ROMAN CATHOLICISM AND DEMOCRATIC GOVERNMENT.
Some time ago Lecky, the historian (see Literary Digest, May 30, 1896), pictured no roseate future for Democratic rule, claiming it to be the rule of ignorance. F. H. Giddings, professor of sociology of Columbia University, New York, takes issue with this broad statement, and contends that only now has democracy begun to develop a positive program; hitherto its position has been negative, a “rectification of wrongs” from which the people have suffered. And yet Professor Giddings admits that it may continue to be the rule of ignorance. Absolute democracy, he thinks, is an impossibility. If the masses will not choose “cultivated men” as leaders, they will choose “that most preposterous and contemptible of potentates, the ‘boss.’ Leadership of some kind men must and will have.” And Professor Giddings further points out that the “ignorant masses” “will not rule through their ignorance,” but “will rule through their deference to great humbugs, great scoundrels, great priests, or great men.” What this writer thinks is necessary is “faith in the true aristocracy of intellect and conscience.” He then continues (we quote from the Literary Digest of January 2):— Only to the faint-hearted and to the short-sighted should there be any need to say that a determined effort to restore that faith is to be the most momentous sociological phenomenon of the next fifty years. The initiative may be taken by the Roman Catholic Church. Accepting democracy as the inevitable form of the State within the Constitution, the Roman Catholic Church fully and deliberately intends to make itself again what once it was—the ruling aristocracy of the State behind the Constitution. If this purpose becomes more and more obvious, the forces of Protestantism will again be roused to intense activity. The principles of liberty and of individual responsibility will again be opposed to the principle of authority, and will again fascinate the minds of rationalistic men. “In all probability, therefore, the destiny of democracy is to be controlled either by religious authority or by a much more earnest and thoughtful type of Protestant liberalism than that which prevails to-day. In a struggle between these forces men of all ranks and conditions, the rich and the poor, the learned and the unlearned, will give their allegiance to worthy leaders. The ‘boss,’ with his deeds of ignorance and of evil, will sink into oblivion. It should be needless to add that such a struggle, if it comes, will be a contest of ideas.” What is said here respecting Roman Catholicism is unquestionably true; more than this, in this field Roman Catholics will unquestionably triumph; for the “sure word of prophecy declares it.” But as for the masses of the so-called great Protestant churches arousing, we have little hope; there are found among them too many apologists for Rome; and, more than this, these churches have, in their great representative bodies, committed themselves to the principles of Roman Catholicism, union of Church and State, on the Sunday question, and in other ways. And yet there will be true Protestants, men who will protest on the ground where stood Jesus of Nazareth, Martin Luther, Roger Williams,—the ground of absolute separation of Church and State, the absolute non-interference of the civil magistrate in matters religious, the supremacy of conscience over creed, the sufficiency of God’s word as the rule of faith. Reader, in this “contest of ideas,” of eternal principles, where will you stand?