The Swindled Poor by Editor

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, Cal. · May 21, 1885

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 11, No. 20.

The Swindled Poor.

By Editor

THAT shameless iniquity by which the poor people who trusted three millions of dollars to the Roman Catholic Archbishop Purcell, still cries, like Abel's blood, for vengeance. It is worse than a ghost and will not down. Its latest appearance is in a letter to the late Baltimore Council, a bitter cry of distress that would move any heart that had the smallest sympathy with justice or the least consideration for the poor, swindled out of their money by an unscrupulous priesthood.

Three times those suffering people have appealed to the pope, but they might as well have appealed to the Mahdi. What does he care, or what can he do if he did care? We will copy a passage from this appeal as an exposure of the wrong, an exhibition of the misery it has caused and of the utter heartlessness of the church authorities, which have at this moment in their hands the property which was obtained by the money out of which these poor people were swindled. Nothing more disgraceful was perpetrated by the Church of Rome in the Dark Ages, and the private members were not more helpless at the feet of ecclesiastical despotism in those days than these defrauded people are now. But listen to their groans and pleas for help:—

"Our sole purpose in addressing you on the assembling of this National Council is simply to invoke your aid in having justice done to the many thousands of Archbishop Purcell's creditors and their suffering families. No tongue can tell or pen depict the calamities that have followed in the train of that disaster. It is not alone the poverty that covered the unhappy victims, the hope and belief that have been shattered by years of disappointment, and the mists of uncertainty that hang around the future, that should alarm the shepherds of the flock of Christ, but the doubts of salvation that have arisen in the minds of thinking Catholics, and the absolute denials of future bliss that have pushed aside the faith of many devoted followers of the cross. Three times we appealed to the head of the church for redress, and he has treated each application with silent contempt. For more than five years we have awaited some action. Even the funds subscribed by the generous Catholics of the United States in 1879, in aid of Archbishop Purcell's creditors, were never disposed of as the donors expected, nor was any account ever rendered of the amount or disposition of these contributions. We make this last appeal for justice to the Catholic bishops of America that shall ever be made to any ecclesiastical authority on behalf of Archbishop Purcell's creditors. The appeal of the creditors to the holy father, who alone is gifted with the heavenly prerogative of infallibility, has failed to counsel, cheer, or give us hope that our interests would be attended to here, or joy meet us in the world to come; and if this council of bishops, cognizant of all the facts, follows in the footsteps of the holy father, the case shall be withdrawn from the cloister to the open arena of public opinion."

Poor deluded souls! They think they are addressing men with human sympathies, and American sentiments, with views of moral right that are founded on the ethics of the gospel and the ten commandments. They are wofully mistaken. All that Archbishop Purcell did is justified by the great rulers of the Church of Rome. This money was obtained from "the faithful" who intrusted it to their spiritual guides, who promised to keep it safely, employ it in church purposes, paying lawful interest for it and refunding the principal in due time. The churches and colleges and convents built with the money are there, but the principal and interest of the money are nowhere, and now the people say, in wails of misery, "No tongue can tell or pen depict the calamities that have followed in the train of that disaster."

Not a disaster, it was a stupendous fraud and crime, in which religion was made the instrument to work the ruin of innocent, confiding souls.—N. Y. Observer.