We here leave entirely out of sight all consideration of the question of outrage upon the religious sensibilities of millions of Catholics in the United States, and place the judgment of the offence upon the broad ground of civilized propriety. The men who perpetrate this outrage seek to justify themselves on the plea that it is as king or temporal sovereign of Rome they caricature him. Their offence is aggravated by so flimsy and paltry a pretext. The merits of the disputes among the monarchs of Europe do not concern us here in America to that extent, and if they did, as a question of monarchical right and precedence of seniority, the kings and emperors of Europe are all new-comers and upstarts by the side of the Roman Pontiff.
While these caricatures are essentially addressed to a sentiment of religious bigotry, their authors seek, by the false association of some political idea, not only to excuse them on that ground, but to reinforce that bigotry with all the strength of political hatred. Take, for instance, the filthy crocodile picture. There is an appeal whose falsity is only exceeded
by its beastliness. Then the “Roman Catholic mission from England to the heathens of America” (Weekly, Dec. 30, 1871), in which the pure Christian, the devoted philanthropist, the perfect gentleman—Most Rev. Archbishop Manning—is portrayed with iron shackles in his hand, which he holds concealed behind him, striving to entice the negroes to come to him; to whom a negro replies (so naturally!): “No, thank you. We have just been emancipated, and, if England is responsible for slavery in the United States, I don’t care to jump from the English frying-pan into the English fire.”
The favorite device of the Weekly gentlemen is to represent the perpetrators of offences against law and order, and the participators in municipal robbery and corruption, as Catholics, and, in their persons, to hold the Catholic Church responsible for such offences. It is not necessary to dwell on the absurdity of such a charge, nor on the hardship and injustice of such a responsibility.
There are thousands of men in this city, supposed to be Catholics—nay, who, if asked the question, will say that they are—who have not been inside of a Catholic Church nor spoken to a priest for long years, men whose lives are scandalous in their irregularities and crimes. Such as these bring disgrace upon the church whose precepts they trample under foot. If arrested for violation of the laws of the land, we sincerely trust they may have legally meted out to them the fullest measure of punishment. The properly constituted authorities will have our thanks for so doing. The Weekly writers are ignorant of much that touches Catholic faith and practice, but they are not ignorant of the fact that the custom among Protestant churches of considering as members those only
who make avowed profession, and live up to the requirements of strict church membership, does not prevail in the Catholic Church. The difference with us is between practical Catholics and those who, neglecting their religious duties, live in sin; and we state with profound regret that the number of this latter class is very much larger than any one who loves his church cares to see.
But it is all the same thing to the Harper scribes, and the indifferent Catholic, the bad Catholic, the Catholic who is a scandal to his church, is a “good enough Morgan” for our Weekly, which constantly represents him as an active and devout member of the church, in direct communication with the Holy See. How if a similar rule were to be applied generally, and we should in every case of moral dereliction seek out the sect with which the sinner has some real or supposed affiliation, and charge the crime upon the religious teachings of that sect?
Is the Presbyterian Church to be made responsible for New York municipal defalcations because connection with them is charged on the Presbyterian, Mayor Hall? Is the Methodist Church answerable for Tammany frauds because Tweed is a Methodist? Let us suppose for a moment a man so devoid of all sense and decency as to compile a narrative of crimes and outrages perpetrated by people known to be Methodists, beginning years back with the well-known (Avery-Cornell) seduction and murder case in which a Methodist minister was the criminal, and coming down past the scandalous publication by Methodist printers of the infamous book of Maria Monk, to the late horrible story, in a Western city, of torture through long years of an unoffending child by its unnatural Methodist parents, to the
shameful malversations of a religious Book Concern, to the gigantic thefts in our city administration, to the Drew complication of the Erie abomination, which shines by its absence in all the late Harper chronicles; and, having completed his catalogue, to present and denounce these crimes as the legitimate result of the teachings of the Methodist Church. It would be waste of words to point out the false reasoning, the injustice, the malice of such a performance. For, however Christian sects may differ on doctrinal points, and whatever may be alleged as to the extent of their theological errors, none of them deliberately teach immorality, and all inculcate the precepts of the decalogue.
What, then, shall be thought of a journal which, week after week, loudly and persistently, not only accuses the Catholic Church in the persons of her ministers of teaching the most flagrant immorality, but seeks—coupling with this grave charge the imputation of striving to create civil discord—by every artifice of rhetoric, by every device of exaggeration, by every appeal of gross caricature, to arouse the wildest passions and the fiercest bigotry? The journal in question labors to stir up, and it does stir up, bad blood and hot strife among hitherto peaceful neighbors.