Monks, Popes, and their Political Intrigues

by John Alberger

Another source of the pope's revenue are the proceeds derived from the sale of crosses, amulets, relics, pictures, beads, and articles made by monks and nuns. These articles of pious merchandise are blest by the bishop, and sold sometimes privately, and sometimes at Catholic fairs, They are supposed by the purchaser to insure him good luck, and to keep evil from his dwelling; and although they are often an unsightly set of trumpery; yet as they are consecrated by the bishops blessing, which, however, rather depreciates their intrinsic value, they are prized by the cajoled Catholics as exceeding in value either gold or gems. We have no data enabling us to calculate the amount of revenue derived by the pope from this source of income; but we may be allowed to conclude from the fact that, as the church has availed herself of its advantages in all countries and ages, it has proved exceedingly remunerative.

Another source of the papal revenue are the contributions extorted from laborers, female servants, and others of the industrial classes. I know of a servant girl who paid one dollar every autumn towards furnishing the church with winter fuel. What fuel costs the church, I do not know; perhaps little or nothing. The number of Catholics in the United States are commuted by Catholic authority to amount to 10,000,0000; and if each one contributes one dollar annually for the benefit he derives from the church furnaces, (and I am credibly informed he does), the pope receives from this source an annual income of 10,000,000 dollars. But this is not the only method by which the laboring classes are filched out of their honest gains by the holy mother. On the regular monthly pay-day of contractors for public works, and of mining, manufacturing and mechanical companies, the priest makes his appearance, And exacts a dollar a month from each of the faithful.

If there are non-Catholics among the employees, who hesitate to contribute the monthly donation, they are insulted, intimidated, and their life threatened to such a degree that they consider it prudent to yield to the demand, or seek employment elsewhere. This system of extortion is engineered among the workmen by some favorite of the Catholic priest, who makes it his business to see that he is not disappointed in getting his dollar a month. An engineer of this description, employed on the Baltimore and Ohio railroad, in his avidity to accommodate the priesthood narrowly escaped being victimized by a secular sharper. A stranger, professing to be a Catholic priest, solicited in behalf of his necessities, his charity and influence. Promptly heading a subscription list with the generous sum of two dollars and fifty cents, he was soon enabled to exult in the subscription of a very respectable amount by his fellow workmen. The list was, in accordance with usage, handed to the cashier of the establishment; but before any money was paid on its account it was discovered that the priest was a spurious one, and that the money he solicited was not intended for the treasury of the pope, but for the pocket of an unconsecrated impostor. Catholic periodicals, with commendable regard to their patrons' interest, have frequently published instances in which pretended priests and monks have successfully gulled the faithful. When we consider the vast proportion of poor to rich Catholics in the world, it seems evident that this branch of the pope's financial machinery, by which he wins a dollar a month from each of the industrial classes of the Catholic church, must furnish his coffers with an annual revenue exceeding that of any other government. Another source of the pope's revenue are alms collected by an order of lay mendicants. The church, instructed by the practice of mendication among all nations and classes, at all periods of history, and under all circumstances, has been enabled to perfect a system of extraordinary comprehensiveness, sharpness and efficiency. Organ grinders, bead counters, children, mothers with babes in their arms, men without legs, the blind, the deaf, the cripple, any object that can touch? the tender or religious sympathies of the community, are employed as beggars for the pope of Rome. This description of mendicants sometimes openly solicit alms for the holy father, but at other times endeavor to conceal their mission under a mask of profound dissimulation. The eloquence of broken noses, distorted forms, mutilated limbs, and tattered garments, are made to plead with touching pathos in behalf of the papal monarch. The revenue which he derives from his numerous crowd of professional beggars, is one of the secrets of the Holy See; but from the liberality with which Catholics respond, from a sense of religious duty, and Protestants from prudential motives, it may reasonably be presumed that it is not inconsiderable.

Another source of the pope's revenue is derived, from his foreign possessions. These possessions consist of churches, monasteries, nunneries, mission houses, edifices for schools, colleges, hospitals, asylums, private dwellings, tracts of land, and every other species of property. The papal foreign property is sometimes held in the name of the pope, sometimes in that of a priest, and sometimes in that of a corporation, real or pretended. Every priest coming to the United States, in order that he may legally be qualified to hold property for the benefit of the church, is required to take the oath of allegiance, whether he considers it consistent or not with his ordination oath. (See Hogan's Synopsis, p. 36). In 1822 the pope claiming to be the proprietor of St. Mary's Church at Philadelphia, leased it to a foreign priest, and sent him over to take charge of it. The trustees, and William Hogan, the recognized encumbent, refusing to obey the order of the pope's agents, a suit of ejectment was brought against them in the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania. Judge Tilghman presided at the trial. He decided that the pope could legally hold no property in the United States, and sustained the action of the defendants. (See Hogan's Synopsis, pp. 113,114). In a suit brought by the brothers of the order of Hermits of St. Augustine, against the county of Philadelphia, for the destruction of St. Augustine's Church by a mob of the American party, it was discovered that the alleged corporation was entirely spurious. The pretended corporators consisted of Micheal Hurly, pastor of St. Augustine's Church at Philadelphia, Prince Gallager, pastor at Bedford, Pa., Lewis de Barth, pastor of St. Mary's Church at Philadelphia, Patrick Henry, pastor at Coffee Run, Chester County, Pa., and J. B. Holland, pastor at Lancaster, Pa. So profoundly secret was the existence of this company kept, that no laymen or priest outside of the pretended corporators had ever heard of it before the trial, and as the public documents contained no enrolment of it in accordance with the requirement of law, it was pronounced entirely spurious and invalid. The value of the property held in the name of this pretended corporation, in evasion of the laws of the United States, was computed at 5,000,000 dollars. Even in cities where the Catholic population is deemed numerically insignificant, millions worth of property of which the inhabitants have not the slightest conception, is owned by the pope, under cover of fictitious names or otherwise. (See Hogan's Auric. Confess., vol. 2, p. 204, &c). Whenever the church has obtained sufficient power she has made a bequest to the coffers of the church a condition to the validity of a will; and where she has failed to acquire this power, she has still exacted a compliance with it from her members, under pain of her penalties. Splendid palaces and gorgeous church edifices alone are not adequate to satisfy the cravings of her avarice, she must have lands and every species of wealth. Wherever her priests have effected a pious entering wedge in a block of buildings, by means of a church or an asylum, they must scheme to work out the other proprietors, and monopolize the whole themselves. Their covetous eye is always fixed on some magnificent farm, and their active speculation, or deeper craft, has enabled them to become in possession of very desirable tracts of land. I know of a priest who netted ten thousand dollars by a single land speculation. The priests, by means of the confessional, become accurately acquainted with all secrets, with every contemplative movement in the general or State government, or in financial corporations, that can effect the market value of lands or stocks; and it would be exceedingly astonishing if, with this advantage, their speculations should not invariably be successful. In possession of such means, the church has in every age accumulated prodigious wealth. Before the secularization of the monastic property in Europe, the ecclesiastical domains and revenues were so great that the benefices were bestowed by kings on royal heirs. In California and Mexico, previous to the revolution that caused the sequestration of the church domains, her mission-houses owned nearly all the territory of the State. In China, even at this day, there are three bishoprics endowed by the crown of Portugal, which hold seven provinces; and the bishops of the Apostolic Vicars hold several others. The possessions of the Catholic priests render them the wealthiest citizens of the country in which they reside; and as no heir can inherit their estates, each succeeding generation is destined to see them augmented until every bishopric, however poor now, has become a princely domain, with a princely revenue, governed by a titled priest.

Every Catholic edifice in the world, and every description of property held by a priest, belongs to the pope; the real title, as lord paramount, being vested in him, whatever ostensible title policy or necessity may have induced the church to adopt. Over these possessions he exercises supreme, despotic dominion, sometimes directly, and sometimes indirectly.

We have now enumerated some of the sources of the pope's revenue; but we have mentioned but a few of them. In fact the rites of the Catholic church partake so plainly of a financial character, that they seem to have been instituted for purposes of ecclesiastical revenue. With a fiscal system principally based on them, extending over Christendom, rigorous in its exactions on all classes, the church unites a rapacity so unprincipled, measures so oppressive and unjustifiable, deeds so horrible and arrogations so presumptuous, that were it not for her religious aspect she might be mistaken for the demon of avarice. While rolling in opulence and luxury, she stoops to the basest trickery to filch from laborers and servant girls their wages; to disinherit lawful heirs; taking advantage of ignorance and superstition, and pretending to regulate the condition of the soul in the eternal world. The immense sum of gold which she has, by means of her fiscal system, been piling up in her coffers for ages, has had no visible outlet except what has been expended in the support of her officials, and on bribery, corruption, and political intrigue. The policy that dictates the accumulation and reservation of this vast amount of treasure, must contemplate the undertaking of some gigantic enterprise; and the world may yet be startled from its slumber by the martial assertion of the church to her pretensions of supreme dominion over the world; and by the fact that she is better organized for war, and better furnished with its sinews than any other power.

As an independent sovereign the pope has oaths of allegiance which he prescribes to such of his subjects as he judges proper. According to the authority of William Hogan, the consecration oath of the Jesuistical bishops is as follows:

"Therefore, to the utmost of my power I shall and
"will defend this doctrine, and his holiness's rights and
"customs against all usurpers, and heretical and Pro-
"testant authority whatsoever; especially against, the
"new pretended authority of the Church of England,
"and all adherents, in regard that they and she be
"usurpal and heretical, opposing the true mother church
"of Rome. I do renounce and disown my allegiance
"as due to any heretical king, prince, or State named
"Protestant, or of obedience to any of their inferior
"magistrates or officers. I do further declare the doctrine of
"the Church of England, and of Calvinists,
"Huguenots, and of the other named Protestants to be
"damnable, and they themselves are damned, and to be
"damned, that will not forsake them. I do further declare
"that I will help, assist, advise all wherever I
"shall be, in England, Scotland, Ireland, or in any
"other kingdom I shall come to, and do my best to ex-
"tirpate the heretical Protestant doctrines, and destroy
"all their pretending powers, regal or otherwise. I
"do further promise and declare, that notwithstanding
"I am dispensed with, to assume any other religion
"heretical for the propagation of the mother church's
"interest, to keep secret and private all her agent's
"councils from time to time, as they entrust me, and
"not to divulge, directly or indirectly, by word, writ-
"ing, or circumstance whatever, but to execute all
"that shall be proposed; given in charge, or discovered
"unto me, by you my ghostly father, or by any of his
"sacred convents. All which I, A. B. do swear by the
"blessed Trinity, and blessed Sacraments which I am
"now to receive, to perform, and on my part to keep
"inviolably, and do call all the heavenly and glorious
"hosts to witness these my real intentions to keep this
"my oath."

The consecration oath of a Catholic bishop is as follows:

"I do solemnly swear on the Holy Evangelists, and
"before Almighty God, to defend the domains of St.
"Peter against every aggressor; to preserve, augment
"and extend the rights, honors, and privileges of the
"Lord Pope and his successors; to observe, and with all
"my might to enforce his decrees, ordinances, reserva-
"tions, provisions, and all dispositions whatsoever;
"to persecute and combat, to the last extremity
"heretics and schismatics, and all who will not pay
"the sovereign Pope all the obedience which he shall
"require."