books of all histories which are “unfair” to the papacy; that is, books that chronicle events which show the papacy in an unfavorable light. The idea in both cases is to give the church of Rome a strong hold on the minds of the rising generation. Against these and other schemes which Rome is pushing, the Protestant world seems powerless, chiefly because Protestants have tried to fight Rome with Romish weapons. Fighting the devil with fire, or fighting any enemy of truth with that enemy’s weapons, is to give the enemy all the advantage. Fight Rome with the Word of God. That is the one weapon which Rome can not use, and before which she can not stand. Now, as ever, that Word is the mightest thing in all the world.