A Movement within the Papal Church — Similar to Federating Protestantism — Its Parallel in the Fourth Century Was a Prelude to the Tyrannies of the Dark Ages
Several weeks ago Elder Porter had an article on Protestant federation and its meaning. We are also publishing some five articles by Elder Wilkinson on the same subject. They have shown how the federation of Protestantism is reaching across the chasm to clasp hands with the papacy. In his articles this week and next, Elder Porter calls attention to the federation of the various Catholic orders, and how they in turn are manifesting a disposition to combine with Protestants for the enforcement of “civic righteousness,” Sunday observance, etc. Yet, while willing to combine, the most outspoken of the Catholic orders make clear their intention that they should be at the head. The importance of these topics can not be overestimated, and the articles merit more than ordinary study.
Editor.
An American Federation of Catholic Societies was organized in Cincinnati, Ohio, in April, 1901. Its object was declared to be to bring in “civic righteousness.” Since that time, the society has made marvelous advancement.
Their Principles Reaffirmed
Its fifth annual convention was held in Convention Hall, Buffalo, New York, from July 29 to August 1, 1906. It was a representative gathering of Catholics, and its official utterances should receive attention from thinking people. Its officially expressed aims were at that convention reaffirmed, and were declared to be to establish “civic righteousness, God in the home, the school, and the nation.”
The Catholic Union and Times is authority for the statement that the fight against unlimited divorce, intemperance, and socialism, and for the regulation of capital and labor and the Sabbath, is a “patriotic undertaking in which Catholic and non-Catholic may join hands.”
Federation to Bring Righteousness
In an address before this convention, Bishop Canevin said: “Federation properly worked out would bring righteousness to the nation. . . . Against this unnecessary labor, this atheistic profanation of the Lord’s day, . . . this federation should resolutely use its power in civic as well as in social and private life. . . . To carry out the purpose of this association, every force of religious activity, pastors and people, bishops, priests, and laymen, must be solidly united with one voice and act with one will for God and our country.”
If Catholics and Protestants Should Unite
Bishop McFaul said: “I say to you that if Catholics and Protestants should unite to do something, there is no great wrong in this country that we can not right. . . . It has been an epoch-making congress. We feel now that we have got this federation on a basis that will eventually reach out to every Catholic in the United States.”
Eucharistic Congresses and What They Mean
The Eucharistic Congress held in Montreal, Canada, September 6, 1910, was another epoch-making congress. Its purpose was to exalt the eucharistic bread and the pope. This was set forth in the following excerpt taken from a letter of the pope appointing Cardinal Vannutelli papal legate to represent the pope in the congress: “By this public manifestation the eucharistic bread, unhampered by space and division, will bind together the land which the seas separate, stimulate distant nations to proclaim and vindicate the glory of God the Saviour, and to honor with due loyalty and submission the center of Christian unity, to wit, Christ’s vicar on earth.”
The legate made the exaltation of the eucharist and of the pope the key-note of his opening address.
“Europe extends her hand to America; and this continent, in her sublime favor, unites with the Old World to exalt together the greatest of the sacraments, under the supreme direction and with the encouragement of the supreme pastor of the church. . . . Then the universal pastor, taking under his charge these new and immense spiritual domains, will show to an astonished universe the Old and the New World realizing before the human race the universality of the church foreshadowed by our Saviour and His apostles. . . . It [the present congress] unites for the first time the Old and the New World in solemn praise of the eucharist.”
In the Catholic federation movement, we see a perfect counterpart of the Protestant federation movement, with the exception that the Catholic federation seeks, through the eucharist, to exalt the pope to his former position of universal authority.
Similarity to Fourth Century Movements
When one sees Protestantism extending her hand across the gulf that for more than three centuries has separated between Protestantism and Catholicism, one is inclined to query, “Have Protestants forgotten Rome’s history?” For more than a thousand years, Rome’s principles on individual liberty and enforced religion were written with the blood of martyrs.
These federation movements remind the student of history of the church councils of the fourth century. The church council in Carthage, A. D. 401, petitioned that shows might be transferred to some other day than Sunday, because “the theater was often vastly more frequented than the church.” The law was enacted, in response to church petitions, in 425 A. D.
Sozomen says that Sunday laws were urged in order “that the day might be devoted, with less interruption, to the purposes of devotion.” This was the “civic righteousness” federation movement of the fourth century. It was a “reform movement.” It was not only a “reform movement,” but a “world-wide reform movement.” It was as harmless in the statement of its purpose, and as zealous for the good of the people religiously, as are the great federation movements of to-day; but once started, there was no stopping place. All must obey the laws enacted by that federation, or suffer the penalties.
Constantine and His Various Sunday Laws
In A. D. 321 Constantine, as a sun-worshipper, enacted the first recorded Sunday law, requiring the observance of “the venerable day of the sun.” Two years later, he professed conversion to the Catholic faith, and afterward enforced the same day as a Christian institution.
Not Easy to Enforce
The early Christian church were keepers of the seventh-day Sabbath. To enforce upon men of deep Christian conviction the observance of religious rites borrowed from heathenism was not easy. But the issue was on. It must be met. The next step was legislation against Sabbath observance. That was Satan’s purpose in this whole federation movement. He must work up to it gradually, and under cover of civic reform, lest the people should discern his purpose and revolt at his audacious designs against the work and worship of God.
But in the great church council of Laodicea, A. D. 364, it was enacted that “Christians shall not Judaize, and be idle on Saturday, but shall work on that day; but the Lord’s day they shall specially honor.” (Can. 29, Hefele’s “History of the Church Councils.”)
The reign of terror that prevailed for centuries was the result of the fourth century church federation’s attempt to coerce the consciences of the early church into Sunday observance under the guise of civic reform. Martyrs to the apostolic faith fell by millions during the centuries of conflict between faith and federation.
The Author of Civic Righteousness
St. Augustine, a prominent churchman, introduced the “civic righteousness” reform theory in the fourth century federation movement as follows: “It is indeed better that men should be brought to serve God by instruction than by fear of punishment or by pain. But because427the former means are better, the latter must not therefore be neglected. . . . Many must often be brought back to their Lord like wicked servants by the rod of temporal suffering before they attain the highest grade of religious development.”—Schaff’s “Church History,” volume 2, section 27.
On this theory of conversion by coercion, Neander, one of the greatest of church historians, says, “It was by Augustine, then, that a theory was proposed and founded, which . . . contained the germ of that whole system of spiritual despotism, of intolerance and persecution, which ended in the tribunals of the Inquisition.”
Civic Righteousness and Persecution
The fourth century church federation, in its attempt to develop “civic righteousness,” determined that all must be converted. If they would become converted to all of the church federation dogmas without coercion, that was better; if not, they must suffer penalties until they accepted them. The rack, the thumbscrew, red-hot pincers, and all of the horrible tortures of the Inquisition followed.
Both the Protestant and the Catholic federation are now starting out to convert men by civil enactments, which later must be enforced by penalties, causing the revival of the Inquisition as certainly as like causes produce like results. The cheek of every true Protestant and patriot should blush with shame, as he sees his enlightened fellow Protestants and patriots following the trail of the old serpent into the false and fatal view of the kingdom of God which has repeatedly wrecked Christianity and blighted the finer sensibilities of statesmen.
Any one can see the truth of the statement of the twentieth United States Congress, whose Senate Committee, when reporting adversely on a proposed Sunday bill, said: “Extensive religious combinations to effect a political object are, in the opinion of the committee, always dangerous. . . . All religious despotism commences by combination and influence; and when that influence begins to operate upon the political institutions of the country, the civil power soon bends under it; and the catastrophe of other nations furnishes an awful warning of the consequences.” “Our Constitution recognizes no other power than that of persuasion for enforcing religious observance.”
The Papacy Still Intolerant
Protestants who are courting the papacy for the furtherance of the ends sought by their federation movement, are likely to think that Rome has greatly changed as the result of the work done by the Protestant Reformation; but in the 1906 Catholic Church Federation Council, the Rev. Mr. Kelly said: “If we were more intolerant, this would be a better country. We want intolerance of the right kind.” The intolerance of the papacy has always been regarded by her clergy as of the right kind.
In the year 1910, Pope Pius X issued a very strong encyclical against higher criticism. In it he took occasion to speak with great emphasis against Protestantism in general, and the Reformers in particular. Afterward, when much opposition had been aroused on the part of leading Protestant statesmen, the pope assumed an apologetic attitude, and sought to compromise with them temporarily by polite explanations of his statement.
The “Western Watchman” Stands for Intolerance
Concerning this controversy, the Western Watchman, St. Louis, Missouri, one of the foremost Catholic journals in the United States, spoke in its issue of July 7, 1910, as follows: “She [the Roman Catholic Church] has never changed her opinion of the Reformers. She said four hundred years ago that they were bad, unprincipled, and immoral men; she proscribed their lives as vicious and their doctrines as of hell. She denounced Luther and his partners in heresy as the corrupt disseminators of a corrupt doctrine, and the methods they employed to overthrow the Catholic religion as blasphemous and satanic. She said so four hundred years ago; she has not changed her opinion since. The late encyclical was a mild reaffirmation of the encyclicals of all the popes since the council of Trent.
“Many years ago we stated that the greatest iconoclasm in history would be the demolition of all the statues raised to the heroes of Protestantism and their consignment to the dump heap of history; and we declared that the event was nearer than people suspected. . . . No one now regards Cranmer and Ridley and the other English Reformers as anything but blasphemous scoundrels, for whom hanging and burning were too good. . . . “Protestants need not expect that the judgment of Catholics upon Reformers and their work is going to undergo any mitigation. Time has only added confirmation and irrefutability to the original estimates. The process of religious peace will be on the lines of truth and loyalty to the church’s heroic past. . . . “The promoters of heresy are children of perdition. She has always maintained this as a theory; she is prepared to demonstrate its truth in the lies of her detractors. It has been a long time; but the original Protestant sin has found its authors out. Get ready the ropes; the bloated authors of the Reformation will soon be toppled from their place of pride and cast in the dunghill of the world’s scorn.”
Intolerance Reaffirmed
That this was not an exaggerated statement, which was ill considered and afterward recalled, is apparent from the following statement, which appeared in the October 12 issue of the same paper and of the same year: “Protestants think that it is possible for an honest man to change his religion. Catholics believe so also, provided that the change is from one Protestant sect to another, or from a Protestant sect to the Catholic Church. But Catholics not only believe, but know, with a knowledge as firm as the rock of Gibraltar, that the man who apostatizes from the Catholic Church is an unmitigated scoundrel, a renegade to every honest and honorable principle. People may call that bigotry. It matters not what it is called, there is not a Catholic in this world who would not prefer to see his mother or sister dead than turned Protestant.”
It Must Be on Catholic Ground
How, then, can Catholics and Protestants confederate? It is thus made plain that there can be no confederation except upon Catholic principles. How can Catholics, who would rather die than change their faith, enforce conversion to their federation creed upon those who differ from them, and still fulfil the Golden Rule laid down by Christ, “Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them: for this is the law and the prophets”?
This intolerant view is not new in the Catholic faith. It has always been one of the fundamental doctrines of the Catholic Church. In his “Plain Talk about the Protestantism of To-Day,” Monsignor Segur boldly declares: “The church is certainly intolerant in matters of doctrine. True, and we glory in it! . . . And what is more logical? The Catholic Church alone, in the midst of so many different sects, avers the possession of absolute truth, out of which there can not be true Christianity. She alone has the right to be, she alone must be, intolerant. She alone will and must say, as she has said in all ages in her councils, ‘If any one saith or believeth contrary to what I teach, which is truth, let him be anathema.’”
It is very apparent that Rome stands ready to unite with Protestantism in a confederation of churches, if that confederation will renounce Protestant principles, and use its good offices to reinstate the Roman see in her former position of supremacy over the nations. This is the prediction of prophecy, and it is the road that led to her supremacy in the fourth century.
