IS ROME LOYAL TO AMERICAN INSTITUTIONS?
By M. C. W.
The Catholic Review of March 23 makes the following declaration:— “When any man, or any body of men, we care not who or what they are, seriously and deliberately assert or intimate that the Catholics of this country are not loyal to its institutions, they not merely make themselves ridiculous—they violate the dictates of justice and charity, and are not worthy of being listened to by candid, fair-minded men.” It is a strong, positive statement, and we wish we could believe it to be true. While there is no conflict between the Catholic Church and the Government, or the institutions of the State, of course that church will support the Government. But if the free institutions of this Government come in conflict with the institutions of the Catholic Church, it is the church first and always. Concerning its position on education the same article says:— “The rule requiring religious education for Catholic children is simply a law of the Catholic Church. It is not an arbitrary rule imposed by the Pope upon the American Church whether they like it or not. It is a law passed by the Plenary Council of Baltimore, approved by the Holy Father, and sanctioned by the whole Catholic Church. And the principle itself of religious education is sanctioned by a very respectable portion of our Protestant fellow-citizens. There is nothing political about it.” Religious education is right, and the Catholic Church has the right to educate its youth religiously, but this belongs, as the Government rightly recognizes, to the home and the church. The State, in its public schools, designs to fit men to become intelligent citizens. A tax is levied for that purpose upon all. All can avail themselves of its benefits. The school only teaches those things which are of benefit to all. It aims to inculcate no religion; in fact, it has no right to teach religion. If it were right to divide the public money with Catholics, then Methodists, Baptists, Quakers, Mormons, infidels, and pagans could as justly claim their share of the public funds, and the State would be responsible for all the religious teaching. But the public schools teach no religion whatever, so that none can be offended, while they do teach those things beneficial to all. But against this just institution of the public school, Rome has issued her fulminations. She has brought it into politics again and again. She certainly is not loyal to one, at least, of the very foundations of a free Government,—free education to poor and rich alike in all things necessary to fit them for the common walks of life. Their opposition may be “simply a law of the Catholic Church,” but it is directed with all the power of that church, through indulgence, precept, and anathema, against the institution of free non-sectarian education. “Loyal” means fidelity to law. If the Pope were in America, would not the Catholic Church take the same position which she now takes concerning the church in Italy? If the question were between our entire code of free laws and free institutions, on the one hand, and the temporal power of the Pope, on the other, would the Church of Rome then be loyal to the Government? We are not discussing questions which lie between man and God, but between temporal rulers only. The Catholic Church stands alone here. No other church pays homage (at least,264professedly) to a temporal ruler but the Roman Catholic Church, and the ruler in the Vatican is to that church the ruler over all others. But this the Catholic Review would say was “simply a law of the Catholic Church;” “there is nothing political about it.” In this way every persecution of the past of which that church is guilty could be justified. The Church of Rome is inimical to every free Government. Her idea of loyalty is to use the civil power to further her own designs. To the vacillating Government which will swing to Rome's wishes, she is loyal; but woe be to that Government which despises her wishes, if she can only bring it beneath her heel.