Literary Digest on Roosevelt's Vatican Negotiations
The Literary Digest (New York) points out that the administration’s “undiplomatic” intercourse with the Vatican has been undiplomatic in name only. “Mr. Roosevelt’s positive statement that the negotiations with the Vatican are not of a diplomatic character, has been received,” the Digest says, “with disrespectful amusement. It is admitted,” it continues, “that he may call them undiplomatic so far as he and his mission are concerned, but need the pope and his cardinals be undiplomatic? European papers answer this query in the negative. Another point is that the large foreign element in the United States, not yet trained to the practical separation of church and state, will be bewildered by what Mr. Roosevelt has done.” The Digest then gives a view of the matter from the standpoint of an impartial observer, and one well qualified to judge correctly on the point of which he speaks. It quotes from the Paris Temps. “De Tocqueville and Laboulaye,” says the Temps, “would shudder in their graves if apprised that the land of the separation of church and state had upon its own initiative rushed so near the peril of an adulterous union of the civil power and the spiritual power.” The Temps then further declares:— In truth, the plan that Governor Taft was charged by Secretary Root to urge upon Leo XIII and Cardinal Rampolla amounts to a concordat. The United States would not have made a law for the establishment of religion, but upon pretence of purchasing the property of the religious orders, it would have paid the Vatican about ten million dollars. That would have constituted a fund for the endowment of the Philippine clergy. Moreover, the mere fact of the signature of a treaty of this sort by a representative of the federal government and the pontifical secretary of state would have conferred upon the apostolic delegate at Washington a legal standing, a sort of diplomatic recognition. He could then have negotiated directly with President Roosevelt or with his government without having recourse to the services or the officious intermediation of an American citizen like Archbishop Ireland. It will be seen thus that the United States was willing to set a price upon the concessions it asked from Rome. It is for the United States government to decide if the recall of the religious orders and the sanction of the friars’ expulsion are worth such considerable compensation as the abandonment of a secular policy, and the conclusion of a sort of concordat or treaty with the Holy See. Certainly, when we can quote such statements as this, from such authorities, the prediction that a union of church and state will come in this country, and the belief that the government is playing into the hands of Rome, are entitled to sober consideration.