It is frequently stated in liberal journals that Roman Catholicism and Protestantism are coming together; and there is no question but what it is true. Protestants comfort themselves in the dream that the change is in Roman Catholicism; Roman Catholics know that the change is in Protestantism. As stated by that doughty editor and consistent Catholic, Father Phelan of the "Western Watchman," "Protestantism is dead." As to the changed attitude of some of our Protestant journals, at least aforetime Protestant journals, we take the following from "The Independent" of April 30, 1908, on the Catholic Centennial. Says that journal editorially:
"We can not afford to do without the Catholic Church; it is Christian; it teaches positively the great Christian duties and doctrines. If it teaches some other things, true or untrue, that is what other churches have done, with the result that the good overbears the evil. Compare the lowest Christian land in the world, Protestant, Catholic, Greek, or Abyssinian, with pagan countries, and the supremacy of Christianity is evident.
"The Roman Catholic Church in this country has had an extraordinary history. The Western Continent was discovered and then settled by Catholics. Catholics have the full precedence, for there was at first no Protestantism. . . . It is thus true that more than three fourths of our territory was preempted by Catholics; but that it was the greater virility of the English people which gave Protestantism the victory we may not claim, but we believe that religion is the greatest factor in the development of national character, and that the independent self-assertion of Protestantism implied in its name, its resistance to authority, has much to do with its past success, which now gives us forty-six states, from French Canada to Spanish Mexico, and from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and not one of them predominantly Catholic. But the days of Catholic decadence are ended."
Admitting this to be true that Catholics first settled in this country, and the logic of the present claim made by Protestants that whatever Christian sect may enter a heathen land should be left undisturbed in its position, the conclusion would be that Protestants should yield the country to Roman Catholic domination and let it indeed be what it is fast becoming, a Roman Catholic country. That is the logic of the theory upon which Protestants are now working.
As to the strength of the Roman Catholic Church, "The Independent" says that Catholicism proudly claims nearly fifteen million adherents. There are 250,000 children in the parochial schools of New York. "The old New England States, long strictly Protestant, are rapidly becoming Catholic, and Boston is a Catholic city, and Massachusetts and Rhode Island are very nearly Catholic. Archbishop Farley may well feel a holy pride in the growth of his church." "The Independent" closes its editorial in this way:
"What we do expect is a closer approach of Protestants and Catholics, due chiefly to the silent change in the Catholic Church thru the gradual sloughing off of those non-essentials but hitherto destructive superstitions among the illiterate, too often cultivated for financial advantage. In both branches of the church the essential Christian faith will be more and more emphasized, and the non-essentials will be minimized, with full liberty of more than tolerance. A chief bishop in the Vatican can still be accepted as well as one in Canterbury Cathedral, each leading and neither enslaving his followers. The Catholic Church in this country has a worthy history, and we hope for it its full part in holding our country to the Christian faith."
It is a simple fact that the Protestant churches have left the essentials of Protestantism—an open Bible, as the authority in religion, the absolute non-interference of the civil magistrate; no other head save Jesus Christ. They stand now, uncertain, vacillating, drifting; one class tending toward German Rationalism, which is practical infidelity; the other, toward a strong, centralized human church in which traditionalism is dominant. Roman Catholics stand just as clearly and strongly and steadily to the tradition and the Bible, or THE BIBLE INTERPRETED BY TRADITION, with the pope as the infallible head of the church. They have no idea of ever changing their position. To yield to Protestant principles in any way is to relinquish the claim to infallibility. It is true that of late there has been a drawing together of the two bodies, but the one which has yielded the ground has not been the Roman Catholic, but the Protestant.
And yet, there is a Protestantism which still holds to God's word. Some of its adherents are in error, but all are facing the right way. And just as surely as God led a church out of the formalism and traditionalism of Judaism, just as surely as He led His church out of the traditionalism of the Medieval Ages, just so surely God will lead His church out of the formalism and ritualism and traditionalism of the last days, a church which He describes in these words: "Here are they that keep the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus." Rev. 14: 12.