VOL. XIV., No. 84.—MARCH, 1872.
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1872, by Rev. I. T. Hecker, in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington, D. C.
AN UNCIVIL JOURNAL.
The activity and universality of the American press are proverbial. Leaving out of sight the innumerable political organs which dabble in everything, there is not a department of human knowledge, not a recognized theological creed, not a leading foreign nationality, not a prominent ism of the day, that has not its daily or weekly to represent it. And they all speak and investigate with unlimited freedom. The race of Robert Burns’s “chiel” who was “takin’ notes” has been multiplied until they here outnumber the sands on the sea-shore. Nothing escapes them. All shortcomings of whatever origin are certain of detection by some of them, and they are not restrained by any false modesty from instant proclamation thereof. Everybody is held accountable to everybody else. Republicans and Democrats keep up permanent mutual inquisition, Protection and Free-trade spy out each other’s defects, and rival sects seem firmly to believe in the chastening influence of announcement of their neighbors’ faults.
More than any of these, more than all put together, is Catholicity in the United States subjected to the most ceaseless and penetrating surveillance. The curiosity prompting this surveillance is sometimes friendly, but generally the reverse. English literature, essentially anti-Catholic and bigoted, has made its mark upon American education, and with many people the intolerant falsehood of much English history still passes for truth. So-called religious (Protestant) papers are never at a loss for a leader topic—“Abuse the Catholics.” Protestant ministers find heads of discourse always ready in anti-Popery admonitions. We personally know many excellent men among them who conscientiously strive to do their duty as they understand it, and are above such wrong; but there are large numbers of Poundtexts and Brandlighters, obscure in position, of uncertain education and wretchedly paid, who make of “Popery” a stalking-horse, and seek to fill their empty pews and depleted pockets with the fruits of anti-Popery excitement. Added to such editors and such preachers as we describe, there is a
small army of literary and theological stragglers, bummers, and disgraced deserters hovering on the rear of these regular forces, always in the field with lectures, pamphlets, keys to Popery, horrible disclosures, and all the pestilent riff-raff of anti-Catholic literature. One would think the Protestant army of observation on such a footing sufficiently well-organized, active, and effective to guard the walls of the American Zion and sound a timely alarm.
But the publishing firm of Messrs. Harper & Brothers is not of that opinion, and they appear to have discovered that it is their duty to take under their special protection and keeping the public schools, the Bible, the Protestant religion, and the liberties of America;—thus demonstrating the wretched incapacity and utter failure of our civil authorities, our religious press, and the Protestant ministry to do their plainest duty. The gentlemen in question publish, here in New York, Harper’s Monthly Magazine, and a hebdomadal called Harper’s Weekly: A Journal of Civilization. These periodicals contain a variety of light literature, papers on current topics, poetry, anecdotes, and highly-flavored anti-Popery articles. Besides these last, the Weekly generally has one or more caricatures calculated to disseminate the worst falsehoods, and to excite hatred towards Catholics and contempt for their religion.
For years past, a constantly recurring subject of its most offensive form of caricature has been the person of the venerable Pontiff Pius IX. It is difficult to conceive how any man of even ordinary instincts of propriety—we care not what his religious prejudices might be—could have for this revered personage any feeling but one of profound respect. An aged bishop, fourscore years of age,
whose purity of character is without speck or stain, whose long life has been one of labor and usefulness, piety and virtue, beginning his sacerdotal career as a missionary in a foreign land, then serving faithfully as the director of charitable institutions and hospitals, whose first acts of power were those of benevolence and universal amnesty, toward whom, on the part of the tens of thousands of Protestants who have seen and spoken with him, no sentiments but those of profound admiration and veneration are ever expressed—such a character as this is selected by the Journal of Civilization as the favorite butt of its indecent ribaldry.