ROME IS SATISFIED by G.

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Sep 17, 1902

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 28, No. 38.

ROME IS SATISFIED.

By G.

MANY persons imagined that Roman Catholicism would lose prestige in the Philippines by the transfer from Spanish to American supremacy. But the fact that Rome is satisfied with present conditions is evidence that she has lost nothing by the change. In the first place, the native rebels are much nearer being under control than they have been for many years. Their rebellion was primarily against the rule of the friars, and was continued against the United States because this government opposed their independence, which would have resulted in their confiscating the property of the friars. Their defeat by the United States is a victory for Rome. Tho the friars leave the country, Rome still owns the land they hold, and will get the money which the government will pay for it. Rome will gain about ten million dollars by the defeat of her old-time enemy at the hands of the United States; and even if the friars have to leave the islands because of having lost their influence with the natives, Rome will replace them with other clericals in whom the natives will have confidence. So Rome will be the gainer in the matter of religious influence. Of course Rome is satisfied.

Then some persons thought it was a master-stroke of policy for Governor Taft to go to Rome to negotiate with the pope with reference to the church's interests in the Philippines. Even Catholics have been alarmed lest the church was going to come out with a loss of Philippine prestige. But so well-informed an authority as Archbishop Ireland reprimands them for their fears. In his home cathedral at St. Paul, Minn., he recently delivered a discourse on the subject, from which we take the following, as reported in the Catholic Mirror:—

The interests of the church, it is said, are made to suffer at the hands of the government in its newly acquired dependencies, and the call to arms is sounded from the rostrums of Catholic societies and through the columns of Catholic papers, to the perturbation of the whole Catholic body, and, indeed, of the whole country. The moment has come to say to Catholics—be wise, be zealous unto sobriety.

Who are they who complain, and protest, and call upon Catholics to be up and doing? Are they those who might claim to represent the church in its general, or even local interests? Has the Sovereign Pontiff spoken? Certainly he has not complained; rather has he been heard from in very different tones. Have the ecclesiastical authorities in the dependencies invoked our aid? In no instance have they so acted. Where they have been heard from, as in the case of Porto Rico and of Cuba, it was to tell us in plainest words that they have no grievance, altho from irresponsible sources it had been, on several previous occasions, dinned into our ears that the church was robbed and persecuted in both those islands. Bishop Blenck, of Porto Rico, openly rejoices that the American flag, rather than the Spanish, guards his diocese; and the hierarchy in Cuba are thanking God that church interests there were settled by the government at Washington before a Cuban Parliament was allowed to sit down in Havana. The archbishops of the States meet together once a year in Washington—each one representing the whole hierarchy. It can not be said that they are heedless of the welfare of the church; and yet they have sounded no alarm.

Further along in the archbishop's discourse, he shows that in the matter of the conference at Rome the pope took the initiative, and the government followed. And the suggestions for further conference and settlement in the Philippines were also proposed by the pope, and agreed to by the government. Here are his words:—

The logic of the situation in presence of strange complications for Church and State, arising from a change of sovereignty in the Philippine Islands, pointed to a mutual conference between the head of the church and a representative of the State, as the proper and dignified way to a final and peaceful solution.

Leo XIII. saw this; Theodore Roosevelt saw this. Leo took the initiative, proposed the conference, and asked the government to expose frankly and thoroughly its views. The President and his advisers accepted the proposal. What more could have been done by the administration to prove its good will and sense of justice?

If the administration had refused to send a representative to Rome, verily what clamorings there would have been; and now, when it has sent a representative to Rome, and agrees to the further proposal of the Vatican to transfer negotiations to Manila, clamorings are still raised.

In this reprimanding lecture to Catholics the archbishop incidentally shows that the Roman hierarchy is well pleased with the United States as an aid in her political difficulties. When it was first evident that Spain had lost her footing in the Philippines, this journal said that, as far as Rome's interests in the islands were concerned, she was simply swapping horses when the old one had given out. And after three years or more of experience, the younger, stronger steed is giving eminent satisfaction. G.