The Footprints of the Jesuits

by Richard W. Thompson

Gathering the papal doctrines from these sources, authoritatively commanded by Leo XIII to be considered as the foundation of all Roman Catholic education, a man must stultify himself not to see that the fundamental principles of our Government can not enter into and become a part of that education. The Roman Catholic youth are forbidden by the papal system from accepting as true the principles of the Declaration of Independence, or of the Constitution of the United States. Both of these instruments would have to be excluded from Roman Catholic schools, or the pope be disobeyed. Or if introduced there, the pupils would have to be taught that they contain irreligious principles, which the Church had always condemned, and still condemns. The Jesuit preceptor would tell them that the American Revolution was a sin in itself, because it was rebellion against the existing principles of monarchical government, which alone have the divine approval; that all men are not created free and equal, because some are born to command, and others to obey; that governments do not derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, but the multitude of the governed are bound to obey their superiors, and they the pope; and that when our fathers appealed to "Divine Providence" for the support of our national independence, their appeal was blasphemous, because the pope, who represents God on earth, has anathematized the principles they have announced. And with the Declaration of Independence thus disposed of, they would be further instructed that the first article of the amendments to the Constitution is null and void, because it is the duty of the Government to establish the Roman Catholic religion by law, inasmuch as it is the only true religion ever revealed, and the Protestant religions are false and heretical; that these false religions ought to be prohibited by law, and that the freedom of speech and of the press should be so far restrained as not to allow the Roman Catholic religion to be assailed, the authority which the pope claims for himself to be questioned, or the Roman Catholic priesthood to be subjected, like other people, to obedience to the public laws.

Upon the great work of building for themselves and us a Government based upon the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States, our fathers entered, as we verily believe, under the protection of Divine Providence. Are we prepared to have the youth of this country taught that this is such delusion as can only exist in the minds of "the dreamers of unprofitable dreams?" Unless we are, we must discard the advice of any alien power, either spiritual or temporal, hostile to the progressive spirit which has thus far assured our growth and greatness, and promises still greater progress and development in the future. A century of experience has taught us that the founders of our Government were not only skillful builders, but wise and prudent counselors. When they shunned the pathways along which other nations had wrecked their fortunes, they, as we believe, displayed a degree of wisdom never excelled in the previous history of the world, by building up a system of secular government which centers in the hands of the people—a free, intelligent, and patriotic people—entire sovereignty over the laws. There can be no attack upon any material part of that system, without assailing this popular sovereignty, and denying to the people the right of self-government.

When, therefore, we are told—as the Jesuits now tell us—that these secular institutions created by our fathers are sinful and heretical, because they violate the divine law as Leo XIII, Pius IX, and Gregory XVI, in our own time, and numerous other popes before them, have defined that law, we are confronted by the alternative of either resisting this assault in some effective method becoming to ourselves, or of consenting to the papal policy of retrogression, which proposes to lead us back into a condition of humiliating dependence upon an alien power which teaches that popular governments contravene the divine law, and have the curse of God resting upon them. We are no longer left to surmise this, or to draw inferences with regard to it, which may be ingeniously and Jesuitically met by the pretense that they proceed from Protestant prejudices. The doors have been thrown open so wide by our liberalism and toleration that the ultimate end which the papacy seeks after is not brooded over in silence as it formerly was, but is plainly and distinctly avowed, so that it will be our own fault if we fail to discover the points at which our civil institutions are assailed.

Our Government has been so well and wisely constructed that it does not interfere, in any respect whatsoever, with the freedom of conscience. On the contrary, it is protected by constitutional guarantees, which we preserve with the most assiduous care. But the papal assailants of some of its most cherished principles avail themselves of this freedom to justify their united exertions to restore the temporal power of the pope, well knowing that if that can be accomplished so that his authority could be established here, as they desire it to be, he would exercise his prerogative right to deny this same freedom of conscience to all except those obedient to himself, and would arraign us at the bar of the Roman Curia, because under our constitutional guarantees we tolerate all the varieties of religious belief.

Without the least disguise, these same assailants openly declare their purpose not to slacken their efforts until our system of popular education is entirely uprooted from the foundation, and our public schools are converted into papal conventicles, where the disciples of Loyola shall have supreme rule and be permitted to plant the principles and theological doctrines of Thomas Aquinas in every youthful mind. This accomplished, they would expect that the coming generations, instead of deriving patriotic instruction from the example of those who founded the Republic, would bow their heads in absolute and uninquiring obedience to all the doctrines and dogmas of the pope—substitute the decrees and encyclicals of the popes and the Canon law of Rome for the Constitution and laws of the United States—and, discarding entirely the admonitions of our Revolutionary fathers, would accept as infallibly true whatsoever the pope should declare concerning the relations between the spiritual and the temporal powers; that is, between the Church and the State.

In this work of plucking out every germ of patriotism which instinctively grows and bears fruit in youthful minds, the Jesuits have been experts, ever since Julius III and Loyola established a college at Rome to teach treason to the German youth. Time and practice have increased their skill, and their disappointment at being compelled to witness the triumph of Protestantism, while they have become fugitives among the nations, has intensified their hatred of all free and independent Governments. Leo XIII—not forgetful of his own early training—has signified his purpose to select them as the educators of American youth, so that they may be trained in the religious belief that our national independence is leading us to "libertinism" and ruin; and that they can only serve God rightly by forgetting home and country, and by plucking out from their minds all sense of personal manhood and every ennobling quality; so that, instead of becoming influential citizens of a free and progressive country, they may fit themselves for "uninquiring obedience" to a foreign and alien power, as the Jesuits themselves have done. This country, so blessed by the abundant fruits of the Reformation and of popular government, must not be permitted to turn back to the old paths, which papal and imperial despotism has filled with pitfalls. The principles of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States must not be supplanted by papal and Jesuit dogmas—such as have been set forth by the ambitious popes and by Loyola, in order to secure the complete triumph of monarchism over popular liberty.

The sentiment of patriotism is well-nigh universal among the people of the United States—Roman Catholics as well as Protestants. The former have the same desire as the latter to participate in making the laws that govern them. Their Italian brethren had this desire so intensely that they resorted to revolution, and thus secured it in the only possible way by abolishing the pope's temporal power. Why, then, should they be urged, with such untiring tenacity, to restore again this temporal power and revive its evils? Why should it be demanded of them that they organize into a politico-religious party, obedient to a papal envoy from Rome, and pledged under the solemn obligations of religious duty to reverse the judgment of their Italian brethren, and fasten upon them a burden they have thrown off? Why should they be required to accept a religion which teaches that mankind are by nature unequal, with some born for dominion and the multitude for obedience only? Why should they be commanded to treat as sinful and heretical civil institutions which now protect them and increase their temporal happiness? Why should it be continually sounded in their ears that the divorce of the State from the Church, religious liberty, the freedom of speech and of the press, are such offenses against the divine law as must not be condoned in this life, and will not be forgiven in the next?

These questions are not idle, but are full of meaning to those to whom they are addressed, and could be multiplied almost indefinitely. They are sufficiently suggestive to show—what there are few so blind as not to see—that the existing agitation about the rights of the Church, and the passionate declamation employed by the Jesuits to maintain it, have but a single object—the re-conversion of the pope into a temporal and imperial ruler of the Italian people, against their consent. This—with these agitators—must be accomplished at every hazard, no matter what other consequences may follow. It is inculcated as religious duty, which can not be neglected without disobeying God! All the obedient, therefore, are commanded to take part in it, in disregard of all human laws forbidding the people of one nation from interfering with the domestic affairs of another. The reverend author of the pope's biography—speaking for and by the express authority of Leo XIII himself—says that the abolition of the temporal power "is an international wrong which all Catholics are bound to denounce and oppose until it is done away with."[222] This is the command of the pope, authoritatively uttered in imperial tones. It is sent out to all the Roman Catholics throughout the world, who are required by it to defy the laws of the countries which protect them, because they are mere human laws, and to restore absolute monarchism to the pope, because the divine law provides that mankind shall be ruled by kings and not by themselves.

The Roman Catholic part of our population are seemingly content as they are, in their peaceful and quiet homes, where, with their wives and children around them, they are secured by Protestant laws in the right to worship God unmolested and according to their own consciences, as well as in their pursuit after happiness and prosperity. Are they prepared to place all this in jeopardy, to minister to the pride and vanity of those who assume to be their rulers, who know nothing of domestic joys, or peaceful homes, or such sympathetic affections as grow out of the tenderest relations of life, or of the laughter and chattering of innocent children, which make the heart glad? All the means that learning and eloquence and authority can employ will be invoked to make them so; and it is considered one of the most effectual of these to instruct them—as the pope's biographer does with singular complacency—that the Church at Rome has been always found upon the side of free thought in religion and popular self-government in civil affairs! And to maintain this marvelous assertion, he boastingly claims that the great English Magna Charta—the foundation of our civil and religious liberty—was written "with a Catholic pen;"[223] when he must have known, and undoubtedly did know, that Innocent III—who claimed, as Leo XIII does, to be "God's vicegerent," with the apostolic power to build and destroy nations, to plant and overthrow kingdoms—cursed and anathematized that charter because, as he said, it violated the divine law; declared it to be null and void for that reason; excommunicated its authors and defenders as heretics; and said that if that charter had been carried to Rome it would have been consumed in flames kindled by a common hangman, as would also have been the bodies of the earls and barons who extorted it from a craven-hearted king. The decree abolishing the temporal power of the pope was also written by a Catholic pen.