The Footprints of the Jesuits

by Richard W. Thompson

In the chapter from which these extracts are taken, there are a couple of sentences intentionally passed by as worthy of special notice and comment. They are pregnant with meaning, and especially interesting to us in this country, in view of the fact that Protestants are regarded as rebels against the Church, and are, as a class, still held to be within its jurisdiction, and subject, like sheep that have strayed away, to be brought back into the fold again. These questions are asked:

"If you refuse to recognize the authority of Christ in the Church, how can you expect your subjects to recognize your authority in the State? If it is lawful for you to revolt from the Church, it must be lawful for others to rebel against the State?"[242]

Whilst this does not openly assert the right of Roman Catholics to revolt against Protestantism and Protestant institutions, it not only suggests, but leaves it to be inferred. Everybody knows that Protestantism was the fruit of a revolt against the authority of the Church at Rome. According to this author, and the teachings of that Church, no just rights were thereby acquired, because none can grow out of resistance to its authority. Consequently, Protestantism has no right to exist, and it is the duty of the Church to reduce it to obedience—that is, to destroy it—whensoever it can be accomplished. Hence the suggestions of the author include two propositions: First, that as Protestantism is rebellion against the Church, it has set an example which may be rightfully followed in rebellion against itself; and, second, that if Protestantism has, by its rebellion against the Church, established civil institutions which the Church considers inimical to itself, "it must be lawful" to rebel against such institutions until they shall be made to conform to the interests and welfare of the Church. Hence, as his theories advance, he denies that any such thing as nationality, as understood by all modern peoples, can have any rightful existence, because "it is opposed to the Church's precept of submission to lawful authority;"[243] in other words, it is opposed to the right of the infallible pope to ignore all the boundary-lines of States, and make himself the sovereign and universal dispenser of the governing authority of the world within whatsoever jurisdiction he himself shall define. In the same connection he condemns the doctrine of non-intervention among nations, and insists that it is their duty to interfere with the affairs of each other, for the reason that "Christian charity commands men and nations to come to the rescue of each other."[244] "Mutual help," says he, "is a fundamental duty of Christianity; and therefore non-intervention must be a principle belonging to paganism."[245] This doctrine is manifestly employed to convince all Roman Catholics throughout the world that it is their duty to bring, not only themselves, but the Governments under which they live, to the point of interfering with the affairs of Italy, by force, if necessary, in order to secure the restoration of the pope's temporal power. In so far as it applies to the United States it advises that our non-intervention laws shall be disregarded, because, in enacting them, the Government usurped a power which did not belong to it, inasmuch as it tends to results prejudicial to the sovereign rights of the pope. In furtherance of the same idea, he strenuously resists the doctrine of what is known as accomplished facts—what the French call fait accompli; that is, the recognition of the independence and nationality of a Government which has been successful in maintaining itself, as the kingdom of Italy has done, by revolutionary resistance to the arbitrary temporal power of the pope. Therefore, as the present Government of Italy is an "oppressive tyranny," has acquired no rights, but has shown "only crime upon crime in a never-ending chain of iniquities," the "old order of things," with the pope as a temporal monarch, possessed of absolute power to dictate all the laws, should be returned to.[246]

We must follow this author somewhat farther, because, before closing, he reaches a point absolutely vital under civil institutions like those of this country. He devotes over a dozen pages to "liberal Catholics," in order to prove that, as the Church must necessarily be intolerant, liberalism is one of the forms of heresy. "To be Catholic with the pope, and to be liberal with the Government, are contradictory characters; they can not exist in the same subject;"[247] because the former involves that which is true, and the latter that which is false, where the civil constitution does not conform to the papal ideas. Such "liberal Catholics" as "put their faith in liberty of the press, representative government, ministerial responsibility, or the like"—as all foreign-born Roman Catholics who have taken the oath of allegiance to the United States have sworn to do—"betray not only an ignorance or oblivion of what is vital to religion, and of the principles which Christianity requires in Governments and constitutions; but also a most false and pernicious opinion." And in expressing his amazement that there are any in the Church so liberal towards a Government that is entirely secular and not subject to the dictation of the pope, he asks this question: "Is it not a matter of marvel that any one should imagine himself to be a Catholic, while he is liberal with the Government?" He recognizes no authority for the government of society but that of the Church, because conformity to the law of God can be obtained in no other way; and therefore he says: "If this idea of authority is contradicted, counterbalanced, or checked in the constitution of a country, then the Government is founded on a basis which is opposed to reason, to nature, and to the Christian faith." And for this reason, "modern constitutions have therefore put themselves into direct antagonism to the Catholic religion."[248] Consequently, he continues, "every honest man, in every country, now sighs out a new prayer to his litany: From a Legislative Chamber, 'good Lord, deliver us!'"[249] He insists that fidelity to the Church consists in the observance of all the dogmas set forth in the Syllabus of Pius IX, and thus enumerates these important propositions contained in it: The 55th condemning the separation of Church and State; the limitation of the rights of Governments declared by the 67th; the liberty of worship condemned by the 77th; the freedom of the press censured by the 79th; civil marriage reprobated by the 65th to the 74th; secular education, which is called usurpation, proscribed by the 45th to the 48th; oppression of the clergy denounced in the 49th; and "all the principles of liberalism, of progress, and of modern civilization," declared in the 80th, "to be irreconcilable with the Catholicism of the pope."[250]

With a few more brief comments upon "civil marriage," the "secularization of education," and the Jesuits, this extraordinary book is brought to a close by admonishing the faithful not to permit their children to receive "a godless education" in such public schools as are authorized by the laws of all our States—because all education should be under the supervision of the Church—and by announcing in serious and solemn phrase, that "Protestantism has filled the world with ruins!"[251]

What an extent of infatuation must have incited this last remark! There need be said of it only that, in former times, there were powerful Governments subject to the dominion of the popes, but all these have passed away—not a single one is left. Protestant Governments have risen out of the ruins of some, and are now rising out of those of others of them, and all these are happy, prosperous, and progressive; whilst the pope himself, with the vast multitude of his allies assisting him, is devoting all the power given him by the Church to persuade them to retrace their steps and return to the retrogressive period of the Middle Ages. The author of the work to which so much space has been appropriated, is one of his conspicuous allies, far from being the least distinguished among them; and for that reason the doctrines he has announced in behalf of the papacy have been set forth at unusual length. This having been done, in order that what he has said may be thoroughly comprehended, it needs only to be further remarked here, that, according to what he has laid down as the established religious teachings of the Roman Church, with an infallible pope at its head, it is impossible for any man to maintain those teachings and at the same time be loyal to the Government of the United States. There is no escape from this; but before further comments upon this point, there are other evidences to show how, since the pope's infallibility was decreed, the lines of distinction between the popular and papal forms of government have been so distinctly announced that it requires very little sagacity to distinguish them, and even less to realize that they can not co-exist in the same country.

A reverend educator attached to St. Joseph's Seminary, Leeds, in England, has, since the Vatican Council, also entered upon the task of instructing the English-speaking world what are the only relations between civil Governments and the Church which an infallible pope can approve. His views were first communicated through the columns of the Catholic Progress, a periodical of extensive circulation; but they were deemed to be of so much importance and such an essential part of the permanent literature of the Church, that in 1883 they were published in book form so as to assure more general reading. This book, entitled "The Catholic Church and Civil Governments," contains but little over one hundred pages, and, being in cheap form, has found its way to the United States, where it is expected, of course, that its teachings will inoculate the minds of all the faithful, and furnish instructors to conduct education in religious schools. What it is expected to accomplish will be seen from the following references to its contents.

At the opening of the volume the reader is apprised beforehand of what he shall expect in the way of doctrinal teaching. It is dedicated to the present pope, Leo XIII, who, besides being designated as the vicar of Christ, is addressed as "The Christ on earth!"—not as man, with the faculties and frailties of human nature, but as God himself! Although the author is not represented as a Jesuit, it may well be inferred that he is one, from these blasphemous words, which shock the sense of Christian propriety, and ought to excite indignation in every intelligent Christian mind.

He starts out by assuming that the present pope "is still a king," and that "he exercises a real authority over his subjects, irrespective of the country to which by birth they belong."[252] In this he agrees with the Italian P. Franco, and the English statesman Lord Montagu, that the principle of nationality can not be permitted to prevail against the pope in his march to universal dominion—that State lines and even ocean boundaries amount to nothing. Upon this hypothesis he bases the assumption that the Church "is a public society, a kingdom, a divine State," and possesses "the power of public jurisprudence."[253] Elsewhere he calls this "external power to legislate;" that is, to pass laws binding the consciences of her subjects, to take means to insure those laws being put in exercise, to be herself the judge of the sense of her laws, to punish them that trespass against the laws, and to bring them into the right path by coercion.[254] He endeavors, by various modes of statement, to establish the proposition that the Church is "independent" of all civil Governments, until he reaches the point of positively asserting it;[255] assigning as the reason that the "Church is the continuation of the authoritative presence of Jesus Christ in the world."[256] Turning away, only for a moment, from the idea of a "universal Christendom"—unlimited by the separate nationality of States—he draws a melancholy picture of the condition of the world, unless this independence of the Church shall be fully recognized. "Once grant," says he, "that the Church is subordinate to the civil State, and there will ensue a complete upsetting of the scheme of salvation, an entire submersion of divine truth, a total overthrow—nay, an utter destruction—of the kingdom of Christ."[257] "She knows that no earthly power can bind her," nor can she "swear fealty, or own allegiance to any other sovereign," which propositions he proves by the Syllabus of Pius IX.[258] Hence, he repeats, "The Church is a perfect society, and independent of the State;"[259] and emphasizes it by declaring "that the State is in the Church, as a college is in the State."[260] She has "the right of way. She has the right to enter every kingdom in the world, to set up her tents, to propagate her doctrine, to make subjects, ... to reign in every corner of the earth,"[261] and "to use the weapons most suited to accomplish her object."[262] She "is bound to use the means most conducive to her spiritual end," and "the illuminating spirit" that guides her "shows her the advantage of sometimes making use of temporal means." Besides fasting, abstinence, excommunication, and interdicts, "even more severe measures have occasionally been found to be very salutary." She "is justified in using extrinsic coercion whenever it promises to be a help," according to "the principle of the coercive power," asserted by Pius IX in the twenty-fourth proposition of the Syllabus. Primarily these coercive measures are to be employed against "only the members of the Church;" but are subject to be employed at the discretion of the pope against all baptized persons. "Once baptized," says he, "then the Church has over them all the rights of a parent."[263] This includes baptized Protestants, who, by the decree of the Council of Trent, are considered as sheep gone astray, but still within the jurisdiction of the Church.

The Church, he insists, is subordinate to the State in nothing, but the State is "subordinate to and under the guidance of the Church in all matters which touch, even incidentally, upon the moral life of the State."[264] The State "is bound not to institute any law or sanction any custom which can in any way hinder the Church in gaining her supernatural end," and "is bound to aid the Church by a material assistance whenever she deems such assistance necessary."[265] "At the present day there does not remain one truly Catholic State."[266] But this does not release them from the obligation of obedience to the Church, because the "greater portion of their subjects are baptized," and "baptism enrolls a man among the children of the Church; and hence, in spite of their denying the claims of their true spiritual Master, they are, as Christian States, still bound by one obligation; namely, to refrain from establishing any law which is against the conscience of their Catholic subjects."[267] Therefore the Church must "be obeyed by her subjects, with or without the good-will of the civil power."[268] "The Church has a right to carry out her divine mission in every land, and to do so, if need be, in spite of the civil power."[269] "The Church sends her ministers throughout the world," "independently of the favor or permission of the temporal powers," and invests them with "absolute power."[270] When the pope assigns them a duty, "he gives them a right to carry out that duty in the teeth of every earthly power."[271] "For the civil power to endeavor to hinder the Church in the exercise of this right is a crime. It is to resist God."[272] He claims for the Church the right to go into all the countries in the world, with or without their consent, and "there to establish and unfold herself, to set up her machinery" in whatsoever way she may deem expedient.[273] "Hence," says he, "the Church has a right to erect her hierarchy, to set up her tribunals, to hold her synods, to open schools, to found colleges and convents, and especially to be free and unfettered in her communications with the pope. She has a right to spread the faith, and needs not to sue for leave from any earthly power."[274] "And this right the Church can never lose. It can never become obsolete. No length of time can prescribe against it;"[275] that is, no Government can exist long enough to acquire the right to mature a system of laws which the pope may not rightfully command to be resisted and set aside, when he shall decide that the interests of the Church require it to be done.