However, lest the traditions of the early fathers of his church—Luther, Calvin, and the royal Henry—should be forgotten, and having no longer any Catholics to persecute, he turned his attention to the Presbyterians, Covenanters, and Puritans with some effect. The humanizing custom of cropping the ears and slitting the noses of those dissenters became greatly the fashion in this [pg 295] reign; for, though James acknowledged the right of private judgment in the abstract, the exercise of the right was found by his subjects to be a very dangerous pastime. The Puritans, who also based their religion on the same right, improved on the lessons thus taught; for, when in the next reign it became their turn to persecute and punish, instead of cutting off the ears or the nose of his son and successor, they took off the entire head, and gave to the English Church its first and only martyr. Oliver Cromwell and the Long Parliament interpreted “King James' Version” too literally, and of course, believing in freedom of conscience, swept away episcopacy, kings, bishops, and all. After the Restoration, the English Church was again in the ascendant. Then they dug up the bones of the Puritan regicides, scattered them to the winds, and ever since the followers of John Knox and the believers in the Westminster Catechism have held a very subordinate place under the feet of “the church as by law established.”
If the fell spirit of Protestantism, which, as we have seen, was bloody and cruel in its inception and growth, had been confined to the eastern hemisphere, we, as Americans, feeling grateful to Providence for the exemption, might have less cause of complaint against it. But unfortunately it was not so. The virgin soil of the New World, from the first consecrated to freedom, we are often told, was destined to be polluted by the evil genius evoked by the apostate monk of Wittenberg. Every breeze from the east that wafted hither an immigrant-ship bore on its wings the deadly moral pestilence of intolerance and persecution. It accompanied the Huguenots to the Carolinas, landed at Jamestown with the royalists, went up the Delaware with the Swedes and Quakers, up the Hudson with the Hollanders, and pervaded the hold of the Mayflower from stem to stern. Whatever physical, mental, and moral qualities those early adventurers, of many lands and divers creeds, may have possessed, Christian charity was certainly not of the number, and though they each and all proclaimed the right of every one to be his own judge in matters of religion—and most of them claimed to have suffered for conscience's sake—not one had the consistency or the courage to tolerate, much less protect, the expression of an opinion or the observance of a form of worship differing from his own. So completely had the rancor of the founders of Protestantism eaten up whatever of Christianity it retained of the church's teaching, that each of the sects, having no common enemy to prey upon, turned round, and, like hungry wolves, were ready to tear and rend each other. With the exception of one small settlement, there were no Catholics in the early colonies; but still, the Puritan found it as unsafe to live in Virginia as the Episcopalian did in New England, while the non-combatant Friend dared not risk his life in either locality. There was one little bright spot in the darkened firmament that hung over the infant settlements, and that was near the mouth of the St. Mary's, on the Potomac. Here Lord Baltimore had planted a colony of Catholics which soon showed signs of life and vigor, worshipping according to the old faith, and proclaiming the doctrine of charity and religious toleration to all Christians. But it was not long allowed to enjoy its honors in peace. Its very existence was a reproach to its bigoted neighbors. Taking advantage of its humane and equitable laws, Protestants of the various denominations, persecuted in [pg 296] the other colonies, flocked to it as to a city of refuge, abused its hospitality, when strong enough in numbers changed its statutes, and actually commenced to persecute the very people who had sheltered them.
As the colonies grew in population and extent, we do not find that they increased in equity or liberality. Many of them were even at the pains of passing laws prohibiting the settlement of Catholics within their limits; and now and then we hear of some solitary priest being executed or a group of humble Catholics driven into further exile. The dawn of our Revolution created some change in religious sentiment, but it was more on the surface than in the heart. England, the oppressor, was the champion of Protestantism; France, the ally, was as essentially Catholic; so it was not considered politic to manifest too openly that bigotry of soul which pervaded all classes of society in those days, though even in the continental congress there were found some candid enough to object to asking the assistance of Catholic Frenchmen to help them to wrest their liberties from their Protestant enemy. These patriots preferred the Hessians and their Lutheranism to Lafayette and Rochambaud.
Our independence once gained by the efficient aid of the troops of the eldest son of the church, a pause appears to have occurred in the persecuting progress of the sects. Common decency required as much, but commercial interest demanded it. Our finances were in a ruinous condition, and it was only among the Catholic nations of Europe that we could look for sympathy and support. Then the new states very generally repealed the colonial penal laws, and finally the amended constitution prohibited the interference of the general government in matters of religion. Still, though we owe much to French sympathy and influence in placing us, as Catholics, free and equal before the law, we owe more to those of our own countrymen who actually had no religion at all. We would rather, for the honor of human nature, that the benefits thus received had been derived from another source; but it is an historical fact that the minds of many of the leaders of the Revolution, before and during that struggle, had become deeply imbued with the false philosophy then prevalent among the intellectual classes in Europe, and, believing in no particular revelation, dogma, or religion, they could see no reason why one party calling itself Christian should ostracise another claiming the same distinction. To their credit, be it said, our countrymen never carried their theories to the same extent as their fellow-philosophers across the Atlantic, and their impartiality, which we would fain hope to have been sincere, took a direction in accord with the spirit of justice and impartial legislation.
If, then, our young Republic has not been disgraced by such penal enactments against Catholics as have long disfigured the statute-books of England, and which are yet in force in Holland, Denmark, Sweden, and Norway, the Protestant sects, as such, deserve neither credit nor gratitude. The active Protestants of that day—the ministers, deacons, and politicians—were just as narrow-minded and as bigoted as were their ancestors, and as would be their descendants if it were not for certain good reasons best known to themselves. Witness the periodical outbursts of Nativism or Know-Nothingism which have from time to time disgraced our national character. These have been directed invariably against Catholics—not against foreigners as [pg 297] such, for with a Protestant or even infidel foreigner their promoters have never professed to find fault. The occasional destruction of a convent, the burning of a church—and we have had many so dealt with—or the mobbing of a priest may only show that depravity exists in certain sections of the country, but the news of such atrocities has been received with such ill-concealed satisfaction—certainly with nothing like hearty condemnation—by the clerical demagogues and the so-called religious press, that we are forced into the conviction that to the absence of opportunity and power on their part we alone owe our exemption from such villanies on a larger and better organized system.
We are told, in a tone of patronage, if not menace, that we ought to be content as long as the Catholics of America are free and enjoy equality under the law. We grant the freedom and equality, but only so far as the letter, not the spirit, of the law is concerned. Let any one look at the way our Catholic missions in the far West have been defrauded for the benefit of Methodist and Baptist preachers of the Word and cheaters of the Indians, and tell us are they free and equal? How many Catholic chaplains are there in the army and navy, the bone and sinew of which are mainly Catholics? For how many foreign consuls are we paying merely to act as agents for the Board of Foreign Missions, Bible Societies, and Book Concerns? How are our numerous state institutions—penitentiary, reformatory, and eleemosynary—attended to in the interests of their Catholic inmates? When these questions are satisfactorily answered, we will be able to estimate the extent of the legal equality we possess. For so much of freedom and equality as we actually enjoy, we are thankful. Grateful not, however, to the Protestant sects, but to a benevolent Providence who has vouchsafed it to us; and, under him, to our Catholic predecessors who helped to found, and our co-religionists who have bravely defended, our institutions, and who now stand ready to oppose with might and main any attempt to infringe upon our liberties.
But even as to the letter of the law we are not without just cause of complaint. For instance, we object most emphatically to the present school law of this state as unjust and inequitable in its provisions and method of administration. The state has no right to prescribe how or what our children shall be taught, and then make us pay for its so doing. We Catholics are unanimously in favor of educating our own offspring according to our conception of the demands of religion and morality, and, as the artificial body called the state is a judge of neither, it is manifestly incompetent to direct the training of our children. We are also willing to pay, and are actually expending, large sums of money in this good work; and while we are doing so, we hold it not just to tax us for the support of schools we do not require. Our duty to the state and society is performed when we teach our children to obey the laws of one and respect the usages of the other, and, if parents and the ministers of religion are unable to do this, mere officials and strangers certainly cannot. However, if the state will insist on levying a school-tax, let it in justice give us a pro rata share of the money, and let the Evangelical Alliance of the sects take theirs and bring up their children in their own way. We ask nothing for ourselves that we would not willingly see granted to others, but, until one or other [pg 298] of these measures be adopted, we maintain that a large class of the citizens of the United States is deprived of one of its most vital and dearest religious rights.
Then, again, look at the treatment meted out by the legislative authorities to Catholic institutions, to our hospitals, foundling-asylums, reformatories, and orphanages, which save annually to the state hundreds of thousands of dollars, and are daily conferring on society incalculable advantages. What begging, petitioning, and beseeching must we not resort to, to get the least legislative favor for them, even to a bare act of incorporation! For a quarter of a century or more, irresponsible bodies under the names of the sects, or even in no names but their own, have been fattening on the public money, our money, and no word of remonstrance has been uttered; but, as soon as anything is asked for our institutions, the cry of “sectarian appropriations” and “Romish designs” is immediately raised and repeated along the line. Every petty bigot who misuses a pen gets up a howl about the “Papists,” and “Romanism the Rock Ahead,” etc.; the pigeon-holes of the religious newspaper offices, and of newspapers the contrary of religious, are ransacked for stale calumnies against the church, and slanders over and over refuted are launched at the most gifted and reputable of our citizens. This must all be changed before we can consider that, as Catholics, we stand on an equality with non-Catholic Americans, and before we are prepared to admit that Protestantism, mollified by time and distance, has lost any of its pristine love of persecution and proscription. We would prefer to live at peace with every shade of Christians, but, if they will not let us, they must take the responsibility.
In stating our grievance in this manner, we do not address ourselves specially to the sense of justice or fair play of the leaders of Protestant opinion, but rather to the manhood and intelligence of our co-religionists who, by a more determined effort, might easily remove the evils of which we complain. We are more confirmed in this view by a recent event which happened at the national capital. The force of well-regulated public opinion will always be very powerful in this Republic, and we are satisfied that the opposition very generally expressed by the Catholics of the country to the scheme of compulsory education by the general government, some time ago introduced into Congress by some distinguished members, had a powerful effect in defeating, for a time at least, a measure fraught with the greatest danger to our rights, and to the general liberties of all the states.[131]
We expect little from the Protestant press or pulpits. The manner in which the revival of religious persecutions in Europe has been looked upon by them precludes the faintest hope that they will listen to the appeals of humanity or justice where their passions, prejudices, or interests are concerned. Not very long since, the schismatic king of Sardinia wantonly levied war on the most defenceless and venerable sovereign in the world, and despoiled him of the larger half of his small dominions; yet there was not a single Protestant voice heard among us in reprobation of the foul act. Two years ago the same royal filibustero, with, if possible, less pretence, and without any warning, stealthily advanced his army on the Eternal City, took possession of its churches and their sacred furniture; [pg 299] its convents, and turned them into barracks and stables; its treasures of art and literature, and sold them to the highest bidder; its colleges and schools, and drove out the students and poor children to wander on the face of the earth. Then the Protestant churches and meeting-houses rang with acclamations; and public assemblies were held by freedom-loving American citizens to congratulate the modern vandal on his “victory” over—justice, religion, and civilization.