Roman Catholic Claims for Recognition
By Editor
It seems quite evident that Roman Catholicism will demand or is demanding recognition not granted in the past. For instance, it is stated by Marquis de Fontenoy, a European newspaper correspondent, a part of whose article was printed in the Boston Pilot, that a cardinal is not necessarily a priest—he is not a mere member of an ecclesiastical body, he is not to be compared with ministers of the gospel—but a great personage, who is regarded and treated everywhere abroad, not as a dignitary of any church, but as a prince of the blood, and therefore, under the circumstances, he should be regarded as a foreign prince of the blood to whom the United States, as one of the great powers of the world, is under obligation to concede the same honors that they receive abroad. Thus, if Cardinal Farley were to visit an American man-of-war, he would be entitled to the salutes and to the naval honors reserved for a foreign royal personage, and at any official entertainments at Washington the cardinal would not only outrank any cabinet officer, the speaker of the House, and the vice-president, but also the foreign ambassadors, coming immediately next to the chief magistrate himself. And it is also stated that when a royal personage not of sovereign rank visits New York, it is his duty to make the first call on Cardinal Farley. And the Boston Pilot says that “this country would be showing a contemptible and narrow littleness which does not become it, and which will never be manifested, if it endeavored to set at naught the century-old rank which all nations accord to their eminence.” Well, we will see whether the United States will yield to the old régime, or will still hold to the “new order of things” of 1776, which set aside the old-time practises which grew out of a union of church and state.