Underlying the whole of the doctrine of this discourse is the assumption of the supremacy of the secular order, or that every American citizen is bound to subordinate his religion to his politics, or divest himself of it whenever he acts on a political question. This, which is assumed and partially disguised in Dr. Bellows, is openly and frankly asserted and boldly maintained in Judge Hurlbut's pamphlet. The judge talks much about theology, theocracy, etc., subjects of which he knows less than he supposes, and of course talks a great deal of nonsense, as unbelievers generally do; but he is quite clear and decided that the state should have the power to suppress any church or religious institution that is based on a theory or principle different from its own. The theory of the American government is democratic, and the government ought to have the power to suppress or exclude every church that is not democratically constituted. Religion should conform to politics, not politics to religion. The political law is above the religious, and, of course, man is above God. In order to be able to carry out this theory, the learned judge proposes an important amendment to the constitution of the United States, which shall on the one hand prohibit the several states from ever establishing any religion by law; and, on the other, shall authorize Congress to enact such laws as it may deem necessary to control or prevent the establishment or continuance of any foreign hierarchical power in this country founded on principles or dogmas antagonistic to republican institutions. He says:
"The following amendment is proposed to Article I. of the amendments to the Constitution of the United States. The words in italics are proposed to be added to the present article:
"Art. I. Neither Congress nor any state shall make any laws respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble and to petition the government for a redress of grievances. But Congress may enact such laws as it shall deem necessary to control or prevent the establishment or continuance of any foreign hierarchical power in this country founded on principles or dogmas antagonistic to republican institutions.
"It is assumed that there is nothing in the constitution, as it stands, which forbids a state from establishing a religion, and that no power is conferred on Congress by the constitution to forbid a foreign hierarchical establishment in the United States. If such a power be needed, then the proposed amendment is also necessary."—Secular View, p. 5.
This proposed amendment, like iniquity, lies unto itself, for while it prohibits Congress and the several states from making any law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, it gives to Congress full power to control or prevent the establishment or the continuance—that is, to prohibit—the free exercise by Catholics of their religion, under the flimsy pretence that it is a foreign hierarchy founded on anti-republican principles. The hierarchy is an essential part of our religion, and any denial of its freedom is the denial of the free exercise of his religion to every Catholic, and of the very principle of religious liberty itself, which the constitution guarantees.
We of course deny that the Catholic hierarchy is a foreign hierarchy or anti-republican, for what is Catholic is universal, and what is universal is never and nowhere a foreigner; but yet, because its Supreme Pontiff does not reside personally in America, and its power does not emanate from the American people, Protestants, Jews, and infidels will hold that it is a foreign power, and anti-republican. The carnal Jews held the Hebrew religion to be a national religion, and because the promised Messiah came as a spiritual, not as a temporal and national prince, they rejected him. Infidels believe in no spiritual order, and consequently in no Catholic principle or authority; Protestants believe in no Catholic hierarchy, and hold that all authority in religious matters comes from God, not through the hierarchy, but through the faithful or the people, and hence their ministers are called, not sent. It would be useless, therefore, to undertake to prove to one or another of these three classes that the Catholic hierarchy is at home here, in America, as much so as at Rome, and, since it holds not from the people, that it is not founded on anti-republican or anti-democratic principles. The only arguments we could use to prove it lie in an order of thought with which they are not familiar, do not even recognize, and to be appreciated demand a spiritual apprehension which, though not above natural reason, is quite too high for such confirmed secularists as ex-Judge Hurlbut and his rationalistic brethren, who have lost all conception, not only of the supernatural order, but of the supersensible, the intelligible, the universal reality above individual or particular existences.
For Catholics there are two orders, the secular and the spiritual. The secular is bound by the limitations and conditions of time and place; the spiritual is above and independent of all such conditions and limitations, and is universal, always and everywhere the same. The Catholic hierarchy represents in the secular and visible world, in the affairs of individuals and nations, this spiritual order, on which the whole secular order depends, and which, therefore, is an alien nowhere and at home everywhere. The Catholic hierarchy is supernatural, not natural, and, therefore, no more a foreigner in one nation than in another. But it is only the Catholic that can see and understand this; it is too high and too intellectual for non-Catholics, whose minds are turned earthward, and have lost the habit of looking upward, and to recover it must be touched by the quickening and elevating power of grace. We must expect them, therefore, to vote the Catholic hierarchy to be in this country a foreign hierarchy, although it is nowhere national, and is no more foreign here than is God himself.
The Catholic hierarchy is not founded on democratic principles, we grant, but there is nothing in its principles or dogmas antagonistical to republican government, if government at all; but since it holds not from the people, nor in any sense depends on them for its authority, non-Catholics, who recognize no power above the people, will vote it anti-republican, undemocratic, antagonistical to the American system of government. It is of no use to try to persuade them to the contrary, or to allege that it is of the very essence and design of religion to assert the supremacy of an order which does not hold from the people, and is above them both individually and collectively, or to maintain in the direction and government of human affairs the supremacy of the law of God, which all men and nations, in both public and private matters, are bound to obey, and which none can disobey with impunity. They will only reply that this is repugnant to the democratic tendencies of the age, is contrary to the free and enlightened spirit of the nineteenth century, denies the original, absolute, and underived sovereignty of the people, and is manifestly a return to the theocratic principle which humanity rejects with horror. To an argument of this sort there, of course, is no available answer. The men who use it are impervious to logic or common sense, for they either believe in no God, or that God is altogether like one of themselves; therefore, in no respect above themselves.
It is very clear, then, if Judge Hurlbut's proposed amendment to the constitution were adopted, it would be interpreted as giving to Congress, as the Judge intends it should, the power to suppress, according to its discretion, the Catholic hierarchy, and, therefore, the Catholic Church in the United States, and that, too, notwithstanding the very amendment denies to Congress the power to prohibit to any one the free exercise of his religion! How true it is, as the Psalmist says, "Iniquity hath lied to itself." The enemies of the church, who are necessarily the enemies of God, and, therefore, of the truth, are not able to frame an argument or a law against the church that does not contradict or belie itself; yet are they, in their own estimation, the enlightened portion of mankind, and Catholics are weak, besotted, grovelling in ignorance and superstition.
There is little doubt that the amendment proposed by Judge Hurlbut would, if adopted, effect the object the Evangelical sects are conspiring with Jews and infidels to effect, so far as human power can effect it—that is, the suppression of the Catholic Church in the United States, and it is a bolder, more direct, and honester way of coming at it than the fair-seeming but insidious amendment proposed by Mr. Justice Strong, of the Supreme Court of the United States, and his Evangelical allies. It is now well understood by non-Catholic leaders that the growth of the church cannot be prevented or retarded by arguments drawn from Scripture or reason, for both Scripture and reason are found to be on her side, and dead against them. They see very clearly that if she is left free with "an open field and fair play," it is all over with her opponents. They must then contrive in some way, by some means or other, to suppress the religious freedom and equality now guaranteed by our constitution and laws, and bring the civil law or the physical power of the state to bear against the church and the freedom of Catholics. That it is a settled design on the part of the leading Protestant sects to do this—and that they are aided by Unitarians and Universalists, because they know that Protestant orthodoxy would soon go by the board if the Catholic Church were suppressed; by the Jews, because they hate Christianity, and know well that Christianity and the Catholic Church stand or fall together; and by unbelievers and secularists, because they would abolish all religion, and they feel that they cannot effect their purpose if the Catholic Church stands in their way—no one can seriously doubt. We include the Jews in this conspiracy, for we have before us the report of a remarkable discourse delivered lately in the Hebrew synagogue at Washington, D. C., by the Rabbi Lilienthal, of Cincinnati, entitled "First the State, then the Church," which is directed almost wholly against the Catholic Church. We make an extract from this discourse, longer than we can well afford room for, but our readers will thank us for it:
"Of all the questions which demand our serious consideration, none is of more importance than the one, 'Shall the state or the church rule supreme?' All over Europe, this question is mooted at present, and threatens to assume quite formidable proportions. There is but one empire across the ocean in which this problem, so far, has been definitely settled by virtue of autocratic might and power. It is Russia. When, in the seventeenth century, the Patriarch of Moscow had died, and the metropolitans and archbishops of the Greek Church met for the purpose of filling the vacancy, Peter the Great rushed with drawn sword into their meeting, and, throwing the same on the table, exclaimed, 'Here is your patriarch.' Since that time the Czar is emperor and pope at once; and, very significantly, the 'Holy Synod,' or the supreme ecclesiastical court of Russia, is presided over by a general, the representative of the Czar. And hence the Emperor Nicholas used to say: State and church are represented in me; and the motto ruling the Russian government was autocracy, Russian nationality, and the Greek Church.
"But everywhere else in Europe this question agitates the old continent. In Great Britain, Gladstone works for the enfranchisement of the church; the Thirty nine Articles, so renowned at Oxford and Cambridge, are going to be abolished, and High Churchmen and Dissenters prepare themselves for the final struggle. Italy, so long priest-ridden, has inscribed on her national banner the glorious words, 'Religious liberty,' and means to carry them out to the fullest extent, in spite of all anathemas and excommunications. Spain, though still timid and wavering, has adopted the same policy. Austria has thrown off her concordat, and inserted in her new constitution the same modern principle; and the German Empire has fully recognized the equality of all citizens, without difference of creed or denomination, before the courts and tribunals of resurrected and united Germany.
"But daily we hear of the demands of the clergy, made in the interests of their church. Since the last Œcumenical Council has proclaimed the new dogma of Papal infallibility, the bishops want to discharge all teachers and professors, both at the theological seminaries and universities, who are unwilling to subscribe to this new tenet of the Roman Church. The Archbishop of Gnesen and Posen even asked for the names of all those men who at the last election of members for the German Parliament did not vote for those men he had proposed as candidates. The government is now bound to interfere, but nobody can tell how this coming conflict between church and state will be decided.
"This is the aspect of the old continent. What is the prospect in America, in our glorious and God-blessed country? Of course, religious liberty, in the fullest sense of the word, is the supreme law of the land. It is the most precious gem in the diadem of our republic, it is warranted and secured by our constitution.
"The immortal signers of the Declaration of Independence; those modern prophets and apostles of humanity; those statesmen who thoroughly appreciated the bloody lessons of past history, knew but too well what they were doing when they entirely separated church and state, and ignored all sectarian sentiments in the inspired documents they bequeathed to their descendants. The denominational peace that heretofore characterized the mighty and unequalled growth of the young republic bears testimony to their wisdom, foresight, and statesmanship.
"But, alas! our horizon, too, begins to be clouded. The harmony that heretofore prevailed between the various churches and denominations begins to be disturbed. Then we had in the last two years the conventions at Pittsburg and Philadelphia. The men united there meant to insert God in our constitution, as we have him already on our coins, by the inscription, 'In God we trust.' They intend to christianize our country, against the clear and emphatic spirit and letter of the constitution. And I must leave it to the learned judge of the Supreme Court of the United States who presided over those meetings, to decide whether this future Christian country hereafter shall be a Catholic or a Protestant country.
"The Roman Catholic press and pulpit are not slow in answering this question. With praiseworthy frankness and manliness they declare the intentions of their church. Father Hecker says: 'In fifteen years we will take this country and build our institutions over the grave of Protestantism.... There is, ere long, to be a state religion in this country, and that state religion is to be Roman Catholic.' Bishop O'Connor, of Pittsburg, says: 'Religious liberty is merely endured until the opposite can be carried into effect without peril to the Catholic world.' The Archbishop of St. Louis says: 'If the Catholics ever gain, which they surely will, an immense numerical majority, religious freedom in this country will be at an end.' And the Pope speaks of the 'delirium of toleration, and asserts the right to punish criminals in the order of ideas.'
"This language is plain, unequivocal, and cannot be misinterpreted. Still, I am not an alarmist. I have too much faith in the sound common sense of the American people that they should barter away their political birthright for any theological or clerical controversy. They are too much addicted to the policy of 'a second sober thought,' that, after having first of all taught the human race the invaluable blessings of religious liberty, they should discard them just now, when the whole civilized world is imitating the glorious example set by our great and noble sires.
"But, 'vigilance being the price of liberty,' in the face of this assertion it is not only right, but an imperative duty, to enlighten ourselves on this all-important subject, so that we may take our choice, and perform our duties as true, loyal citizens and true, loyal Americans."
This is very much to the purpose, and if it shows that the rabbi is no friend of Protestant Christianity, it shows that his principal hostility is to the Catholic Church, as the body and support of Christianity. He exults, as well he may, over the falling away from the church of the old Catholic governments of Europe, for one of the chief instruments in effecting that apostasy has been precisely his Hebrew brethren, the great supporters of the anti-Catholic revolution of modern times; and his slanders on the Catholic Church are in the very spirit of the Evangelical Alliance, even to the false charges he brings against distinguished individual Catholics. The assertion that "Father Hecker says, 'In fifteen years we will take this country and build our institutions over the grave of Protestantism,'" as that other assertion, "There is or ought to be a state religion in this country, and that state religion is to be Roman Catholic,'" Father Hecker himself assures us, is false. He never did, nor with his views ever could, say anything of the sort. Bishop O'Connor, late of Pittsburg, never did and never could have said, "Religious liberty is merely endured until the opposite can be carried into effect without peril to the Catholic world." We happen to know that his views were and are very different; and if they were not, he is too shrewd to commit the blunder of saying anything like what is falsely attributed to him, or to disclose such an ulterior purpose. We may say as much of the sentiment attributed to the Archbishop of St. Louis. The archbishop never uttered or entertained it. Something like what is ascribed to him was said, many years ago, by Mr. Bakewell, in The Shepherd of the Valley, a paper published at St. Louis, but he was assailed by the Catholic press all over the country, and, if he did not retract it, at least endeavored to explain it away, and to show that he meant no such thing. The archbishop never said it, and was no more responsible for it than was the Rabbi Lilienthal himself. No Catholic prelate and no distinguished Catholic layman even has ever proposed any amendment to the constitution in regard to the relations of church and state in this country, or has expressed any wish to have the existing constitutional relations changed, or in any respect modified. The church is satisfied with them, and only asks that they be faithfully observed. She opposes the separation of church and state in the sense of releasing the state from all moral and religious obligations, for that would imply the subjection of the church to the state, and prove the grave of religious freedom and independence, which she always and everywhere asserts with all her energy against kings, emperors, nobilities, and peoples—against Jew, Pagan, Mussulman, schismatic, and heretic, and it is for this that they conspire against her and seek her destruction.