p. 58 | MEXICO'S TWOFOLD CURSE by Rev. J. Milton Green, D.D.

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Nov 27, 1893

MEXICO'S TWOFOLD CURSE.

By Rev. J. Milton Green, D.D.

ROMANISM and infidelity, these are the great obstacles which impede the true elevation and progress of our sister republic. The latter is the natural result and fruit of the former. I am aware that in saying this I am antagonizing not a few among us who cherish the belief that Romanism is a better form of religion for the Mexicans than evangelical Christianity would be. The trouble with all such is that they do not know what Romanism, pure and simple, is. They have in mind the Romish Church modified by its Protestant environment, such as we see in our own land, obliged by an enlightened public sentiment and conscience to be externally, and to do many things which are, in contradiction to its traditional and essential principles and policy. I saw the other day, in Omaha, a specimen of the maguey plant, perhaps three feet high by two feet in diameter. It was an exotic. If I had taken it as a fair sample of the product, I should have greatly erred. It had been dwarfed and hindered in its development by its unnatural and unfavorable surroundings. I could but contrast it with the magnificent plants I had seen in Mexico, where soil and climate favor their growth, and where they attain to the height of ten to twelve feet and a similar width. So it is, if I mistake not, with Romanism. What we see in our own favored land is really a modified form of the system. It is not the natural and symmetrical development of its declared principles. It is not the normal outgrowth of its peculiar genius and spirit. Take the authorized utterances of Romanism and compare them with the

church as we see it, and they do not correspond at all. For example, Rome teaches that the many should be kept in ignorance and that only the few should be educated. But among us it is rare to find a Romish child who is not being taught either in the public or the parochial schools. And Father McGlynn gives us the explanation of this when he says that "if there were no public schools, there would be no parochial schools." In Mexico, where the Romish Church has had unlimited sway for more than three centuries over a people naturally gifted and susceptible of high civilization, she has educated only a very few of her children, so that even to this day not more than one in ten of her men, and not one in twenty of her women, can read, while she has suffered slavery for debt to exist under protection of law over a large part of the country. The canon law of the Roman Church distinctly declares that the pontiff "as God is far above the reach of all human law and judgment, and that all laws contrary to the canons and decrees of the Roman prelates are of no force." In our own land Roman citizens, as a rule, are obedient and loyal so far as outwardly appears, and honor the claims of the civil law; but in Mexico the people, following the precepts and example of the priesthood, fought for thirty years the nascent republic, and to-day are found in uncompromising rebellion against the laws of the land relative to public instruction, monastic orders, public religious processions, and the wearing on the streets of priestly vestments. Wherever these and such like laws are respected, it is done under protest and only through fear. Away from the great centers there is a systematic and consistent violation of them. One of the provisions of Rome's canon law is that "heretics are to be deprived of all civil and paternal rights," and it is added, "We do not esteem those homicides to whom it may have happened, in their zeal for their mother church against the excommunicated, to kill some of them." Now in the United States converts from Romanism enjoy equal liberty and protection with others. Here there is liberty of speech and thought and conscience, and we do not think of the system as being at all distinct in this particular from any other church. She respects and tolerates even her apostates. But how changed is all this as soon as we cross the Rio Grande and pass into Mexico! There the system, unless directly checked by the civil authority, sanctions the principle that in Rome "there can be no toleration." It is forbidden to employ a Protestant artisan or to consider him as having any rights which others are bound to respect. He may be insulted, robbed, and injured in person or family with impunity. If he has aught to sell, he must accept less than his neighbors; and if he desires to buy anything, he must pay more for it than they. He may literally be spit upon and stoned and buffeted, and can find no redress even in the courts, because in effect Rome wears the ermine. Nay, more, Romanism shoots, stabs, butchers those whom she considers as heretics, and so far from considering this as crime, she defends the assassins. Witness the massacres of Acapulco, Ahuacuatitlan, and Almoloya, and the martyr roll of sixty which stains the pages of missionary history of Mexico during the last twenty-five years. Many among us will be found to deny the existence in the Roman Church of an authorized tariff wherein every sin, however loathsome, has its price; but we who have seen and read said tariff, consider it only as a principle whose practical outworking is seen in the everyday life of priests and people as we have known them in Mexico. In no other way can we explain the existence of perjury, drunkenness, gambling, and fornication almost universal among the priesthood, and of practical polygamy, lying, stealing, and adultery among the people; yea, and even of murder. Let us not deceive ourselves. Look at the encyclical of Leo XIII. under date of September 25, 1891, and read these words: "Naturalization oaths have been demanded in order that the true church might be made to subscribe to the United States Constitution, with its impious laws and nefarious teachings, to compel them to renounce the true authority of the Catholic pontiff." This is in full accord with the canon law of Rome, but not with Rome as unthinking people see and judge her. That law says that "constitutions of princes are not superior but subordinate to ecclesiastical constitutions." How, then, can a consistent Roman Catholic be an American patriot, an obedient and loyal citizen?—He cannot; and he will, if intelligent, defend himself by citing one of the canon laws, which says that "no oath is to be kept toward heretics, princes, lords, or others." Now Romanism as it is, and as thus described, has in Mexico given birth to a twin curse, which is disbelief—an utter lack of faith not only, but an attitude of bitter animosity toward the Bible and all that is called Christianity. The fathers and brothers of the country very generally coincide with the sentiment which I recently saw in a representative newspaper, that "the Bible has been the greatest obstacle to the civilization and progress of Mexico." They believe that Roman Catholicism is the legitimate successor to the church of the apostles; they consider our Bible an adulteration and ourselves as impostors, and believe that they have seen and known Christianity in seeing and knowing the Romish Church. And thus to-day French, German, and American infidelity, including Spiritualism, find nowhere a more hearty welcome or a more congenital field than in Mexico. And for this reason I consider missionary work in Mexico, as in all papal countries, more difficult than it is in pagan lands. The gospel has not to encounter and overcome a base system of heathenism, but a shameful counterfeit of itself, a public sentiment bitterly prejudiced against it by a system worse than heathenism, that has palmed itself upon the people as Christianity.—Missionary Review.