The American Cardinal

Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, California · Jun 3, 1875

The American Cardinal.

THE Christian Union noticing the comments of the papers on the creation of a Cardinal for the United States, says :—

“Dr. McCloskey is no more dangerous as Cardinal than he was as archbishop, nor as archbishop than he was as bishop, nor as bishop than he was as a simple priest. These offices in this great and venerable sect were not invented for the sake of plaguing Americans and Protestants. They have been for ages a part of the machinery of church organization. The Roman Catholic church is to receive Christian courtesy and toleration, not because it has not yet developed all its polity among us, but on the broad ground of the liberty of men to worship God after their own reason and conscience. This church is no more aggressive with an American Cardinal at its head than it was before. It is a matter with which Christians of other sects have nothing to do. It is the domestic business of this great mother sect with which sister sects have no right to meddle.”

This is far from a just and true view of the subject. If the influence of the dogmas of the Catholic church is evil, and if they are anti-republican in their nature, and if, as Mr. Gladstone has recently shown, they are revolutionary, the power of the church for evil is increased among us by strengthening its influence over the minds of its devotees. No one can deny that the Catholic church in America is strengthened by this act. The very life of the church is in its pomps and pageantry, and as these come more directly to the observation of the mass of believers their enthusiasm is increased. The editor of the Union is not ignorant of the fact that to captivate the senses is the object of the vain show of that church, and that a Cardinal, decked in scarlet, clothed with the power of a prince by the direct action of the head of the church, is an object of greater reverence than a bishop, and his word carries greater authority accordingly. It was a grand stroke of policy on the part of the pope to create an American Cardinal, and from the description of his installation we should judge that the event has nearly turned the heads of many American journalists and statesmen. Much more has it affected the minds of the Catholics of this country.

The figure used by the Union is suggestive, but for accuracy it may be improved in application. It speaks of the “mother sect” and the “sister sects.” If the sisters were introduced it were well enough to call them so, but when “the great mother sect” is first introduced the harmony of association would be better preserved by speaking of the others as the daughter sects. And this would be more in conformity to the view given in the book of Revelation. J. H. W.