WHO IS RESPONSIBLE? by Editor

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Feb 7, 1900

WHO IS RESPONSIBLE?

By Editor

WHEN a young man turns out bad we are prone to ask, Who is responsible? Generally and correctly the blame is laid at the door of those who have brought him up and trained him from his infancy.

If a nation goes wrong, the student of history will ask, Who or what is responsible? Under whose evil influence was the wrong character formed? As the result of what evil seed sowing is the nation reaping its crop of ruin?

In the case of the young man, his parents may have been evil, his education manifestly defective, his moral training worthless, his environments bad. No one is surprised at his untoward end. Sometimes the parents have been of Puritanic strictness in education, in morals, in surroundings, and yet the young man becomes recklessly wild and profligate. His after course is a recoil from the tyrannical restraint put upon him by his parents. They are largely responsible. The November New Century Review has an article by Cardinal Vaughan, which the editor calls "a splendid vindication of the [Catholic] church." The cardinal replies to a writer, "Verax," who asserts that the Roman Catholic Church is responsible for the backward condition of Ireland, Spain, and Italy, and has "always been inimical to the highest civilizations." In reply to this the cardinal says:—

But we are referred to France as further proof against the character of the Catholic Church. Has it been forgotten that the church in France was drowned in a sea of blood a hundred years ago; that religion, revelation, and God Himself were publicly proscribed; that the church is not free to this day in France; that her bishops may nowhere meet in synod; that her religious orders are under a ban; and that whatever education the church gives is under distress and disadvantages?

Again, we are referred to Spain; but during the century Spain also has been swept by the evil principles of the French Revolution, her religious orders have been again and again suppressed, her seminaries closed, her property confiscated, and for years her episcopate was actually extinguished. The church in Spain has had to fight with more than one hand tied behind her.

But let it be remembered that previous to the French Revolution for a thousand years France had been Roman Catholic. Her education in general, her government, her polity, her religious instruction, were in the hands of the Catholic Church. At the behest of that church other religions were proscribed, other religionists banished. The Catholic Church ruled, and the revolution was but the revolt of an unregenerate people against a burdensome religion. A religion based on superstition, ignorance, and fear—prominent elements in the natural heart of man—will enthrall a nation for ages under ordinary circumstances; but let a crisis arise, and the hearts unregenerated by a worldly religion rebel, or take the path of least resistance, and the revolution is accomplished. The responsible party is the religious teacher. The responsibility of the French Revolution must be placed to the account of that church at whose feet France for centuries received her tutelage. And the same is true of Spain. For four hundred years Spain has been under the control of Catholicism. If the Catholic Church is all she professes to be, what a nation Spain should have been now! But, behold, a wreck! Who is responsible but she at whose golden cup Spain has drunk for four centuries? Would to God the other nations quaffing at the same cup, could see its effects!