Poor Reasoning by Editor

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Dec 10, 1885

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 11, No. 47.

Poor Reasoning.

By Editor

The Independent, having received the full text of the pope's encyclical letter "Concerning the Christian Constitution of States," says:—

"It is an excellent and sensible pastoral. Some of our very Protestant contemporaries are aghast over it, and think it awful that the pope should tell Catholics to take their part in political government. But we should be ashamed of any Protestant minister who would not say as much. The Archbishops of Canterbury and York have just issued a similar encyclical to English churchmen. The present writer has cut a prayer-meeting short, telling the people that he must leave and go to a political primary, advising all other republican voters to follow him."

It is very easy for one to approve an act or saying of another when it agrees with what he himself has done or said. The writer in the Independent thinks that the pope's advice is good, because he has himself given similar advice. It is true that the pope's recommendation seems to be a very harmless one. No one could object to a man's voting because he was a Catholic. But when we remember that a Catholic is a Catholic at all times, and that when the pope tells the Catholics to take their part in politics, he means that they shall do so as Catholics, and not simply as citizens of the United States, and that they shall work for the advancement of Catholic power, we can see that his advice is not a thing to be passed over as of no importance. And, by the way, we do not think that political religion is any better because it is called Protestant. When a man's politics and religion are so closely allied that he regards a political meeting as equal in importance to a prayer-meeting, we do not regard him as a safe guide either in politics or religion.