LIBERTY AND ROMANISM

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Jun 26, 1893

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 19, No. 33.

LIBERTY AND ROMANISM.

[Translated from the Spanish, by Frank C. Kelley.]

THE Syllabus is a law all Romanists, from the least to the greatest prince in the church, must respect, under pain of condemnation. With this belief, consequently, although he may be very liberal at heart, the Papist must curse liberty. In order that doubt shall not remain in the mind of the faithful Romanist, the pontifical declaration terminates it by condemning what he affirms, saying that "the Roman pontiff can and must be the reconciler and adjuster of modern civilization, progress, and liberty."

These unreasonable declarations sorely conflict with the ideas and sense of modern society, and they trouble the minds of a majority of those who are called Romanists, causing them to make flagrant contradictions.

They curse progress and freedom, and, at the same time, write songs of liberty and send them forth, to prove that the church, i. e., the pope, is the defender of freedom and the chief support of true liberty—a position actually shameful for many, and humiliating to the majority of those Romanists who love liberty by being obliged to curse it and use subterfuges and sophistries in order to deceive their own consciences.

They tell us that if liberty is the faculty the soul possesses of choice between two contrary opinions, God lacks liberty, because in him can be no conflicting solicitations. Therefore, they conclude that any definition that denies liberty in the Supreme Being is necessarily false, and that the liberty of man does not consist in the inalienable right to choose between two opposite opinions, but in admitting and professing the opinion that may be true and good; which is to say, in

other words, God is always in the truth; liberty for him does not consist in choosing the truth; and that which is not liberty in God cannot be in man, who is the image of God. Liberty, then, consists in always following the truth. But as man cannot be always in the truth, his liberty will consist in submitting himself to the authority that will guide him by the true way. And where is this authority, we ask? In the pope, they reply with undisturbed serenity.

What is there in this argument the design of which is the deception of men?—Sophisms and nothing more than sophisms. It is a sophism to draw from the divine nature conclusions in order to apply them to man on a subject in which they clearly state that they are diverse. God, not having to choose from being the Supreme Intelligence, chooses not, Thou, O man, art the one who must choose. Behold the sophisms that these enemies of liberty, progress, and civilization present to us under a thousand forms!

Another sophism that we meet constantly in the mouth of the Papist is the one that they give us for positive proof for all that is in dispute, by which they begin and prove all. It is this, that the pope is the authority to which man must blindly submit himself, and what he tells us is the truth. Says the Romanist, "You cannot find the truth; submit yourself, give up your reason and your conscience, and you will find it." Yes, I reply at all times, I may be persuaded that the pope has the truth; and, although I sincerely desire that it may be so, yet I doubt it; assure me of it, examining it in the light of the gospel, of reason, and history; and you refuse me the examination. Oh, well, if permitted, it is only done after the manner of a preacher that we heard a few nights ago preaching on "Purgatory before Reason,"—"it is according to the justice of God." He declared that he was not going to prove the dogma by reason; that would be to fall into rationalism; the dogma is proved through what?—Through the faith and the traditions. He said that he was going to show through Catholic authority that this dogma is reasonable.

The pope is the authority and has the truth, says the Romanist, and you can always examine it through the Catholic channel, which is to say, without reasoning upon it, and that you never examine it except to confirm what the pope says is the truth. With these weapons, with this class of arguments, you can prove all, and thus these false defenders of liberty tell us that the teachings of modern civilization are libertinism.

No agency is refused to make acceptable such absurd doctrines; all are good; all are permitted—the audacious falsehood, such as the falsification of history. Balmes tells us that the Inquisition was one of the great glories of Spain, and then declares that his heart is irritated when he hears the church which he has served reproached for using violence to convince men. Is this blindness or sophistry? Mr. Nicolás says indignantly: "The popes have neither sustained nor favored the Inquisition. It has been a question of the kings. Father Ventura rejected violence as means for the conversion of the heretic, and affirmed that the doctrines of the church must alone be propagated by the word, and that physical force had never been used by the popes."

But what of the Inquisition, the destruction of the Huguenots, the anathemas against those who held that the heretics ought not to suffer persecution? The most sincere of Roman authors cannot deny that the church condemns liberty. This painful impression on the mind of the Catholic is destroyed by subtlety. The church condemns all systems of philosophy that are not its own. These authors tell us that they only treat of materialism, although the pope has marked out many other systems of materialism. The church declares marriage concubinage that has not been solemnized according to its doctrines, and these authors tell us that the pope condemns the families thus formed. The church curses him who denies its right to direct in the public schools; and these lords tell us that the pope's only wish is to take atheism out of the schools.

The pope condemns the defenders of the liberty of thought and of conscience. To-day it is known throughout all the truly civilized nations, and these lords say the pope's wish is that no secular education be permitted.

Again we ask, What is there in all this, blindness or deceit? Is it possible that they are all persuaded that modern civilization, in which the most distinguished are, is evil? Ought we not to see clearly in these sophisms, these adulterations of history and the subterfuges of the doctrines of the church, the protest of the consciences of these selfsame defenders of the Papacy, because the conscience naturally resents the infringement of its laws?

It is from these that we affirm that the Papacy is a denial of liberty in all of its forms, and a system that employs means as this one does to make itself acceptable, is death to the conscience and the spirit of its defenders.