ROME'S PROGRESS | AdventAI

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Aug 10, 1904

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 30, No. 32.

ROME'S PROGRESS.

“Rome never changes” is an inherent principle of the Papacy, incident to her claim to infallibility. All her “infallible” decrees, her authoritative utterances, were true and are true still from her viewpoint. Yet there are many half-hearted, weak-kneed Protestants who can not see this. Their grasp has relaxed on anything real or substantial; having no definite moral standard, they are prepared to fellowship everything, save the infallible Word of God; and therefore they can not see that in their delusion they are overthrowing the work wrought by the Reformation. Rome is not coming to Protestants; Protestants are going to Rome, while Rome is the same. Read the following from a recent number of the Literary Digest:—

“The Papacy and the Republic.”

Never before in the history of the national capital, we are told by a writer in Harper’s Weekly, have two members of the cabinet, a justice of the Supreme Court, and representative legislators and military and naval officials sat down at dinner with an Italian member of the College of Cardinals, at which he was the guest of honor, and a member of the cabinet the most, nor has any previous president ever formally welcomed a Roman Catholic Italian prelate as cordially as President Roosevelt recently welcomed Cardinal Satolli.

This new attitude on the part of the national Executive, the writer goes on to say, will be but the reflection of an altered attitude by the Protestant majority of the electors. We read further:—

“Not that the time has come yet when most of our voters will vote as readily for Roman Catholic candidates for office as they will for Protestant candidates; not that the A. P. A. spirit has passed away entirely. But there is a lessened spirit of antagonism to Roman Catholicism among Protestant thinkers and leaders, more harmony of effort between Protestant and Roman Catholic clergymen in civil reform movements, and less and less criticism of recognition of Roman Catholics’ worth by executives who dare to appoint them to administrative or judicial positions.

Not every Protestant is prepared to say, with Senator Hoar, that he believes that “if every Protestant were to be stricken down by a lightning stroke, our brethren of the Catholic faith would still carry on the Republic in a spirit of true and liberal freedom.” But it is significant that in such a book as Mr. Selleck’s recent one on “The Spiritual Outlook” for this country, this Universalist clergyman should praise the Roman Catholic Church as he does and predict a greater career than ever for it in the future, and that Rev. S. D. McConnell, one of the ablest and most thoughtful of Protestant Episcopalian clergymen, in some of his recent writings on the future of Christianity in this country, should have recognized so clearly the potency of a closely-articulated church with a uniform message at a time of transition like the present, and the attraction it will have for society at a time when in affairs of state the organizing principle is coming to be dominion, the cardinal claim authority, and the cardinal virtue obedience.

If on the side of the state and of society in general there is a more tolerant spirit toward Roman Catholicism, due to various forces obvious, and some not so apparent, it is because here, by the admission of Roman Catholic prelates, like the late Archbishop Corrigan, competition with Protestantism has produced a very much more liberal type of Catholicism than Europe or South America knows, and because the American hierarchy, from Cardinal Gibbons down to the priesthood, have once and for all given up the claims of the church on the state which are still made in Europe.

But Rome has relinquished not one jot or tittle of a claim. Her policy is liberal; her purpose is still the same—to control both church and state. Prophecy has foretold all this.