The Papal Temporal Dominion by John Norton Loughborough

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Mar 17, 1874

The Papal Temporal Dominion.

By John Norton Loughborough

The talk of Montgomery, in his speech at the celebration quoted in our last, was very plain; but, before passing to give the speech by Splivalo on the opposite side, I will introduce a few testimonies of Catholics of the ultramontane school, corresponding with that of Montgomery.

The first is a statement made by Archbishop Hughes, of New York city. When he was in Rome, in 1863, he wrote a document in defense of the papal temporal dominion, which was signed by three hundred cardinals and bishops, and made quite a sensation in Italy. The Boston Journal of that year thus speaks of the document prepared by Hughes:—

“The remarkable address was written by Archbishop Hughes, of New York, in behalf of the Catholic world, and more particularly of Italy, affected more than any other country upon earth by the question of the temporal power of the pope, and signed by three hundred cardinals and bishops now congregated at Rome. In this address, Archbishop Hughes asserts that ‘the temporal power of His Holiness, being granted to him by a peculiar desire of divine Providence, all the nations of the earth combined are powerless against it; that Rome and the papal domain do not belong to Italy, but to the Catholic world, and that they can never cease to be its property.’”

By comparing the statements of Hughes and Montgomery, this “gift of divine Providence” (?) was through France and other people. Certain it is that the temporal dominion of the pope never came from Christ, who said, “My kingdom is not of this world.” But the papists give that text a very peculiar explanation, so as to destroy its force against temporal dominion. The cardinal Jesuit, Bellarmino, says of the text, “Christ answered in this way because he was just about to die. He said, ‘My kingdom is not of this world’ because he was going to his Father; therefore his kingdom was not any longer of this world, but in the other, or everlasting world.”

Pope Pius IX., in one of his encyclical letters, openly affirms that “the spiritual power of the pope cannot be separated from his temporal.” This is only in harmony with the claims of former popes. Pope Celestin, writing to the emperor, says, “Remember, in the beginning God created two great luminaries, the greater, the sun, for the day, the smaller, the moon, for the night. The sun is the spiritual power of the pope, the moon the power of the emperor; and as the light of the moon is subject (being only reflected), so the power of the empire is a

reflection and condition of the temporal and spiritual power of the pope.” This statement ought to be plain enough to inform all what the pope would do when he has the power to enforce his temporal dominion. Of course he will make all kingdoms reflect and enforce his doctrines as he has done in the past.

The Catholic priests look with holy horror upon the fall of the temporal power of the pope in Rome. In their paper, called The Monitor, of 1870, they say: “The sacred city of St. Peter’s is overwhelmed by a deluge of wickedness and corruption; the vicegerent of God is deprived of the liberty which his sublime office imperatively demands.” The sovereign pontiff should be free. To deprive him of that liberty would be to do violence to the gospel of which he is the authorized interpreter and guardian, and to the human conscience of which he is the director and guide. But should the pope be subject to any civil government, it is obvious to any one who has given the matter a moment’s serious reflection that his spiritual liberty would be precarious and illusory.”

The clergy and laity of the diocese of New York in 1870 sent an address to Pius IX., in which they say: “With the indignation of honest men . . . who revere the sacred sovereignty of the holy see over its temporal domain, we repudiate and condemn the lawless injustice which has invaded your legitimate domain as a sovereign prince.”

“We also protest against the invasion of the liberty of the church in the person of its head, both as an outrage against the sacred prerogative of Your Holiness as supreme pontiff, and as the violation of a right which we as Catholics possess, of being governed by a chief completely exempt from and independent of all civil authority, for in no other condition could our intercourse with him be free and unrestricted.”

But that we may understand this matter more fully, I will make a few more quotations: The Catholic World, a paper published by L. T. Hecker, superior of the congregation of St. Paul, N. Y., indorsed by the archbishop of New York city, by Cardinal Barnabo of Rome, and by Pope Pius IX. (good Catholic authority sure), in its issue of June, 1871, copied into the N. Y. Tribune, of June 24, says, “While the State has rights, she has them only in virtue and by permission of the superior authority, and that authority can only be expressed through the church—that is, through the organic law infallibly announced and unchangeably asserted, regardless of temporal consequences.”

The Tribune justly remarks that this is “a flat contradiction of the American doctrine that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. It is a virtual affirmation that the civil power is subordinate to the church. . . . The doctrine carried to its legitimate result would make the pope the master of the world.”

The Catholic World, in its number for August, 1871, says, “We of course deny that the Catholic hierarchy is a foreign hierarchy or anti-republican, for what is Catholic is universal, and what is universal is nowhere a foreigner, but yet, because the supreme pontiff does not reside personally in America, and its power does not emanate from the American people, Protestants, Jews, and infidels, will hold that it is a foreign power. . . . The Catholic hierarchy is supernatural, not natural, and, therefore, no more a foreigner in one nation than in another. But it is only the Catholics that can see and understand this.”

Again, the same article says, “We maintain that civil society can no more dispense with the church than the body with the soul. The secular is insufficient for itself, and needs the informing life and vigor of the spiritual. . . . There is no form of government more in need of the church than the republican; founded on the modern doctrine of popular sovereignty, and the maxim, ‘The majority must rule.’ . . . We need the church to consecrate the government, to give the laws a spiritual sanction, to create in us habits of reverence, of submission, and docility.”

As a matter of fact, however, the church has never condemned any particular form of civil polity, or erected one form or another into a Catholic dogma, and a man may be a monarchist, a republican, or a democrat, as he pleases, and at the same time be a good and irreproachable Catholic, if he holds the political power subordinate to the divine sovereignty.”

“The only question is, Shall the State be informed and directed by the infallible and holy church of God, or by the synagogue of Satan? No man who is at all competent to pass a judgment on the question but agrees with the syllabus in condemning not the distinction, but the separation of church and State. Candid, thinking men and women cannot fail to see what the above means. It means, if it means anything, we don’t care what your government is, provided in ALL things it advances the interests of the Romish church. The Catholics profess to be greatly in love with our republican government, and why? Because here they expect to spread themselves unmolested, until they are numerically strong enough to assert and enforce their own tenets upon the people, and then you will see how much they favor the republican principle of freedom of conscience.”

Bishop McQuaid, in a sermon, on the occasion of the consecration of Dr. Carrigan, as bishop of Newark, N. J., which sermon was published in the Boston Pilot, a Catholic paper, of May 17, 1873, says: “The spirit of nationality stood in the way of the Christians when the early apostles commenced their work. The same spirit exists at this very day. And why this opposition? Has not the divinely constituted church wisdom enough and power enough to overspread the world without regard to political forms of government?”

Of the bishops of Germany, in the contest there between church and State, he says: “Before God’s altar to-day, I would blush for shame if I thought that the bishops of the church of God would bend before any power on earth, however mighty. . . . Here in free and blessed America the Catholic church is prosperous.”

Prosperous; yes, indeed she is; and the figures that indicate their prosperity, numerically, are startling. I quote from the “Catholic Directory and Ordo,” a comparison of the Catholic statistics of the United States in 1840 and in 1870. “In 1840 there were 13 dioceses, 12 bishops, 373 priests, 300 churches and stations, and the Catholic population was 1,500,000. In 1870 there were 53 dioceses, 62 bishops, 3,483 priests, 5,219 churches, Catholic population 5,000,000.”

Before me is a still better statement from the Cleveland Herald of May 3, 1873: “Father Spaulding, a Roman Catholic priest of Louisville, delivered a parting lecture to his congregation, in which he indulged in the most sanguine anticipations of the final supremacy of the Romish religion in this country. . . . ‘Now,’ he said, ‘there are 64 dioceses in this country, and, go where you will, there is a priest. The number of priests has doubled in the last ten years, now reaching to 5,000. One-fifth of the natives, to wit, 8,000,000, are Roman Catholics, and they are making remarkable conversions.’”

The masses look on this picture of Catholic prosperity with indifference, but, we ask in all candor, what means this rapid increase of numbers? and what do the Catholics design? The answer is at hand, in the words of Gavazzi, a Catholic priest, a chaplain in the Roman army, who was exiled from Italy in 1848 for having favored Italy’s freedom. “America, beware! Note the signs that everywhere mark the progress of papal dominion—forget not the ecclesiastical pride, haughtiness, arrogance, cupidity, oppression, cruelty, assassinations! This is no story to divert you. These are facts written by history, written for the instruction of men. . . . Now do the Jesuits plot; they have lost in Italy; and they dare to boast that they will gain in England. Yes, they wish to gain in England, but more particularly in America. Hither their eyes turn fondly. Here is a fresh stage; what they have lost in Italy they hope to gain in the New World.”

The Duke of Richmond, formerly governor of Canada, in a speech, said: “The government of the United States will be destroyed by subversion. The Church of Rome has a design upon that country; popery will in time be the established religion, and will aid in the destruction of that republic. I have conversed with many of the sovereigns and princes of Europe, and they have unanimously expressed their opinion relative to the government of the United States and their desire to subvert it.” He goes on to describe the modus operandi as follows: “To send over the surplus population of Europe, who would come among us with foreign views and feelings, and in the course of time be prepared to rise and overthrow the government.”

Papists profess to admire our government. They dare not do otherwise while in a minority here, or their scheme would be at once exploded. But are they really tolerant? One of the later popes said: “Liberty of conscience is a most pestilential error. . . . Unbridled liberty of opinion is that of all others most to be dreaded in the State.”

In a work on “Roman Unity,” which appeared in Rome in 1870, written by the Jesuit, Clement Schrader, and welcomed by Pius IX., we read: “Christian kings and princes must, on no account, admit of liberty of faith and worship in their territories, if they can prevent it.”

Said Bishop O’Connor, of Pittsburg: “Religious liberty is merely endured until the opposite can be carried into effect without peril to the Catholic world.” A Catholic periodical called The Shepherd of the Valley, the organ of the archbishop of St. Louis, says: “The church is of necessity intolerant; heresy she endures when and where she must; but she hates it, and directs all her energies to its destruction. If Catholics ever gain—which they surely will—an immense numerical majority, religious freedom in this country will be at an end.”

Do they mean simply that they will teach against religious freedom, or will this Roman sun (Catholic church) cause the moon (the civil government) to compel obedience? Let us hear the voice of the great Catholic Ecumenical Council of 1870 on the subject. See Canon XII. “Whosoever says that Christ, our Saviour and sovereign, has conferred upon the church the power to direct only by advice and persuasion those who turn aside, not to compel them by orders, by coercion, by external verdicts and statutory punishments, let him be anathema.”

J. N. Loughborough.