CATHOLIC AMERICA by Editor

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Sep 22, 1898

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 24, No. 38.

“CATHOLIC AMERICA.”

By Editor

A RECENT Catholic Mirror has the following from Archbishop Ireland. Is it the close relations between the archbishop and the administration which inspires this apostrophe?

“Catholic America! It is a word at the sound of which the hearts must throb and pledges must issue forth from the soul for loyalty to the duties and inspirations coming from that word. All people love their country, as it is their duty to do; but the love for one’s country must be the stronger and the more fervent in proportion as that country has claims upon her children; and what country has such claims upon the allegiance of its sons as America? The word ‘America’ sums up the highest gifts of civilization; it sums up the sweetest gifts of providence to human society—civil and political liberty without stain.”

We would remind our readers again that not thus did the Catholic Church talk a few years ago. In the Catholic World for September, 1871, a leading article thus refers to the Constitution of the United States:—

“As it is interpreted [in 1871] by the liberal and sectarian journals that are doing their best to revolutionize it, and is beginning to be interpreted by no small portion of the American people, or is interpreted by the Protestant principle, so widely diffused among us, . . . we do not accept it, or hold it to be any government at all, or as capable of performing any of the proper functions of government; and if it continues to be interpreted by the revolutionary principles of Protestantism, it is sure to fail. . . . Hence it is we so often say that if the American republic is to be sustained and preserved at all, it must be by the rejection of the principle of the Reformation, and the acceptance of the Catholic principle by the American people.”—P. 736.

But now there is a change, not in the Catholic Church in respect to its attitude toward the Constitution, as interpreted in 1871, but in the present interpretation of that Constitution as regards Catholicism. These things are worthy of profound consideration but the great mass will lie supinely until bound hand and foot, crying all the time, “Liberty.” The form of words remains in the Constitution; the life is gone.