p. 114 | The Papacy Unmasked

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Mar 28, 1871

The Papacy Unmasked.

AMERICANS have been taught to believe that there are certain cardinal truths upon which our government rests, which are essential to the maintenance of our freedom. Our forefathers having suffered bitter and untold persecutions under State religious establishments, wisely separated the State from the church, and established each on an independent basis.

There was but one opinion in the colonies at the time of the adoption of the constitution of the United States upon this subject, however much of dissent may have existed as to others. All patriots approved it, all indorsed it, all applauded it. The great father of American statesmen, Thomas Jefferson, considered

“Freedom of religion among the essential principles of our government,” and “that its free exercise is placed by the Constitution independent of the powers of the general Government.”

And the great author of the Constitution, James Madison, declared that

“A resource that cannot fail to aid me in the fulfillment of my duty is the sentiment and intention to avoid the slightest interference with the rights of conscience or the functions of religion, so wisely exempted from civil jurisdiction.”

Patriots and sages viewed with jealous eye their dear-bought liberty, and every heart beat responsive to the patriotic sentiments of those great pillars of the government. At that time the Romish church had about thirty priests in this country.

As, year by year, that church grew in strength in our Union, both from immigration and from natural causes, a voice came rolling across the Atlantic from a papal organization, at Lyons, for the propagation of the faith, “claiming that France and Spain took possession of this country for the church,” and saying:

“At a late hour, heresy made her appearance, and led to the coasts of North America the most violent of her disciples—the restless Puritans. Some other sects cast their scum on the same shores, and Protestantism gained sovereignty in the thirteen colonies which were destined to become the United States. Yet the Catholic Church could never abandon the invaded territory.”

This, then, is the “invaded territory” of the church. Reader, know ye that invaders have no natural rights, and are subject to be ejected as soon as sufficient force can be organized to accomplish it?

In July, 1852, speaking of the Gallican Declaration of 1672, Brownson’s Review, p. 290, says:

“The original vice of the four articles was in the separation of the two powers, and placing the State and the church, each in its own order, on the same footing, each holding immediately from God, independently of the other. The temporal power exists for the spiritual, not for itself, and is therefore subordinate to the spiritual, and consequently subject to the spiritual sovereign, in obedience to whose authority the temporal sovereign must govern. In the second place, the separation of the two orders is not and cannot be a fact. The two orders are distinguishable, but the temporal is never without the spiritual any more than the creature is without a creator.”

This sentiment went forth, indorsed by twenty-five American Archbishops and Bishops. A few years glided swiftly away, and an echo from Rome, gathering force as it crossed the Atlantic, rolled up our valleys and over our hills and mountains, as “The Voice of Infallibility,” proclaimed in the appendix to the encyclical letter bearing date Dec. 8, 1864, as follows:

“Error Fifty-fifth.” That “the church must be separated from the State, and the State from the church.”

Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison, and those other illustrious patriots and statesmen, were “invaders,” and hence had no right to say “the rights of conscience and the functions of religion were wisely exempted from civil jurisdiction,” in the land won by their valor and wisdom. “The church could never abandon the invaded territory,” therefore the twenty-five Archbishops and Bishops, the Pope, the Priests, Brownson, and the entire Catholic press, declare those great men were wrong, that our cherished ideas and our cardinal principles of government are “ERRORS.”

Reader, who do you suppose had the interest of America more at heart, the organization which says those patriots who transmitted to us our glorious liberties were “invaders of the territory of the church” or the fathers of the Republic, themselves? those who are sworn “to defend,” “to advance,” the interest of the pope? or those who suffered and bled, and died, to secure to us the blessings of freedom?

Many Catholics assert that the church does not hold such a doctrine in the United States. We ask any person of this belief to designate an Archbishop, Bishop, Priest, or layman, occupying any position in the church, or on the press thereof, who has denied it! Will you name one among them who ever denounced the horribly atrocious way in which the “faithful children” repelled, in 1564, the Protestant “invasion” of “the territory of the church,” in Florida? That terrible chapter teaches us the punishment to be meted out to other “invaders of the territory the church could never abandon.” Again, only a few days since, “father” Thos. Farrell, of New York, was removed from the pastorship of St. Joseph’s church by Archbishop McCloskey, because he addressed a letter to the “Meeting of Friends of Italy,” expressing satisfaction at the separation of the church and state in Italy.

This, the Western Watchman says, made him “a hater of the Holy See,” and “an abettor of sacrilege.” There is little evidence in such language, and in the action mentioned, of a disposition to renounce the doctrine in the United States.

The Romish church has long been working most earnestly to reconquer “the invaded territory.” To accomplish that, it has, in some sections of the Union, sought to drive the Protestant Bible from the family circle by burning it; in others, it wars against our public schools and unites with infidels and Jews, although anathematizing them with every breath, to banish the Bible therefrom, because the Western Watchman says:

“They have no right to be at all. We said, [it repeats] Materialize, unchristianize, infidelize, those schools, for it is only by so doing we can wrench our rights from the dishonest majority who now legislate for us.”

Priests are told to “speak from their altars” and exhort their flocks to vote for no man who will not comply with their demands.

Raise up children in their schools which they call “Christian,” and wish to establish on the ruins of the public schools, with the Romish catechism instead of the Protestant Bible, in their hands, and a generation will suffice to give them an immense numerical majority, when religious freedom in this country will be at an end, and, as Archbishop’s Kenrick’s organ, the Western Watchman, said a few weeks ago, “The heaven-born institutions

of Catholicity will be planted side by side with the institutions of the country.”

The Duke of Richmond, formerly governor of the Canadas, said in a speech at Montreal, when speaking of the United States:

“The church of Rome has a design upon that country. Popery will in time be the established religion, and aid in the destruction of that Republic.”

About 1828 the St. Leopold foundation was established in Austria for the purpose of supporting “the greater activity of the Catholic missions in the United States.” Austria took this society under her royal protection, as a Cabinet office of the prince, before its organization in some lectures against Protestantism in support of Popery, took the ground that the United States was the

“True nursery of all these [revolutionary] destructive principles. Thence the evil has overrun many other lands, either by natural contagion or by arbitrary communication.”

The Pope published a bull promising full indulgence and remission of all their sins to those who contributed to this society. The English Romanists formed an emigration society for the same purpose. Both of the above societies directed their attention to the North-west.

In a pamphlet written by a Roman Catholic, speaking of the Catholics, is written:

“They gain more by immigration, more by natural increase in proportion to their numbers, more by intermarriages, adoption, and conversions, than Protestants. With their exclusive views of salvation, and peculiar tenets, as soon as they have a majority, this becomes a Catholic country with a Catholic government, with the Catholic religion established by law.”

He calls attention to the West, especially to St. Louis, which

“Has risen up, as it were, but yesterday, in the heart of this country, it now boasts of more than thirty thousand inhabitants, twelve thousand of which are German, Belgian, French, and Irish, Catholics, mainly attracted by the system of education afforded by the Belgian Jesuits.”

It is this system of education the Western Watchman wishes to establish on the ruins of our common-school system. That paper last spring said, St. Louis is

“The most Catholic city in the land, and it will be an everlasting disgrace to us, if we do not give the nation at large proof of our manly determination to overthrow a galling and outrageous injustice,” and insisted that they should carry religion into politics and elect none to the school board but those “pledged” to secure their demand, saying,

“We mean to seize that board, and it will be our fault if we fail in the attempt.”

How long will it be before they will feel strong enough to attempt to seize some other branch of the Government?

A very large element of our population, about seven millions, is working unitedly by sustaining the Romish church, to bring about the union of the church and state. That our Protestant brethren may reflect upon the question, we call their attention to the condition of those countries in which the union is, and has been, in existence, from time immemorial. Behold Mexico and the Republics and governments of South America; civil wars, civil wars have desolated them, and the clergy have drawn the blood of life from their veins. They contain no stable governments, permit no freedom of thought or of worship, afford inadequate protection for life, and manifest but little virtue. Look at Spain, highly favored as to climate and soil as she is, until lately priest-ridden, “all the vitality has been ground out of her,” as one of her statesmen in the session of the cortes said, by “the church.”

If this union is productive of such excellent results as are attributed to it, why has it not manifested itself there? Spain had some experience with the noble (?) Jesuits, and to show what the king thought of them we shall quote a page of history. The king discovered that they were “the power behind the throne,” more powerful than the throne itself in directing the people, therefore he issued a decree banishing them from all the Spanish dominions and forbidding them to return or hold any intercourse whatever with any subject of Spain, or any person residing within its territory. He had soldiers surround the colleges and take possession of the bells, so they could not be rung to create a tumult. The fathers were told to secure their breviaries, linen, money, and other trifles, and were then marched like so many criminals, to the seacoast, and shipped away. A month after their departure the king wrote to the Pope touching the matter. He said as it

“Is the first duty of a sovereign to watch over the peace and preservation of his State, and provide for the good government and tranquillity of his subjects,” he had therefore, “been under the imperious necessity of resolving on the immediate expulsion of all the Jesuits who are established in his kingdom and dominions, and to send them to the States of the church, under the immediate, wise and holy direction of your most holy beatitude and most worthy father and master of the faithful.”

Whereat on the 16th day of February, 1767, the pope wrote a letter of remonstrance to the king; we quote the address and the reference to the Jesuits from it:

“To our dearest son in Jesus Christ,”

Of the Jesuits he says:

“The body, the instruction, the spirit of the company of Jesus is absolutely innocent; and not only innocent, but it is pious, it is useful, it is holy; and all this considered with reference to its laws, to its maxims, or to its objects.”

Yet when this holy “company of Jesus” arrived at Civita Vecchia, his “holiness,” the Pope, directed the Superior or General of their own order, “father Ricci,” to refuse them a landing, and they were deterred from landing by the guns of the fortress.

Here we find the “dearest son of Jesus” and the “holy father” afraid of this “holy company of Jesus.” If they dreaded their machinations, what should not American Protestants fear, whose doctrines they are sworn to extirpate?

We further find a Catholic State in such mortal dread of Catholic society that it is compelled to banish it. Is there, then, such magic in Catholicism that we must be blinded to its encroachments, to its objects and designs? that we must shut our eyes to its history? If the purpose and lives of that “company of Jesus” were so holy, why did a Catholic nation, ruled by “the dearest son of Jesus,” spew them out, and the Pope refuse them a landing? and, if the union of the church and state is so holy, and productive of so great good, why is it Spain, and Italy, and Austria have been destroying it? The most intensely Catholic countries are the most profoundly ignorant, indolent, and criminal. The States lately ruled by the Pope himself, in which are over 250 bishops, by their police statistics, establish this. These show one murder annually in every 1,000 inhabitants, and as to ignorance, out of 170,400 marriages in the year 1868, there were 90,350, in which neither the bride nor the groom could read or write.

If the Romish church fosters education, how is it so much ignorance abounds in its dominions? If it prevents vice and crime, how is it with so many Bishops, Priests, Monks, and other holy (?) orders as exist in the late States of the church, they were overrun with brigands, and that so many murders are annually committed? If it prevents indolence, how is it the “holy city” is filled with beggars?

Notwithstanding the fearful condition of society under the immediate rule and eye of the Pope, the Western Watchman and other Catholic papers say:

“We have to plant the heaven-born institutions of Catholicity side by side with the institutions of the country. The battle as between the eternal and immutable principles of Catholicity and the pernicious maxims of human insolence, ambition and lust, must be fought here in this land and with this people.*”

Are institutions which foster so much crime, and such profound ignorance “heaven-born,” or fit institutions to supplant those which are the natural offspring of our form of government?

Protestants, you must work with the same zeal they manifest; perfect your Evangelical Unions, your Christian Associations, and whatever else will give concentrated action. Do not be destroyed in detail, but put forth a united effort to turn those now in the communion of Rome from the “Man of Sin,” and awake those among us to realize the danger of the time. “The church is of necessity intolerant,” and when the “Catholic religion shall have been established by law,” the “final penalties of the law will be inflicted upon the violaters thereof”—“the invaders of the territory of the Church.”—From the Sentinel, Edina, Knox Co., Mo.