Protestant Eulogies of Catholic Bishop Foley
Why not Protestants all turn Catholics? If not, why not Protestants stop defying them? To be a Catholic now-a-days seems to be the sure way to gain fulsome eulogy from Protestant lips. The readers of the REVIEW will remember the quotation some time since from H. W. Beecher, making Pope Pius IX. go at his death straight up into the arms of Christ in Heaven, deifying him a little sooner than Catholics themselves. And now the daily Inter-Ocean of Chicago, in its issue of Feb. 22, devotes half a page to the most excessive eulogy of Bishop Foley, of the Roman Catholic Church, who died in that city last week. In the opening of the article occurs this passage:— In the ten years of his service here, Bishop Foley has wrought a good work. He has built up and strengthened the bulwarks of the church, and the entire Christian community has been benefited by his labors. The prayers of all good people go up for his soul.
Perhaps in this writer’s estimation, “the entire Christian community” does not include Protestants. Perhaps also he does not consider any of them among “all good people.” But if he does, then he represents Protestants, all the “good” ones at least, as praying for the soul of the Catholic bishop. How do the Protestants like this?