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3rd EDITION

Its Law and Its Literature

By THOS. E. WATSON

Author of "The Story of France," "Napoleon" "Life and Times of

Andrew Jackson," "Life and Times of Thos. Jefferson,"

"Waterloo," "Bethany" (a novel of the Old South),

"The Roman Catholic Hierarchy," Etc.

Published by

The Tom Watson Book Company, Inc.

Thomson, Ga.

1928.

Copyright, 1927

GEORGIA WATSON LEE BROWN

Thomson, Ga.

The Roman Catholic Church

Its Law and Its Literature

IF YOU examine the creeds of the churches, ascertain their fundamen- tal laws, and read their literature, they have no right to complain. On the contrary, they cannot ask you for fairer treatment. As a matter of fact, the churches, with one exception,' proclaim their whole creed, give the widest publicity to their laws, and invite you to study, not only their literature, but their records.

Presbyterianism is proud to tell you what it has done for Scotland, for Ulster, for Geneva, and for Holland. The Church of Knox and Calvin made its mistakes, and sometimes committed crimes ; but they were the result of the state of mind which Roman Catholicism had imposed upon Europe, and from which the pioneers of the Reformation could not en- tirely free themselves. The murder of Servetus, for his denial of the Trinity, has been a source of boundless satisfaction to the Roman Church, which murdered tens of thousands of Christians, because they could not believe that bread, sold out of a bakery, can be changed into the body of God.

In like manner, the Baptists are proud to tell you how Roger Williams planted religious liberty in Rhode Island, before the granting of the famous Lord Baltimore charter for his Catholic colony in Maryland — a charter which left the Romanists free to burn such men as Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine, ex-President Taft, and every other deist or Unitarian. Under the Maryland charter, Abraham Lincoln and Robert Ingersoll — not to mention less prominent agnostics — could have been put to death. It was Roger Williams, in Rhode Island, and Thomas Jefferson, in Virginia, who founded real freedom of re- ligious opinion. Of course, William the Silent had long before done the same thing, in Holland, after he had come triumphantly out of the terrific struggle with the Roman Catholic Church and the Spanish King.

As for the Episcopalians, the Lutherans, and the Methodists, their civilizing work is a part of the history of our Republic. None of them is guilty of such a frightful crime as the massacre of the Huguenot Colony, in Florida. None of them had torture chambers, such as the Romanists built, all the way from Florida to California, and thence to the tip end of the South American Continent. None of them enslaved Indians, and caused an entire race to fade away, under the horrible hardships of the Spanish Catholic system. None of them have stirred up bloody revoluutions in Mexico, Central America, and South America, as the Roman Catholic Church has done, and is still doing. None of the other churches wear garments that drip with innocent human sacrifice. None of them so robbed the helpless natives, and so gorged itself on gold, that the annual revenues of the church were $50,000,000. in Mexico

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alone ; while, in the Philli]jpine Islands, Mr. Taft had to mortgage the whole group to satiate a part of the papal claim — leaving the priests in undisturbed possession of the best city property in the Islands.

True, some of the Protestant churches are accumulating far more property, than is good for the spiritual welfare. They imitate the bad example of the Romanists, in building cathedrals which smack too much of mere human pride. The expensive church requires the Rich Man, and the Rich Man takes the life out of the church. The Baptist preacher cannot denounce Rockefeller's Colorado infamies, and his Standard Oil criminalities, when Rockefeller is sitting on a front bench, ready to pour Standard Oil and Coal Trust money into the church's yawning treasury. A corporation like Trinity Church, in New York, is a national scandal. The State should exert her sovereign powers, under the law of Eminent Domain, and take over all such vast and unnecessary church properties ; and, after duly providing funds for the continuance of strictly religious work, should apply the surplus to public education, mothers' pensions, and similar charities.

It is not good for the country to have so great a proportion of all the wealth grasped by the churches, untaxed, and yet benefited by the rise in values, made possible by secular industry. Only in this one particular do we find the same general abuse in all the churches. Too much thought and effort are given to property; and as the churches become more and more the bombproofs of rich rascals, who deserve to be in stripes and chains, the poor man stands afar ofif,with bitterness in his heart, and bitterness on his tongue. He says, and believes, "There is on law and religion for the rich and another law and religion for the poor. I cannot get justice in the fine court house, and I cannot get soul-rest and comfort in the fine church."

In these United States, where Roman Catholicism has to meet com- petition, and has to walk as uprightly as possible, its literature ought to be of the highest type. Mere self-interest requires it to avoid as far as possible anything that might alarm the non-Catholic world, shock its traditional beliefs, and ofifend its common sense.

In Spain, Portugal, Ireland, and the southern portion of the Con- tinent, it is different. In Catholic countries, Roman prelates and editors can say and publish almost any absurdity, in the name of faith, and drive it down the gullets of the laity.

But in this country, you would suppose that Romanist leaders would practise the same secrecy as to their customs, that they practise in reference to the Pope's Canon Law — the fixed, ancient, and unchanged basic law of Roman Catholicism.

Concerning this Roman code of laws, some of which are in operation in the United States, at this moment, and all of which are utterly antago- nistic to our American laws and Constitution, I will speak later.

Of the literature that is being industriously circulated by the Romanist leaders in their tireless efforts to convert us to their "faith," quite a number of speciments have come into my hands, recently. They were sent to me from West Point, Georgia, in which vicinity it is being used.

In that part of the State, and in Alahania, just across the Chattahoochee River, there is a large population of mill-workers, many of whom, no doubt, have never enjoyed those educational advantages which the Ameri- can churches are providing at such prodigious expense for the children of China and Japan — countries whose governments amply provide free public schools for their own people.

If I were to go to one of the Protestant ministers of West Point, or Opelika, or Columbus, and ask him, wliai he has ever done, to prevent the spread of Romanism among tlie factory settlements, could he tell me anything, that he has done?

If popery is not a curse to any nation that it rules, why do Protestant churches exist? IVhat did they originally protest against f

If the same terrible Roman system that Knox, Luther and Calvin thundered against, has craftily, and panther-like crept upon our indifferent, unsuspecting people, why should the Protestant churches not thunder against it, now? Every Protestant minister should take to his heart and conscience this question:

"What have I done to prevent my flock, or the lambs thereof, from wandering into the snares of Romanism, when they move into the big cities ?"

What has the average Protestant preacher done to enlighten his con- gregation, as to the true nature and the fatal purpose of Italian popery?

When Rome's sly emissaries flood the factory settlements with the literature of superstition, idolatry, and Mary worship, how can the average worker, into whose hands this literature falls, detect its frauds, its fallacies, its falsehoods, and its total lack of Scriptural foundation?

The average person cannot do it, unless he has had mental help from some who know the history of Rome's hateful hierarchy, and the ruinous principles of its creed.

One of the favorite magazines of the American papists is, TJie Lamp, published at Graymoor, New York. It prints, on its inside cover, a testimonial, signed by Cardinal Merry Del Val, who assures The Lamp that the Pope cordially bestowes a special blessing on it. Cardinals Gib- bons, Farley and Falconia testify the highest regard for TJic Lamp, and their letters to that effect also appear on the cover.

A considerable portion of The Lamp is taken up by letters from people who believe that St. Anthony has done them favors. Because of the alleged favors of this Italian priest, who died some centuries ago, the dupes send money to Th,e Lamp. Thus a phantom saint and his fancied favors, pour a continuous stream of oil into The Lamp.

One of the letters reads :

"Dear Father: Enclosed find $1 in thanksgiving to St. Anthony for cure of rheumatism. I. C. V.

"Glens Falls, N. Y.. Sept. 9, 1914."

Another follows :

"Dear Father: I promised to send $1 each month, if I was cured of my rheumatism, and now 1 am nearly well."

On another page of the same magazine I find an advertisement of "a remarkable cure of rheumatism, sold bv the Arex Company, of New York.'"

Consider the absurd inconsistency of this. In one breath they say that Saint Anthony, of Heaven, cures rheumatism, and in the next, that the Arex Company, of New York, does it. In either event, The Lamp makes money.

In the letters from people who believe that Saint Anthony has miracu- lously healed them, there are some from those who had suffered with their eyes. But on another page. The Lamp advertises Dr. John J. Hogan, who is recommended as a highly skilled specialist in the treatment of diseases of the eyes.

Thus Saint Anthony competes with Dr. Hogan, and, as you may say, snatches the ducats out of his hands.

One person, in Boston, Massachusetts, sent The Lamp $5, because Saint Anthony had helped in a real estate deal. Another person sends "the enclosed check, as a thank oft'ering for the return of a stolen type- writer, after it was prayed for."

Other letters read :

Dear Sisters: The petition I asked in the Novena was granted. My affairs have been settled most advantageously. Please accept my heartfelt thanks for your good prayers, and the offering I promised, $5.

Santa Barbara, Cal., Oct. 9, 1914.

Dear Sisters: Last month I asked you to include in your Novena a request of mine for re-appointment to teach in the evening schools of our city. I was more than surprised, when I read in one of the daily papers, that I had been appointed. Out of my first month's salary I shall send you an offering.

, N. J., Sept. 30, 1914. A. J.

Dear Father: Find enclosed one dollar for St. Anthony's Bread, which I promised if a sum of money was paid back, after the debtor said he was unable to pay. MRS. T. M. H.

Rochester, N. Y., Sept. 21, 1914.

My Dear Father Paul: I have just heard that I won my motion for a change of place of trial of my case, and I want you all to know how thankful I am for all your prayers, and also to St. Anthony. You will hear from me very shortly. Oh, how my heart goes out to you all, and I feel so thankful tonight that I cannot express myself! F.

, N. Y., Sept. 15, 1914.

Dear Father: In the Novena I asked for a position for my son. He has now obtained work, after being without anything to do for almost ten months. Yonkers, N. Y., Sept. 4, 1914. MRS. A. R.

Dear Reverend Father: I wish to thank St. Anthony for getting two hundred dollars of the seven hundred and fifty which my sister and I lost, and I wish also to join in the Novena commencing next Tuesday for the recovery of tlie remaining five hundred and fifty dollars. M. K.

Bronx, N. Y. City, Oct. 25, 1914.

Your Reverence: I promised when-, my son was out of work to send an offering if he got work again, and now I send it. MRS. M, K.

I am enclosing my promised thank offering to St. Anthony, if I should

find a beautiful gold locket, which I lost. I found it, and never expected to see

it again. MRS. G. E. M.

Dunkirk, N. Y., Oct. 22, 1914.

Aside from the disposition which The Lamp makes of all this money (which disposition may be honest and charitable), the question arises — What is the mental condition of the editors who encourage people to beliee that there is a Saint in Heaven who helps collect doubtful debts, changes the venue of law cases, takes a hand in real estate deals, hunts for lost typewriters, and finds jobs for the unemployed?

What is the mental condition of the Romanist priests who teach this sort of thing; and what is the mental condition of American citizens who pay their money to The Lamp for the alleged services of St. Anthony?

You can understand the mental attitude of those who believe in Faith cures and Christian Science.

But the Roman Catholic beliefs concerning St. Anthony and the Virgin Mary, are altogether different.

When we read the letters of those who believe that Mary hunted for lost horses, and St. Anthony found lost money, we are stupified.

The African belief in the conjure bag, is a progressive state of mind, compared to this Roman Catholic belief in saints, that secure tenants for vacant houses, and tell people where to find "a beautiful gold locket, which I had lost."

Among the "favors" which St. Anthony is asked to grant, as soon as he can, The Lamp lists the following :

Financial and Industrial. — Suitable employment for 104; for advancement in present employment for 14; success in business for 17; success in studies and examinations for 6; victory in lawsuit for 3; temporary help for 38; for the payment of money due 6; for means to pay debts for 22; sale of property for 25; good rentals for 8; miscellaneous petitions, 18.

A lady writes from North Dakota: "Dear Father: Enclosed find a little offering for the orphans. Some time ago I wrote you to kindly make a Novena for us, as we lost eleven horses. On the third day of the Novena we found six of them, and later found them all. We are very grateful to God and our Blessed Lady, and wish to have this published in her Annals."

A friend from Dublin, Ont., announces that they were saved a great deal through having weather favorable for harvesting, after addressing Our Blessed Lady of Victory.

"After joining in the last Solemn Novena the favor I desired was granted, stolen money being returned, and I am indeed grateful to our Blessed Lady of Victory," writes another.

Our Blessed Lady assists the poor widow: "Dear Father: Last month, when my monthly bills came in, it seemed to me I would not be able to meet them by the end of the month. I prayed to Our Lady of Victory that I might be able to do so. It is with gratitude that I write to thank her, for, indeed, I was able to meet my bills within the time allowed. I have been joining in the Novenas and asking Our Blessed Lady to assist me in making ends meet and making a living for my six children in a sm^U grocery. As business is so quiet, I know I could not succeed without Our Lady's assistance. It will soon be three years since our dear Lord called my husband. Kindly publish this, that others in need may be encouraged to ask help of her who can obtain anything she desires."

From a grateful friend: Enclosed find offering of $10. From the 10th to the 18th, my Novena was made that my law suit might be settled out of court, and on the 13th the settlement was made. I am very thankful to Our Blessed Lady, through whose intercession I have gained many favors."

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"I am sending $5, being the amount I promised Our Lady Victory, should I succeed in selling my store," writes a grateful friend. "Please publish this, that others in difficulty may be encouraged to seek help through her powerful intercession."

What do you think of a system which enslaves human reason in such a way as that? In what part of the Bible can anybody find justification for it? How can America expect progressive thought and action from citizens who allow their minds to be so degraded?

In this missionary literature which the Romanists are scattering so profusely, the name of God the Father rarely occurs. The name of Christ is seldom used, except in the glorification of Joseph and Mary.

In the magazine called The Annals of Our Blessed Lady of Victory (published at Lackawanna, New York), you will find such paragraphs as this —

Mary secures the salvation of all who have recourse to her.

What text in the Bible tells us to seek salvation through Mary? No such idea is in the Scriptures, old or new. No such idea was in the Catholic creed, until more than a thousand years after Christ. In fact, the dogma of the immaculate conception of this Jewish woman was not adopted by the Roman Church, until 1870.

Here are two other paragraphs from the same magazine:

Our Lady of Victory, triumphant in the Immaculate Conception, pray for us.

Oh, sinner, cast yourself at the feet of Mary; you will not be the first whom she has snatched from the gate of hell.

There isn't, in the entire Bible, the slightest reference to any woman mediator, to whom Christian prayers may be offered.

The whole idea is pagan : it comes from the Eastern Mythologies, in which goddesses occupied divine positions. Those Oriental religions made their way into the Roman republic, and were most popular, in the days of the Caesars.

W^hen Constantine resorted to the sword to force these Romans into the Christian Church, they remained pagans at licart. The church held them, by allowing them to have the same festivals, ceremonials, local deities, &c. In course of time, the effeminate Eastern habit of worshipping women, created practically a fourth person in the God-head, by ascribing to Mary the power to save souls.

The Annals magazine continues—

So great was Mary's charity when on earth, that she assisted the needy, even before she was asked, as in the case of the Marriage Feast of Cana, when she told her Divine Son the distress of the newly-married couple, "They have no wine," and by this asked Him to work a miracle, which He did to please her.

Mary so loved man that she was willing to give her only-begotten Son for his redemption, even to the ignominous death of the cross.

This writer was in sore straits to find evidences of Mary's great charity. To ask that some wine be made for the use of the marriage f casters, hardly comes under the head of charity, at all; and, with this single exception, there isn't a word in the Bible about Mary's great charity.

There isn't a particle of Scripture for the statement that Mary was wilHng for her son to be crucified; and if she did not have four other sons fhen the Gospels made assertions which are untrue.

Consider this further editorial statement —

It is a great joy to the Sacred Heart of our Lord to grant the requests of His loving and beloved Mother; hence Mary becomes Virtuous, for she can ask no favor from Him who is omnipotent without obtaining Iier request.

You will see that the whole conception is that of an Immaculate Jewess, who always remains a virgin, and who now saves lost souls by asking her Son for them.

This revolutionizes the Bible. It dispenses with the necessity for God the Father and also for the Holy Ghost. You pray to Mary, and Mary prays to her Son. and you are saved. In addition to this, they have made a saint out of the carpenter, Joseph ; and, at one time, the interests of popedom were placed under his "protection."

Of course, you must be aware of the fact that the Bible is silent on the subject of Joseph's even being a convert to Christianity. We do not know whether he was or not. What is more significant, and antagonistic to the modern worship of Mary, is the fact that, // Christ's mother became one of his converts, while he was teaching, the Bible fails to mention it. The New Testament writers did not consider Mary important enough to tell us what became of her. She is treated as a person of no conse- quence to the Christian creed. Like Joseph and Lazarus and Caiaphas, she is a name, and stands for no essential dogma. Her place in the Christian system is that of the Jewess, chosen to be the human mother of Jesus Christ; and when she has performed that maternal duty, she stands aside.

You will search the Scriptures in vain to find where Christ, or any of the Apostles, ever gave her the slightest power in the church.

We don't know when, nor where, she died ; and nobody ever thought it mattered particularly, until paganism developed in the Roman Catholic system. Then they created the "tradition" that she was carried bodily to Heaven, by the angels.

The great bulk of Roman Catholic literature, in the Dark Ages, con- sisted of miraculous things which liappened to the saints, to miracles worked by the saints, to "apparitions" of the virgin, to words uttered by her to those who saw the "apparition," &c. In Hallam's History of the Middle Ages, and in Buckle's History of Civilij^ation, you will find speci- ments of' this utterly stupid and debasing literature. Hallam and Buckle never dreamed of its coming' to life, again : they regarded all that sort of rubbish as dead forever. They held it up to the scorn of man- kind, as "an eidence of what Roman Catholicism did for the mental prostration of the human race. They felt no stronger interest in it that a scientist took in the skeleton of a mastodon: in each case, the monster was thought to be extinct.

They were grievously mistaken. The mastodon has not come back to life, but the other monster has. A few years ago, the leaders of the American Catholics began to cautiously introduce the cult of Saint An-

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thony, of Saint Joseph, and of "Our Lady of Victory." They followed this up by republishing the fables of the Dark Ages, under the title of Lives of the Saints.

Having paved the way for bringing miracles, the miracles are coming. Saint Anne's shin bone is doing marvelous things in New York. Holy ropes are bringing unspeakable blessings of those who buy the sacred twine, and wear it. The little pewter medals which the priests sell in great numbers, will run the doctors out of business, if Catholic faith in the unbelievable continues to grow. As to "apparitions," they have migrated from Europe, and are feeling quite at ^lome in this country. Soon the Virgin will designate some fountain whose waters are as miraculously curative as those of Lourdes ; and then we will have a Lourdes of our own.

Two of the "apparitions" which have already appeared are thus de- scribed in TJie Lamp :

It was Sunday evening, in the octave of All Saints, 1900. For reasons which we may not now go into, it had been for some days a time of grave anxiety for the little company of Sisters in St. Francis' house and to our Mother especially there was not wanting the danger of even possible phj'sical violence. Vespers of the Festival had been sung and Benediction was over. Our Mother was kneeling in Chapel by a window overlooking the Sacristy door opening out of doors. Suddenly she heard a sound of crying, and glancing out of the window, saw a little acolyte, ten-year-old John, still in his red cas- sock, and, as we have just said, weeping. Hastening out to him, the Mother put her arms about him and said: "Why, Johnnie! What is the matter?"

He replied: "I just saw something."

Surprised, the Mother questioned: "What did you see, and why are you crying about it?" Still sol^bing, he managed to say: "I just saw our Lady, and I am crying because I was so surprised." The Mother was rather in- credulous for some time and questioned him very closely as to how he knew the appearance he believed he had seen was Our Lady; just where he saw her, and how she looked, etc. Every time he repeated the same description: "She was large and very beautiful; he knew it was Our Lady, for she had the Christ-Child in her arms; she appeared suddenly at the very moment the ostensorium was raised; she was on the Gospel side, right near where he was kneeling." '

The Third Apparition.

The third alleged apparition of the Blessed Virgin which we record is very briefly noted in an incomplete diary kept by Father Paul under the date of Saturday, March 4, 1915. The memorandum reads as follows:

"On this night (Saturday), while Edward and Gordon Gregory were saying night prayers in Chapel, there being no light but the sanctuarj^ lamp, Gordon saw a large wliite cross from ceiling to the floor, on wliich hung Our Lord, and Our Lady knelt to the left (Epistle side), a round white globe between her and the foot of the cross. This Gordon told immediately on coming out to the Father and returning, he still saw the Crucified One, though fainter, and Our Lady had disappeared."

In the gross literature of the Dark .\ges — literature which the world has long supposed to be forever behind us— there is nothing which de- mands a more a1)ject surrender of Reason, than the foregoing. You can understand how, in the Dark Ages, when Rome had the power to murder men who rejected such drivel, men saved their lives by pretending to believe it.

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But what arc we to think of Americans, in the Twentieth Century, who voluntarily accept such childish absurdities?

The Virgin Alary is a wandering Jewess, who travels from world to world, understanding all the languages, and speaking all of them herself. The French, Italian and Spanish boys and girls to whom she "appears," understand her. The Mexican peasant at Guadaloupe had no diffiiculty in understanding her; and it will be found when she begins to prattle with American children, that she speaks English, without any foreign brogue.

Published in Indianapolis, The Eternal Light, is another papal organ which is trying to lower the American mind to the level of popery's most amazing superstitions. It is edited by an Italian, one Marino Priori, and it has the endorsement of the Italian Pope's Italian Ambassador, John Bonzano. In its issue for January, 1915, this recently established magazine expounds the nature of the Pope :

Who is the Pope in the Vatican or in liis official capacity? The Pope in his official capacity in the Vatican, is Jesus Christ, who uses him as a human in- strument. Jesus Christ is hidden under a veil, as it were. The Pope speaks on matters of Faith and Morals. We hear the human voice which veils the divine.

Before his election to the supreme direction of the faithful, the Pope is as other men created by God with the intellectua:l and moral faculties that become his nature. He is as other men destined to a supernatural end, and has received all the graces necessary to reach it. But once the Church of Christ selects him to be Christ's vice-gerent, he is raised to the highest degree of dignity on earth and is united to his divine Master by bonds of union unique in the dealings of God with men.

The Pope expounds the laws of God: it is Jesus that does so through him. The Pope declares a truth to be of the teaching of the Master; it is Jesus that declares it. The Pope appoints a bishop; it is Christ that does the appointing. The Pope raises a person of heroic virtue to the altars; it is Christ who raises him. When the Pope grants an indulgence, or strikes the guilty with excommunication, Christ does all this through him.

To any rational human being, that sort of gibberish is nauseating. It was never heard of in this country, until a very few years ago. Among the strongest Catholics, the Pope was nothing more than Christ's earthly representative, until Joseph Taylor, who became Pope Pius X., began to proclaim the blasphemous doctrine that the Pope "is Christ, veiled in the flesh."

As every Catholic knows, the Pope kneels to a confessor, regularly, and confesses his sins.

What, then, becomes of "Christ veiled in the flesh?" Is it the voice of Jesus, speaking through the Pope? Does Christ commit sin, when the Pope sins? Does Christ do penance, when the Pope does? If not, why not? If the Pope is Christ, then Christ kneels to a human being and confesses his sins.

Do they expect their own American dupes to always remain ignorant of the fact that one of the Popes was killed in bed with a woman ; that one of them was not discovered to be a woman until she gave birth to a child in a "Holy Procession ;" that one of them owed his elevation to his paramour, and that another of them was a mere boy, whose adulterous

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mother raised him to the papal throne ; that one of them poisoned him- self in trying to poison a cardinal ; that many of them lived openly with their concubines and bastards ; that one of them raped the poet Petrarch's sister in the papal palace at Avignon, to which she had been carried a kidnapped person ; that one of them underwent treatment for veneral disease, after he was elected Pope, and that he finally died of this loath- some disease?

When Pope Celestine V. resigned, was it Christ who resigned?

When Pope John XXIII. committed murder, adultery and incest, as the Council of Constance convicted him of having done, was it Christ who reeked with these awful crimes ?

If Pope Pius IX. and his Minister of State, Cardinal Antonelli, were not two of the worst rakes of Italy, they have been shamefully slandered, for it is said that two society belles in Rome were recognized as the Pope's daughters, and it is a matter of record that Antonelli's bastard daughter sued his estate.

When the Pope laid his curse on our Great Charter, and excommuni- cated the patriotic barons, was it Christ who thus condemned English liberties? If so, why does Cardinal Gibbons boast that our Great Charter is a Catholic work?

The Italian maniac, Marino Priori, says — '-

The Church inspired of God leaves nothing undone, and seems even then not satisfied with all, to inculcate reverence for this man so honored. Love, respect, honor are on her hps when she speaks of Him. She invites us to kneel before Him, kiss his feet and shower upon him marks of deep veneration which would seem exaggerated if she did not show us Christ hidden in the person of the Pope,

That is the senseless raving of a lunatic, and it is the most recent importation from the diseased brains of Latin mystics.

There isn't a word of the Bible that supports anything of the kind. Christ never asked any man to kiss his feet. Christ never appointed one Apostle to a higher dignity than another. Christ forbade that very thing, in the strongest possible hmguage. And the Roman Church made no claim to a universal bishopric, until Christ had left the earth hundreds of years.

Even Gregory the Great did not claim to be universal bishop, and he denied that any such supreme office in the church existed.

When Boniface afterwards claimed and secured the title of pope, he did not get the "honor" from Christ, but from the blood-stained hands of the Roman Emperor, Phocas, of whom the historian says —

"A baser wretch never stained a throne, or invited the vengeance of heaven."

It was only by an imperial decree, signed in Constantinople, in the year 609, that Phocas revoked the law which had made the Bishop of Constantinople the chief of all the churches, and made the Roman Church their mistress.

The historian, Cathcart, says —

"Phocas, the basest of usurpers and murderers, anointed Boniface as sovereign of Christ's entire kingdom."

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That is strictly true. You may read in any History of Rome about the usurpation of the throne by Phocas, and about the atrocities he committed afterwards. You can also read in any honest and full History of the Popes, how Bishop Boniface of Rome outmaneuvered the Christian patriarch of Constantinople, and snatched from his head the crown of Universal Bishop.

Not from the Bible, not from Christ, but from a political intrigue, with a wicked emperor, the popes of Rome derived their title and their place in the Christian system.

Evidently, the literature of Roman Catholicism has taken the back track, and is travelling toward the happy time when everybody was forced to express belief in "white magic," sorcery, witchcraft, exorcisms, unicorns, vampires, dragons, charms, amulets, relics, incantations, and personal visits from angels and devils.

The statesman says, "Show me the laws of a country, and I will tell you the condition of the people." The philosopher says, "Show me the literature of a people, and I will gauge their mental condition.'

If a foreign church can come into this country, and debauuch the minds of free Americans, their mental condition will disarm them when the Italian Pope advances more aggressively against our democratic in- stitutions. Just let the Protestants be quiescent, while the cowl of the monk is being drawn over the brains of millions of American Catholics, and it will not be long before the priests will demand control of education, of marriage and divorce, of the custody of children, and a complete censorship over the agencies which create public opinion.

When the Catholic mind shall have been prepared to accept any monstrosity of belief, or of practice, and the liberty is denied non- Catholics to speak against it, or to write against it, then, indeed, we will face one of two calamities — complete submission to a foreign potentate, or another Revolutionary War for Independence.

It is the madness of utter folly, when the Protestant press and the Protestant pulpits take no account of the public boast and threat of Arch- bishop James E. Quigley, of Chicago, as expressed by him in addressing one of the Italian Pope's armed secret societies —

"We have well-ordered and efficient organizations, all at the beck and nod of the Hierarchy, and ready to do what the church authorities tell them to do. With these bodies of loyal Catholics ready to step in the breach at any time, and present an unbroken front to the enemy, we may feel secure."

Who are "the enemy?" Against whom, have these secret military organizations armed and drilled? What is the legal right that has been denied to any Catholic? What is it they are asked to do, except to obey the laws made in this country?

The law of the Italian Pope denies liberty of conscience, of worship, of speech, and of press : do these armed bands of American papists pro- pose to enforce the Pope's law in America ?

The law of the Italian Pope denies divorce to all who cannot pay huge sums of money for it; and the papal law of marriage claims the right to nullify ours. Do the armed bands of the American papists propose to revolutionize our marriage laws?

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The law of the Italian Pope makes him a deadly enemy to the separa- tion of Church and State, free secular education, and popular sovereignty !

Do the armed bands of American papists propose to fight us, "the enemy," in the eflfort to plant the Pope's law above our own?

Between the Canon law of popery, and the principles embodied in the Declaration of Independence, there is inevitable war. Between the Con- stitution of the Pope's Church, and the Constitution of the United States, there is profound, uncompromising and deadly hostility.

Will the "Hierarchy" give its "beck" and its "nod" to the "well- ordered and efficient organizations," when the time comes for them to openly make war upon the Declaration and the Constitution?

Are we to again haVe a Pope's curse launched against the Great Charter of our liberties ; and will these secret military organizations, that are "prostrate at the feet" of the foreign potentate, endeavor to make good with arms, their crusade against freedom of speech, against freedom of press, and against the supremacy of tJ}e State over the Church?

I am not alluding to the popish principles of the Dark Ages — those fearful centuries when Rome was murderously supreme. My allusion is to the present attitude of this foreign church, which seeks to rule our country, and change its form of government.

In his first declaration of principles, the reigning pope (Rev. Delia Chiesa) carried himself back to the times of the popes who made the Dark Ages. On November 1, 1914, Mr. Chiesa — who took the papal name of Benedict XVI. — made it perfectly plain that the Roman Catholic Church is just as much opposed to the people's right to rule themselves, as and of his despotic predecessors were. He utterly scouts the demo- cratic doctrine that, all government rests upon the consent of the governed. He again proclaims the hateful, mediaeval conception of the Divine Right of Kings.

According to this latest Pope, the duty of the people is to serve, obey, and support the Divine families who were born to rule over all other families. According to this latest Pope, it is the people's part to be thankful to God for being allowed the glorious privilege of being ridden by a divinely favored class, who were born booted and spurred for that purpose.

According to this Italian priest, Delia Chiesa, the great Liberators of the human race were a lot of seditious traitors, who deserved death. Ac- cording to this newest Pope, Garibaldi was a wicked insurgent, Robert Emmett a traitor, Simon Bolivar a mischief-maker, and George Washing- ton and Charles Carroll, of CarroUton, were rebels against a heavenly authority, for which a text is found — as Chiesa tells us — in Romans, XIII, 1.

I think, if some American Catholics who are not bigots, would care- fully study th first Encyclical of Benedict XVI., they would open their eyes.

In this Encyclical, the new Pope declares for union of Church and State, cruelly ignoring the opposite recent public statements of Prince Truthful James Gibbons, of Baltimore.

15

He also demands a restoration of his Temporal Power, which the Italian Catholics pulled down in 1870.

He bitterly condemns all modern thought, and wants us to mentally return to the good old days, when red-tailed Dragons devoured wicked mortals who ate meat on Friday.

He expressly condemns Freedom of Thought, and sweetly argues, in effect that your brain and mine were made to act as hewers of wood and drawers of water for the brain of the Pope and the brain of the King. The divinely chosen Pope and the divinely chosen Kmg may use their brains, if they happen to have any— which it not often the case— but you and I must regard our grey matter as a piece of bare ground to be sown cultivated, and harvested, bv those higher mortals whom God made out of a special grade of clay, and who have the right to thmk for us, speak for us, and live on us, as per a passage in one of Paul's epistles !

It always strikes me as the sublime of impudence, when so anomalous a person as the Pope, presiding over a Catholic world which worships Mary, and which never reads the Bible in the search for papal dogma, should quote from Paul, to sustain the monstrous pretensions of absolu- tism and Divine Right.

In short, the papal law, as re-stated in 1914, is the same that it was in the Dark Ages. According to that law, no patriot ever had the right^ to resist the tyrant King, and no slave ever had the right to fight for his freedom. According to that papal law, the Torch-bearers of the modern civilization and intellectual progress were all rebels against God and the Pope.

Possibly, the Archbishops and the Cardinals may impose that hoary, mediaeval code upon America, but I don't think they will.

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