THE EVILS OF CONVENTS AND ROMANISM.
By William Lloyd Clark
[William Lloyd Clark, in Our True Friend.] CONVENTS have been driven from Mexico, the land of bull fights. They took refuge in this country, and we send our girls behind their steel doors and grated windows. If convents are all right, why build stone walls around them, make doors of steel, and bar the windows with iron? The thing stands condemned in the judgment of every sane person. The danger to be apprehended from the landing upon our shores of large numbers of nuns is very apparent. In so-called “Roman Catholic” countries convents are being closed by government officials, as being a positive evil. In Protestant countries alone, notably in the United States and England, are they fostered and encouraged. If Mexico and Portugal and Italy and France consider it absolutely necessary to close the convents, why should not the United States see a still greater necessity for doing so, as it professes to sustain the utmost freedom of action for all good citizens? Are nunneries less harmful here than in France or other lands? The Italian Government suppressed the convents over a quarter of a century ago. The convents in this country are as criminal as the ones suppressed in Italy; yet they receive the patronage of ignorant Protestants. During the census of 1900, the convents in all large cities refused the census-takers the right to enter. This is anarchy of the rankest kind. The politicians allowed the convents to have their way. Romanism never gained a majority in any country in the world, but it shed the blood of its enemies. Those who pander to Rome and assist her in gaining power may be preparing conditions for the bloodiest revolution the world has ever known.