THE ATTITUDE OF ROME TOWARD THE UNITED STATES.
By G.
NOTHING more clearly indicates the “manifest destiny” of the United States of America than the attitude of the Roman Church toward the republic. No one denies, no one questions, that the polity of Rome is fundamentally monarchical; that but for Protestantism and its influence, Rome never would have tolerated republicanism in any degree. Freedom of conscience never has been a Roman doctrine only as that doctrine could be applied exclusively to the Roman conscience. A Catholic journal of recent date advocates the memorializing of Catholic effort for religious freedom in Maryland in colonial times. It is a fact that strenuous effort was made to that end by Catholics, and final success was won in Maryland simultaneously with Protestant effort in Virginia. But Catholics were then in the minority, and Catholics were then in danger, as were the Baptists of Virginia, of being overcome altogether by the intolerant Puritan element which was carrying a high hand in New England. The Catholics of Maryland were contending for liberty for Catholics. All precedent shows that they could have no interest in the welfare of any other religionists only as such others might be viewed in the light of material helps against a common foe. Going back as far as the edict of Milan—which granted “liberty and full freedom to Christians to observe their own mode of worship,” and commanded that the church property confiscated by Dioclesian should be restored to the whole body of Christians—that decree was construed to mean only Catholics, on the ground that no others were entitled to the name Christian. In short, the Papacy, which is Roman Catholicism concreted, was possible only by the exclusion of everything opposed to it. The attitude of Rome toward the government of the United States as late as 1871 is thus expressed by the Catholic World, in its issue of September of that year:— “As it is interpreted by the liberal sectarian journals that are doing their best to revolutionize it, and is beginning to be interpreted by no small portion of the American people, or is interpreted by the Protestant principle so widely diffused amongst us, . . . we do not accept it, or hold it to be any government at all, or as capable of performing any of the proper functions of government; and if it continues to be interpreted by the revolutionary principles of Protestantism, it is sure to fail. . . . Hence it is we so often say that if the American republic is to be sustained and preserved at all, it must be by the rejection of the principle of the Reformation, and the acceptance of the Catholic principle by the American people.” But in 1892 there was handed down from the United States Supreme Bench the dictum that “this is a Christian nation.” And from this time onward Rome had a pretext for recognizing the republic. In September, 1894, Bishop Keane, then of Washington, D. C., returned from a visit to Rome, and in an interview said:— “The policy of the pope, in view of the late overtures in Italy, is the union of the church with the great democratic powers of the future—that is, America and France. This is his hope, and toward it all his remarkable energies are bent.” A few days afterward it was announced that the bishop was the bearer of a rescript from the pope, of which it was said:— “The papal rescript elevates the United States to the first rank as a Catholic nation. Heretofore this country has stood before the church as a missionary country. It had no more recognition officially at Rome than had China. . . . By the new rescript the country is freed from the propaganda and is declared to be a Catholic country. . . . The importance, not only to Catholics, but to all citizens of the United States, of this radical change in the relations to Rome of the church in America, can scarcely be overestimated.” This change comes by the wholesale usurpation of the name Christian by the Church of Rome, just as in the interpretation of the edict of Milan in the third century. In the dictum of the Supreme Court of the United States that “this is a Christian nation,” the argument was based upon Catholic claims, from the commission of Ferdinand and Isabella to Columbus onward. Thus the precedent was given to Rome to assume that, being a “Christian nation,” this was therefore a “Catholic country”—elevated from the position of a Catholic “missionary country.” Add to this an expression from a letter from the Vatican, dated October 14, 1894, emphasizing the sympathy of Pope Leo XIII. for the United States, in which occur these words:— “This ever-ready sympathy has its base in the fundamental interests of the holy see, in a peculiar conception of the part to be held by the church and the Papacy in the times to come. . . . That is why Leo XIII. turns all his soul, full of ideality, to what is improperly called his American policy. It should be rightly called his Catholic universal policy.” Two months later (January 6, 1895) in an encyclical letter to the hierarchy in America, Pope Leo XIII. says:— “We highly esteem and love exceedingly the young and vigorous American nation, in which we plainly discern latent forces for the advancement alike of civilization and of Christianity [Catholicism, of course]. The fact that Catholicity with you is in good condition, nay, is even enjoying a prosperous growth, is by all means to be attributed to the fecundity with which God has endowed His church; . . . but she would bring forth more abundant fruits if, in addition to liberty, she enjoyed the favor of the laws and the patronage of the public authority.” The “patronage of the public authority” is falling into Rome’s way very fast, especially in our “colonial possessions” and in Cuba, and the influence of these will eventually be felt in “the favor of the laws.” It is the boast of Rome that “Rome never changes.” Therefore her changed attitude toward the United States of America must logically be because of changed conditions or prospectively changed conditions in the government, such changes in the conditions as will enable Rome to utilize the republic just as she has used monarchies in the past. If Rome can not establish here a full-fledged monarchical union of Church and State, as of old in the Old World, she will be content to secure an “image” to that condition, which will be practically the same as far as the church’s influence is concerned. The church’s aim, as expressed in a letter from the Vatican, and published in New York, July 11, 1892—a few months after the “Christian nation” decision was uttered by the Supreme Court—is this: “What the church has done in the past for others, she will now do for the United States.” G.