“The world is in danger from the mad schemes of the triumphant society; it is rousing France to a new crusade with omens and pilgrimages; it threatens the German Empire with a war more disastrous and destructive than Europe has ever seen. It summons its adherents to the polls in Italy; it guides the elections of Ireland, terrifies Spain, and even disturbs the repose of London; and in our own country, so recently torn by civil war, the papal crusaders, linked by the tie of perfect obedience, stand ready to profit by our misfortunes, and to stimulate our internal dissensions; to crush those institutions that have ever reproached their own despotism, and destroy that freedom which is the chief obstacle to their perpetual sway.”
The picture which the Weekly draws of these dangerous brethren is horrible enough to throw a child into fits:
“A dreadful mystery still hangs over them. Their proceedings are secret, their purposes unknown. At the command of an absolute master, they wander swiftly among the throngs of their fellow-men, eager only to obey his voice. Obedience is to the Jesuit the first principle of his faith, instilled into his mind in youth, perfected by the labors of his later years; he hears in the slightest intimations of his chief at Rome the voice of his God, the commands from heaven; and in the long catalogue of fearful deeds which history ascribes to the disciples of Loyola, the first impulse to crime must always have come from the absolute head of the Order, and its single aim has always been to advance the power of the Romish Church. Scarcely had its founder gained the favor of the Pope, and fixed his seat at Rome, when he revived the Inquisition. Italy trembled before the spectacle of ceaseless autos-da-fe; the tortures and the cries of dying heretics, the ruin of countless families, the flight of terrified and hopeless throngs from their native land to the friendly shelter of Germany and Switzerland, were the earliest fruits of the relentless teachings of Loyola. The Jesuits led the armies of the persecutors into the beautiful Vaudois valleys, and the worst atrocities of that mournful example of human wickedness are due to their brutal fanaticism. Soon they spread from Italy through all the kingdoms of Europe; everywhere they brought with them their fierce and cruel hatred of religious freedom, their cunning, their moral degradation, their bold and desperate policy. They ruled in courts; they terrified the people into submission; they were the most active politicians of their time; their wealth was enormous; their schools and colleges spread from Paris to Japan; and for three centuries the name of the Jesuits, covered with the infamy of the massacres of the Vaudois, the Huguenots, the Hollanders, and the Germans, surrounded by its terrible mystery, the symbol of a dark and dreadful association, has filled mankind with horror and affright.”
The practical conclusion to be drawn from all this rhetoric was that everybody, and especially every German, ought to vote for Gen. Grant and the straight Republican anti-Jesuit ticket. It was the Jesuits who “nominated Mr. Greeley, a person known to be in friendly connection with the Romish leaders and closely linked to the Papal Church.” The Jesuits “cover Grant with monstrous calumnies, and celebrate the erratic Greeley.” “Let every German beware lest he lend aid to the enemies of his country. Let him shrink from the support of any candidate who is [pg 764] maintained by the influence of the Jesuits.” “We trust every sincere Protestant ... will labor ceaselessly to defeat the schemes of the Jesuits, and drive their candidate back to a merited obscurity.” And in the same number we find the following wicked paragraph:
“A Jesuit, the Rev. Mr. Renaud, was appointed some time ago by Archbishop McCloskey to superintend the Romish interest in our city charities. The result was at once apparent. The Jesuits excited a revolt in the House of Refuge. One of the keepers was murdered. One of the convicts was sent to the State prison. The rebellion was subdued; but the Jesuits still defend the murderer, and assail with calumnies the House of Refuge, one of the most valuable and successful of our city institutions. This is a curious confirmation of that dangerous character of the Jesuit Society which is painted upon a larger scale in our article in the present number on ‘The Jesuits.’ ”
The next slander of the Weekly was to identify Tweed with the Jesuits. “When the Romish priests,” says this astonishing journal (Nov. 2, 1872), “at the command of their foreign master, began their assaults upon the public schools, they found a ready ally in the Tammany Society.... Tammany became the representative of a foreign influence and a foreign church. It was European rather than American. It teemed with the coarse prejudices, the dull ignorance, the intense moral blindness that to American sentiment are so repulsive, with that mental and moral feebleness that belongs to populations racked by the despot and oppressed by the priest.” An infamous compact was now struck between Tammany and the Papal Church. The “Romanists” supported the political leaders in riotous license, gross vices, and indecent corruption; while an enormous debt was laid upon the city “to satisfy the demands of the Romish priests.” Thus Tammany, by the aid of its foreign allies, became despotic master of New York.
“Covered with the ineffaceable stains of treason and of public robbery, its members attempted to rule by force, and in the spring of 1871 New York lay at the mercy of rebels, peculators, and foreign priests. The press was threatened, whenever it complained, with violence, lawsuits, and the frowns of infamous courts. The Common Council was imported from Ireland, and foreign assassins threatened the lives of those ardent citizens who planned reform.”
The overthrow of the Tweed and Connolly Ring was a stunning defeat for the Pope and his agents. The nomination of Greeley and Kernan (the one openly, the other secretly; a slave of the Jesuits and the Inquisition) was a desperate attempt of the Jesuits to recover what they had lost. And then followed the usual homily, “Vote for Grant,” etc.
In this bitter political campaign against the church the writers for Harper's Weekly were zealously assisted by their artist, Mr. Thomas Nast. This individual has done more to degrade his profession than any other draughtsman we know of, except, perhaps, the makers of lascivious pictures for some of the flash newspapers. He has made a practice of ridiculing the religious belief of hundreds of thousands of honest people who came to America, as he did, from a foreign land, because America offers to all immigrants the fullest measure of political equality and religious freedom. It has been his pleasure to depict the priest invariably as a sleek, sensual, brutal, and repulsive rogue; the bishop as a grim, overbearing, and cunning despot, or now and then as a crocodile crawling with open jaws towards a group of children. In the Weekly of Oct. 12, he represents Brother [pg 765] Jonathan attempting to sever the tie which binds an American bishop to the Pope, holding out, as he does so, a naturalization paper inscribed “This ends the foreign allegiance.” The Pope has his arms full of papers: “Orders to all state officials that are Roman Catholics”; “Down with the American public schools”; “The promised land, U. S.,” etc.; and the bishop carries similar documents: “Orders from the Pope of Rome to the Catholics in America”; “Vote for Horace Greeley”; “Vote for Kernan; he is a Roman Catholic, and will obey the orders of the church.” Another picture, entitled “Swinging around the circle,” was intended to represent all the disreputable supporters of Mr. Greeley in company. “Free love and Catholicism” were side by side, in the persons of Theodore Tilton and a priest, and “Mass and S. C.” figured as a conventional Irishman with one of the Ku-klux. Mr. Kernan was drawn (Nov. 2) kneeling, in an abject attitude, at the feet of the Pope (“Our Foreign Ruler”), and swearing, “I will do your bidding, as you are infallible”; in the background stood a priest loaded with papal orders against the public schools; and on the wall was a copy of the forged handbill, with the legend, “For governor, Francis Kernan,” surrounding a black cross. In a picture of the “Pirates under False Colors,” a priest with a cross held aloft in one hand, and a tomahawk half hidden in the other, is a conspicuous figure in a gang of ruffians. In another cartoon a vulgar-looking priest is seen sprinkling the ruins of Tammany Hall with holy-water.
Now, we know very well that from one point of view the introduction of these calumnies into politics was fraudulent. Mr. Greeley certainly had no leaning towards the Catholic Church and no affiliations with Catholic leaders, and Gen. Grant, we venture to affirm, is insensible to the bigotry which his unworthy followers brought up as a reason for his re-election. We have nothing to ask of any President, and we give our votes according to our individual preferences. But while we do not purpose acting as a religious body in any political movement, we do not purpose either to be set aside by any political party as an outlawed and degraded people, upon whom venal pamphleteers and ignorant politicians may trample at pleasure. If party organs take pains to attack us, and pour out, day after day, and week after week, their filthy libels upon us, the party which sanctions such a warfare and tries to reap the fruits of it shall bear the responsibility. The Catholics of the United States are too numerous, too intelligent, and too public-spirited to be treated with contempt by any faction, whether that faction call itself Liberal, or Republican, or Democratic. We prefer, as we have often said before, to let the politicians alone, and go our various ways in quiet, some after one leader, some after another. But it may as well be understood that, if any of these parties invite an irrepressible conflict with us, they will find out, we trust, that we are not disposed to flinch from the defence of our rights, which are identical with the rights of all other American citizens.