Rome's Claim on America

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Apr 23, 1914

Rome's Claim on America

ThE Roman Catholic Church claims America as hers by right of discovery; and claiming America as her rightful possession, she is throwing every power of her mighty organization into the work of making it hers in fact, by occupation and control.

This is the reason for the establishment of her missions to Protestants in the large cities. It is the reason why she is devoting so much attention to securing control of the great cities. It is also the reason why she is so strenuously fighting against the enactment of any law that would restrict immigration from those portions of Europe where ignorance rules and the Catholic Church is in control. For that reason she is employing every effort to defeat the immigration bill now before Congress. That bill aims to exclude immigrants who are illiterate, who cannot read or write in some language. The immigrants from Roman Catholic countries are nearly all illiterate. To exclude the illiterate is to exclude about two thirds of the Roman Catholic immigrants. That would seriously interfere with Rome's project to gain control quickly of the American nation.

As Rome bases her right to America upon what she did to discover it, it is not amiss to inquire into the matter and see how much of a basis there is for such a claim.

In the first place, there is a real question as to whether Columbus was a Catholic. Some hold that he was a Jew, and produce weighty arguments to prove it. But that contention aside, we are at a loss to understand where Catholicism finds any substantial ground to stand upon in claiming America as hers by right of discovery. There was not in that church at that time any of the spirit of real research or discovery. He who brought forward a new idea was quite likely to pay for it with his life at the stake, or suffer in the gloomy dungeons provided by the Inquisition.

John Clark Ridpath, in his "History of the World," says of that time:—

It were perhaps useless to conjecture at what time and in what way this belief in the sphericity of the earth and in the existence of a new world beyond the waters became diffused in the minds of men. The spread of such an idea, as of all others tending to the betterment of mankind, was first among the radicals and disturbers of that torpid society which, in conjunction with a still more torpid church, held possession of Europe in the fourteenth century.

The worst feature of the situation was not that the church was torpid,—even more torpid than society,—but that it refused to permit society to be aroused from its torpid condition. When it was a crime which might be punished with death for an individual to bring forward a new idea, or to discover and make known a new law of nature, it stands to reason that not much was being done in that direction. The less one knew, and the more subservient he was to all the dictates of the ecclesiastical hierarchy, the less likelihood was there of his being the victim of an auto-de-fé. Wherever any church has been wedded to the civil power, the brightest intellects have been snuffed out at the stake, or hidden away from the light of day in dungeon cells.

Columbus found little encouragement from either the church or the state of his day in his proposed expedition across the unknown sea. The populace took no interest in it, for they were the pitiable

victims of their deplorable environments. They laughed at Columbus as a fool or a dreamer. The church was opposed to the project, for it seemed to the superstitious priesthood to be an impious and preposterous notion. The state was incredulous, for it looked to the church for its instruction and enlightenment, and the church shuddered at the thought of such an undertaking.

When Columbus approached the rulers of Spain at Salamanca and laid the project before them, the king listened to him with indifference, and then turned him over to a council of priests. This body, says Ridpath (Id., page 166), instead of considering the scientific possibility of the undertaking, sought to prove by the Scriptures the impiety of the project, and persuaded the king "that it was not becoming in great princes to engage in such a work."

By such experiences as this (for which the church was in every sense responsible) was Columbus buffeted for years, until at last Queen Isabella, against the counsels of both her consort and her priestly advisers, pledged her own jewels to insure the raising of the necessary means to outfit the "impious" expedition.

The expedition succeeded in spite of the opposition of the Roman Church; but the next year after the New World was found, Pope Alexander the Sixth "drew an imaginary line north and south, three hundred miles west of the Azores, and issued a papal bull giving all islands and countries west of that line to Spain. Henry VII of England was himself a Catholic, and he did not care to begin a conflict with his church by pressing his own claims to the newly found regions of the West. His son and successor, Henry VIII, at first adopted the same policy, and it was not until after the Reformation had been accomplished in England that the decision of the Pope came to be disregarded, and finally despised and laughed at."—Id., page 183.

Note that at the first the church opposed the project. Then, when it succeeded, she assumed control and ownership, taking to herself the right to say whose should be the New World thus discovered in spite of her objections. As a result of that action of Pope Alexander the Sixth, the colonization of America was long delayed. Not until the English ceased to fear the anathemas of the Pope did they make serious endeavors to colonize the New World. And they would never have attempted it had it not been for the Reformation, which set so many of them free from the spiritual and temporal thralldom of the Papacy. One shudders to think what would have been the result to the New World had there never been any Reformation.

Not daring to brave the anathemas of the church, England would have kept to her own shores, and whatever civilization America would have known would have been of the Spanish colonial type, in humiliating subserviency to the papal system.

Upon no ground of discovery, reason, logic, or equity can Rome justly lay claim to America. She hindered its discovery, she hindered its colonization, she has attempted to lay claim to that upon which she has no title, and now she would seize upon that which has been accomplished in spite of her and make it a part of her possessions, to pander to her ambition and contribute to her coffers and her splendor. C. M. S.