Human Worship and Religious Liberty
Surely it is human worship, whether that worship be invited or not by the person so honored, when people kneel in the streets as he passes by. Such was the case, it is stated in a despatch to the New York Times from Boston, January 31, when Cardinal O’Connell came home and passed through the streets in a dense snow-storm. It is said that women knelt in Boston streets as the “prince of the church” passed. He alluded feelingly to the good will manifested toward him by non-Catholics as well as by church-members, and said that when he mentioned this to the “holy father,” the latter exclaimed, “That is good, because I know that many of the good Americans that are not Catholics are better than some of our Europeans who are so- called Catholics,” and the cardinal declared that he believed this to be one of the most memorable statements ever made by the pope; and he added, “This word, like the ‘dove of peace,’ I return to America.” Referring again to the pope, he said: “You should have seen the thrill with which he spoke of America, of the hospitality of its shores, of its religious and civic freedom, and of the great responsibility which he feels. He looks over the seas to this great land for consolation, and he asked me to go back and say that ‘we rejoice, as you rejoice, in the honors that we confer.’ He spoke of the prosperity due to religious liberty.” And yet it is that same religious liberty which, if the principles of the Papacy, or many of our so-called Protestant friends, were carried out, would be utterly destroyed.