ANENT ROMANISM | AdventAI

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · May 25, 1904

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 30, No. 21.

ANENT ROMANISM.

In the bishop’s address read before the Methodist Episcopal General Conference at Los Angeles, Cal., there occurred this paragraph:—

Romanism does not employ in this country the methods which have stamped its history with infamy in Spain, Mexico, South America, Porto Rico, the Philippines, and elsewhere. Yet its insidious efforts to control the secular press, its adroit influence in politics, and its tireless assaults on one of the chief bulwarks of the republic, the public-school system, demand the sleepless vigilance of all Protestants and patriots. Its malign influence in countries where it has for centuries held unobstructed sway demonstrates its essential character, and furnishes many of the most frightful object-lessons which history records. To these lessons we can not close our eyes, because of any mawkish plea for religious toleration. What in Romanism is morally and religiously good we not merely tolerate, but welcome; but what in it is erroneous and evil, subversive of individual rights and of national safety, we must evermore expose and combat as Luther did.

According to the Record, the matter “spread like wildfire through the local Catholic Church,” and resulted in vigorous attempts at refutation by the vicar-general of the district and other priests. In defending the address, Rev. J. M. King, of Philadelphia, said: “If Protestantism is anything it is a protest against the iniquities of Romanism. We insist upon it that Catholicism shall keep its hands off the public schools; its hands off municipal affairs.”

The Record’s report of proceedings further says: “Dr. King was followed by others, who deplored the alleged ‘ills of Romanism,’ but heartily commended the wide-spread good in which the Catholic Church has been a chief administrator. After more than one unsuccessful attempt to smooth the matter over, and drop it, the conference voted to refer the whole question to the committee on state of the church. The general sentiment of the conference seems to favor an out-and-out policy toward Catholicism.”

If the Methodists and other professed Protestant churches had always maintained an “out-and-out policy” against Romanism, instead of adopting so many of her tenets and tactics, Rome’s influence in political affairs, as also in public-school matters, could not have become nearly so potential as they are at present. But most of them have gone too far in “heartily commending,” by precept and practice, many of the so-called “good things” handed down by the Papacy. They have gone so far in that direction that they will hardly find it possible to retrace their steps. From the position which most of them occupy, they can not consistently assert, nor possibly maintain, a really Protestant “protest against the iniquities of Romanism.” But some individuals may have their eyes opened by the agitation of the subject.