SOCIALISM AND ROMAN CATHOLICISM.
THE Milwaukee Free Press, of June 7, gives a portion of an address by Victor L. Berger, a prominent and representative Social Democrat, of Wisconsin. Mr. Berger said:— The Roman Catholic Church has always searched for power. It has a political party in Germany, France, Belgium, and Austria. The Irish party represents it in England. There is no Roman Catholic party in China or America, but there will be. It merely has been a question of time. Whether this political action of the American Federation of Catholic societies, which has claimed to be a non-political organization, will make a division in the Roman Catholic Church or the membership of the federation, we do not care. It is none of our business. Every priest in the church who has proclaimed the principles of Socialism, or has raised his voice in remonstrance against autocracy in the church, has been kicked out by the back door. The simple question that is presented to the Roman Catholic Church to-day is whether it is to be pro-capitalistic or anti-capitalistic, just as the question one hundred years ago was whether it was to be pro-feudalistic or anti-feudalistic. One hundred years ago that church decided to stand for feudalism, and paid the penalty for this. It afterward made its peace with the bourgeois world, and seemed to fare well, and got rich again. To-day the Roman Catholic Church has decided to stand by Capitalism. It will have to take the consequences, and they may be much more serious than what happened in the French Revolution. Only there is one thing of which I have no doubt whatsoever. That is, as soon as Socialism wins out—which no doubt it will, since economic development makes it a necessity—the Catholic Church will then turn around and reverse its position, as it has done many a time, and claim that Christianity, and especially the Roman Catholic Church, always has been socialistic, and it will make its peace with the socialist commonwealth. But then, according to the prophet of God, the socialistic state will have yielded to the church, the church will control, and both will hasten to their doom. And the time draweth near, and the days will not be prolonged. Read Rev. 17:8-17.