Adroit Statesmanship by L. A. S.

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Sep 30, 1902

“Adroit Statesmanship”

By L. A. S.

The leading editorial in the Northwestern Christian Advocate (Methodist, Chicago) of September 17, is printed under the title, “Has the President of the United States Been Made the Cat’s-Paw of Archbishop Ireland?” “The asking of such a question ought to be an insult to the president,” says the Advocate; nevertheless it feels that the question is justified, because “if founded upon fact,” it “is one of the gravest issues which the American people could be called upon to consider.” The Advocate then proceeds to give reasons for believing that the question is indeed “founded upon fact.” The expression of such views of the situation by a leading organ of the Methodist Church in this country is well worthy of note.

The Advocate quotes a cablegram from Rome dated September 11, stating it was rumored there that President Roosevelt had intimated to the Vatican that he would be pleased to see Archbishop Ireland made a cardinal as a reward for the services the latter has rendered the church and the United States. But little importance would be attached to this cablegram, the Advocate says, were it not that similar cablegrams from Rome have been published of late in American dailies, “intimating that such action on the part of the president had been or was to be solicited.” As an example of these, it quotes from the Brooklyn Eagle

the statement concerning the contemplated promotion of Archbishop Ireland, that “it is considered that if, after a satisfactory solution of the Philippine question, President Roosevelt asks the pope to recompense Archbishop Ireland for his services in the affair, the pontiff will then consider the matter.”

The Advocate considers it “hardly credible” that the president has been guilty of “such violation of the spirit, if not the letter,” of the national constitution, and of “such an insult to the members of the Protestant churches,” as would be involved in a request of this nature to the pope. “That any president or any political party,” it adds, “should permit the friends of Archbishop Ireland to use them, would be the most astounding act in the history of American politics; and if committed, would surely result in strife that would wreck the careers of politicians and political parties.”

The Advocate is mistaken; this would not be “the most astounding act in the history of American politics.” We would remind this Methodist organ of an event which happened in this country a few years ago, to which possibly it paid but little attention, the papal church not being directly concerned in it; namely, the surrender of congress to the church-and-state party in this country, who demanded that the Columbian Exposition in Chicago should be closed on the “sabbath.” Congress, led by the Senate, enacted a law declaring that the first day of the week is the “Christian sabbath,” and forbidding the exposition to be opened on that day. And shortly afterward a prominent member of the church party at whose demand Congress had done this thing, in a sermon setting forth the “benefits” of ecclesiastical control in politics, said: “I have learned that we [the church party] hold the United States Senate in our hands.” This is what a majority in Congress did in 1892, and it was truly a “most astounding act,” judged from the standpoint of the Constitution of this nation. It was not permitting “the friends of Archbishop Ireland to use them,” but it was permitting themselves to be used by other ecclesiastics in this country for an unlawful purpose, contrary to the spirit if not the letter of the Constitution; and the act was not one whit better in character because the ecclesiastics were Protestant and not papal. Indeed, it was in the machinations of this Protestant church-and-state party, which has persistently demanded religious legislation on the part of both state and national legislatures, that this evil practice of letting themselves be used for ecclesiastical purposes had its beginning among politicians and legislators in this country. No one who has kept track of the record of these things contained in the last twenty years of United States history, has any occasion to be surprised at the intimation that the government has lent itself now to a faction of the Roman Catholic Church.

The Advocate clearly sees that if the president should make the request attributed to him in the cablegram from Rome, “it would place him and his administration under obligations to an ecclesiastical power which not only claims temporal sovereignty, but claims to be superior to all temporal sovereigns, including the president of the United States.” And, says the Advocate, “there are developing evidences which seem to show that a trap was laid for the president and his advisers on the friar question, and that they have walked into it, and from the Roman Catholic point of view have been caught.” The Advocate can also see that Governor Taft’s mission to Rome, about the merely “business” character of which so much was said in American newspapers, really amounted to diplomatic intercourse between the papacy and the United States. On this point it quotes from the Rome correspondent of the Catholic Citizen (Milwaukee). It seems, the Advocate says, on the authority of this correspondent, “that the pope willfully but adroitly changed the character of Governor Taft’s mission from a business to a diplomatic mission, thus apparently forcing an official of the United States government to violate the Constitution, and usurp the laws which declare that the power to create a diplomatic mission inheres in Congress alone.”

The whole affair was a piece of “adroit statesmanship” on the part of the pope. So says this Rome correspondent of the Catholic Citizen, and the Advocate agrees with his view. “That was exquisitely and robustly adroit statesmanship,” he says, “which converted into direct relations with the United States at Manila the work of a commission that presented its credentials with a speech setting forth as the basic fact of the case, and its primary purpose, . . . a total separation between church and state.” That is to say, the pope has used this mission of the American governor to Rome, ostensibly bent on severing church and state in the Philippines, to place the United States government in a position squarely contradictory to the American principle of the separation of church and state. This is “adroit statesmanship,” indeed, but adroit statesmanship is no new thing at the Vatican. The papacy is a master of such statesmanship, and no government which enters into negotiations with the papacy has any reason to think it is not contending with the master diplomatic power of the world. It can expect only to get beaten in the diplomatic game.

From these “transactions at Rome, as reported in the Roman Catholic papers,” the Advocate sees that “there should be no further negotiations in Rome or Washington with an official representative of the Vatican,” nor should there be “further prolongation of negotiations over the removal of the friars.” The evidence shows that “the church authorities can no longer be trusted to deal frankly with the president and the government of the United States in this matter,” and therefore “the negotiations should be brought at once to a definite and final conclusion.” Why did not the Advocate know all this before the negotiations were begun? Was anything else to be expected, in the light of papal history and papal claims? Why were the founders of this Western republic so careful to separate the civil government from the sphere of religion? Was it not because they had in view this very history of the papacy, and knew that the union of church and state was a fundamental principle of the papal system? Religious legislation is a papal measure; and when such legislation is enacted and enforced as has been done in this country in the matter of Sunday laws, what is to be expected but that the government will finally come into touch with the papacy itself? And now just this thing has come, or is so threatening as to cause this organ of Methodism to speak out in alarm; but the time to have taken alarm was years ago, when American Protestants began to imitate papal ways.

L. A. S.