Foreign Prince or American Citizen? by Editor

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Jul 4, 1912

Foreign Prince or American Citizen?

By Editor

An article under large head-lines, in a recent issue of the Pilot, quoted, in part at least, from the Catholic Universe, of Cleveland, Ohio, begins with this surprising sentence: “Governor Foss, of Massachusetts, at a recent state dinner, gave the post of precedence to His Eminence, William Cardinal O’Connell, and there has arisen a good deal of acrimonious discussion about it in some Protestant quarters.” If staying away from the banquet because he did not think it proper that the governor of the commonwealth should be relegated to third place was giving precedence to the cardinal, then this statement about Governor Foss is true, though a trifle misleading. But what follows is still funnier. The article goes on:—

“We venture to assert that the government at Washington would be forced by diplomatic usage to seat any cardinal at a state dinner ahead, not only of the cabinet, the members of either house, and American officials of whatever rank, including the Supreme Court, but that he would be seated in advance of the ambassadors from foreign countries. The reason is a perfectly logical one, and has no bearing upon the question of Catholicity and Protestantism, as some of the objectors ignorantly suppose. For from time immemorial a cardinal has ranked as a prince of the blood in all courts of the world. The Pope, even though not in possession of temporal dominions now as in the past, is still a reigning monarch, though his realm be purely spiritual. The members of the sacred college have exactly the same international rank as princes of the blood royal of any reigning house. A cardinal of the Catholic Church ranks with the royal grand dukes of Russia, with the heirs apparent and presumptive of all the kingdoms of Europe, and ahead of all the nobility.”

“Logical” is a good word, but we fail to see its application to the arguments here advanced as the “reason” for the cardinal’s claim to precedence. The case of a Russian grand duke or the heir apparent of a European kingdom is not a parallel one; for one of these, if he became a citizen of this country, would be obliged to renounce his allegiance to a foreign power, and his “international rank” would become that of an American citizen.

The comments on the subject of precedence at the banquet of the Charitable Irish Society throw an interesting light on the question often asked: “Can a loyal Catholic be a loyal citizen?” The great body of American Catholics would answer emphatically, “Yes,” and we believe they would be absolutely sincere. But here we have the statement, in Cardinal O’Connell’s own paper, that the so-called “American” cardinals are really—as are all the other cardinals, of course—subjects of a foreign power, members of the family of a “reigning monarch,” and that they place their allegiance to this foreign power above their allegiance to the United States, claiming precedence, as foreign princes, over officials of the United States government, to whom, as American citizens, they would naturally give place. Can a “prince of the blood royal,” owing allegiance to a “reigning monarch,” be at the same time a loyal citizen of the republic of the United States?

Of course the Pope is not a reigning monarch, any more than is the exiled Manuel of Portugal, or the head of the Bonapartes; but since Catholics maintain that he is, if the cardinals, immediately upon their appointment, should renounce their citizenship in the countries to which they had previously owed allegiance, their claim to precedence might justly be called “logical,” even though it could not be allowed. As things are, it is simply ridiculous.—Zion’s Herald (Boston), April 24, 1912.