"Aren't there a lot of Protestant ministers who are guilty of immorality?" McBryan asked.
"There are some Protestant ministers who are guilty of immorality, but when it is discovered that a Protestant minister has gone wrong he is expelled from the ministry. A big difference between the relation of a Protestant minister and his congregation and the pope and the Catholic church is that Protestants do not hold their ministers or any ecclesiastic to be infallible, while the Catholics do hold the pope to be infallible. I do not doubt that many of the popes were good men, and I do not claim that because some of them were bad that all of them are to be condemned, but the point I am making is that one must be very credulous to believe that Christ would recognize as His direct representatives men who had committed such gross immoralities and outraged every human right—men who were among the greatest reprobates and degenerates the world has ever produced. I cannot understand how men who are not controlled by superstitious fear can believe that these men were the successors of St. Peter and that through them Christ passed down the office of pontiff, including all of the prerogatives of his vicarage, to the present incumbent."
"I believe He did," said McBryan.
"I suppose you believe that Christ authorized the sale of the papacy at auction by Benedict IX. Well, I don't believe it."
"It don't make any difference to Catholics what damn Protestants think of their pope."
"Mr. McBryan, I have no objections to your believing in the infallibility of the popes if you want to. The Klan does not object to any religious belief. It stands for the worship of God according to the dictates of conscience, and will protect Catholics as well as Protestants in such worship. What the Klan does oppose, and what every American should oppose, is the exercise of civil power by the Church. Whenever any church, Catholic or Protestant, attempts to gain control of the affairs of state they will find solid opposition from the Klan. One of the principles of this organization is the separation of church and state."
"I would oppose even the Baptist church's doing that," said Wilson.
"Catholics don't believe in the church controlling the state," said McBryan.
"I hope not, but the history of the Catholic church is largely the history of a church directly controlling, or dominating, civil powers; and when such powers have been wrested from it, struggling to regain them.
"The time was when the Catholic church controlled the political affairs of all Europe. In 754 Pippin, king of the Franks, recognized the temporal authority of the pope. In 774 Charlemagne confirmed this power and enlarged the dominion of the pope. For many years contentions between the church and the rulers of Europe were common. France, under Philip the Fair, was the first power to successfully resist papal authority. The rise of Protestantism under Luther caused the pope to lose fully one-half of Europe. This power was never regained. After the treaty of Westphalia in 1648 conditions were brought about that made a rapid decline of the pope's temporal power.