The Catholic View

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Nov 26, 1912

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 39, No. 46.

The Catholic View

Not long ago, in a sermon in San Francisco, the noted Catholic priest, Bernard Vaughan, S. J., spoke on the subject, "Our Homes the Pillars of the State." Referring to Ireland, he says, "The people believe there, with the Catholic Church, that the material basis of the state is private property, that the natural basis of the state is the home,—family life,—and that the spiritual basis of the state is religion; and I may fearlessly say, no people on God's earth realize more fully than the Irish that their country claims for its triple foundation those three great institutions."

Now certainly private ownership is a help to a state, good homes are a help to the state, religion is always helpful to a state if it is separated from the state; but this is not the Catholic view. The Catholic view is that that religion must be connected with the state, and that that religion must dominate the state. The Catholic view is always that religion must control the state, and that religion must be the Roman Catholic religion. We never hear it said by the Roman Catholic that the Bible is the foundation of good government, or of liberty. It is ever and always religion, and that religion is the Roman Catholic religion. And believing this, they must of necessity work for the union of the Roman Catholic Church with the state, and control of the state by that church.