Mutual Interest

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Mountain View, California · Dec 12, 1906

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 32, No. 48.

Mutual Interest.—It is doubtful which of the two is more interested, the pope in America, or American politicians in the pope. Every opportunity that is offered, the pope takes occasion to express his kind interest in America, glad of the conditions that exist here and the progress the church is making; while at every seeming opportunity politicians seem to vie with each other to obtain his blessing; as for instance, one very active politician, who controls four or five great papers, raised a fund for the sufferers from the Vesuvius eruption, and received a letter from the pope containing the papal blessing, which has been widely circulated, evidently to obtain as much Catholic support as possible. The blessing, however, did not seem to tell much in a political way as the politician in question was badly defeated in a recent state election. The pope, of course, is doing all in his power to get the support of America. France, "the eldest daughter of the church," has split with the Vatican, and Spain, the faithful, occupies an exceedingly uncertain position just now. But the Papacy is doing good political work in making itself strong in the great western republic as well as in Protestant Germany. It seems to be the very irony of history that the so-called Protestant countries should now be the main support of the Papacy, yet so it is. It ought to tell to us that Protestantism is vastly different from what it was at the time of the Reformation.