TO AID THE GOVERNMENT by G.

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Jan 29, 1902

“TO AID THE GOVERNMENT.”

By G.

THE Catholic movement “to aid the government in Americanizing the Philippines, by having the church represented there by prominent American Catholic clergymen,” is said to be “now well under way.” It is characteristic of Rome to aid governments; and if aiding to Americanize means to Central or South Americanize, the “movement” in question is logical. If it means to Americanize after the manner of a Catholicized United States, it is still logical. But to Americanize after the principles of the Constitution of the United States is certainly foreign to any purpose of Rome.

Pope Pius IX., in an encyclical letter of Aug. 15, 1854, said: “The absurd and erroneous doctrines or ravings in defense of liberty of conscience, are a pestilential error—a pest of all others most to be dreaded in a State.” In another encyclical of Dec. 8, 1864, the same pope anathematized “those who assert the liberty of conscience and of religious worship,” also “all such as maintain that the church may not employ force.”

Bishop O’Connor once voiced the real Roman sentiment when he said, “Religious liberty is merely endured until the opposite can be carried into effect without peril to the Catholic world.” And the archbishop of St. Louis emphasized this principle when he said that “heresy and unbelief are crimes; and in Christian countries, as in Italy and Spain, for instance, where all the people are Catholics, and where the Catholic religion is an essential part of the land, they are punished as other crimes.”

In an encyclical by the present pope we find the following mandate: “All Catholics should do all in their power to cause the constitutions of States, and legislation, to be modeled on the principles of the true church, and all Catholic writers and journalists should never lose sight, for an instant, from the view of the above prescriptions.”

When the Southern States inaugurated the revolution of 1861–65, Pope Pius IX. gave his blessing and encouragement to that effort to disrupt the United States Government; and when the late war with Spain began, Pope Leo XIII. gave his blessing to the Spanish armies, thus bidding them Godspeed. And since the occupation of the Philippines by the United States—as also in Cuba and Porto Rico—there has been great jealousy in Roman Catholic circles lest Protestantism gain a foothold. Now the American principle of Church and State separation is distinctively Protestant, and Rome has been using every endeavor to keep this principle out of the new possessions. She is now bitterly opposing the secular schools established in the Philippines, and claims the natives en masse as her exclusive charge religiously.

What Rome really means by aiding the United States Government to Americanize the Philippines is predicated upon the theory that America is fast becoming Romanized, and Americanism is estimated from that standpoint. Another Catholic authority, a priest named Hecker, says: “The Catholic Church numbers one-third of the American population. There is, erelong, to be State religion, and that State religion is to be Roman Catholic.” And nothing encourages this idea more than the fact that professed Protestants are paving the way for such a consummation by pressing religion into politics, and politics into religion—a process which opens the door for all that pertains to State religion. And State religion is always a Roman principle when applied to professed Christianity, no matter by what church it is supplied or by what State supported.

Rome never will aid any government in the furtherance of any purpose that is not primarily and ultimately for the interest of Roman Catholicism. And the sooner the people of the United States come to realize this fact, the better it will be for the maintenance of American institutions—for civil and religious liberty. G.