The Purcell Bankruptcy by Cal. Christian Advocate

Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, California · Jul 24, 1879

The Purcell Bankruptcy.

By Cal. Christian Advocate

THE Romish hierarchy, with Cardinal McCloskey at the head, have been setting in motion a scheme for paying something to the creditors of Archbishop Purcell of Cincinnati. And yet it is a pretense rather than a reality, since they cannot hope by private subscription to pay five per cent. on a debt of three million dollars. But it will impress the public somewhat and inspire the hearts of the poor depositors with hope, and so keep them quiet.

As the Purcells claim that every dollar of the money deposited with them was invested in building up Roman Catholicism in the Cincinnati diocese, the honest thing to do, would be to sell every dollar of church property in said diocese (if necessary) and make full restitution. To retain the property and leave the depositors unpaid is nothing less than swindling, for which the guilty party richly merits a cell in the State prison.

A man who will receive deposits and invest them in such a manner as to make payment impossible, is criminally careless, intentionally dishonest, or an imbecile! Had a Protestant dignitary of the church proved a defaulter in the sum of a single thousand, the case would have gone at once into the courts and the offender into prison, and his infamy would have been heralded to the ends of the earth.

But a Romish archbishop commands, possibly, a hundred thousand votes at the ballot box, hence the editors and politicians vouch for his purity, and pour out floods of sympathetic tears for him in his misfortunes! But who has sympathy for the swindled depositors?—Cal. Christian Advocate.