Protestant Weakening and Catholic Prestige; Their Significance
By Editor
PRESIDENT WILSON and members of his cabinet followed the custom that has prevailed for the last six years, and attended the “Pan-American mass” at St. Patrick’s Catholic Church in Washington, D. C., on Thanksgiving day. This has been the occasion of a great deal of comment and adverse criticism by Protestant writers. They think that President Wilson should not have done such a thing as to go into a Catholic church under such circumstances. Theoretically, according to the constitution of the United States, there is no reason why President Wilson as a citizen, or even as president, should not go into any church in the nation that he might desire to enter. But looking a little beyond the theory, we see this,—that a stanch member of the Presbyterian Church, together with members of his cabinet, who are also strongly Protestant in their profession, have evidently felt that for purposes of state and for political reasons it was advisable for them not to run the risk of alienating the feelings of the great Catholic population of the nation. And in attending that particular mass, they showed how the actual breach between professed Protestantism and Catholicism is being narrowed. Protestants have ever held that the beast power of the book of Revelation is a symbol of the great papal hierarchy, and the people whom this paper represents have taught for years that the image to that papal beast spoken of in the thirteenth chapter of Revelation is to be made by this nation. We have taught this from the pulpit and through the press as widely as we know how, for more than half a century. According to this prophecy, we have claimed, all these years, that the time would come when the professed Protestantism of this nation, and the Catholicism not only of this nation but of the world, would throw aside their warring attitudes and come together. This coming together will finally reach the stage where this nation will actually establish an image to the papal power, in order to please and help that great hierarchy. Such are the utterances of the prophecy, and such have been our teachings. And we see in occurrences like this of the president and his cabinet attending a Catholic mass, a much more significant thing than the mere encroachments of the papacy. Such occurrences show that true Protestant sentiment has become so weak in the nation that it feels itself compelled to bow before the shrine of political expediency. Hence not a great while can pass until advancement will be made to that position where the image of the papal power will actually be formed by the vacillating and political Protestantism of this time. These questions are to us much deeper than church dogma or theological theorizing. The great question of fulfilling prophecy is involved.