Chapter XXI. The Church Supreme.

In all the encyclical letters issued by Leo XIII, he has exhibited the restlessness which may fairly be presumed to have been produced by discomfiture at finding the difficulties in the way of restoring the temporal power increasing rather than diminishing. This is in no way surprising, inasmuch as all the faculties of his mind are absorbed by contemplation of the means of producing that result, his pontifical influence not being necessary to enforce the recognition of any other principle of faith. He is too intelligent not to realize that there is a strong tendency among the laity of the Church toward “liberal Catholicism ”—especially among those who are sharing the advantages of free and popular government, like those in the United States—and that if this tendency is not checked by official rebuke in some way, the present age may destroy all hope of re-converting the pope into a crowned king and leave him forever hereafter in possession of spiritual power alone. Being unable to persuade himself that this ought to be acquiesced in, he steadily persists in trying to bring all peoples and nations within the circle of his pontifical jurisdiction, in so far as matters involving faith, morals, and discipline—as he shall define them—are concerned. Hence we find him often announcing the principles by which all the Roman Catholics throughout the world are to be governed in their relations with civil institutions, And, in order to show that he is unwilling to abate any of his own claims to official royalty, he invariably assumes the attitude of a universal guardian, and, consequently, employs the language of authority. He, manifestly, continues now to speak in the same spirit which heretofore prompted him to affirm “ that the false wisdom or philosophy which the last three centuries have followed must be set aside, and Christian wisdom and philosophy made the light of education. . . . Religion, Christianity, Catholicism, must now come with the steady, unfailing lamp of her divine philosophy, extricate social order from its mortal peril, and lead it back to the old paths.”’ The remedy is evidently plain and simple to his mind—merely this, and nothing more—that the modern world shall return “to obedience to the Church,” by the “docile acceptance of the teachings of the one divinely-appointed authority on earth”—who is now himself, and after him to be his successors. What strange infatuation it must be for one so enlightened as Leo XIII undoubtedly is, to suppose that he can so wield the scepter of his spiritual authority over the nations as to cause them to “set aside” their present progress and prosperity, and be led “back to the old paths!”

He omits no opportunity to renew his claim of spiritual authority over “the life, the morals, and the institutions of nations ”—that is, over their constitutions and laws—to the extent of requiring them to conform to “the precepts of Christian wisdom” as promulgated from the papal throne. Such nations as shall do this he recognizes as having claim to permanent existence; such as do not, possess only illegitimate power obtained by usurpation. To “set aside” the latter—especially when they have so disregarded “Christian wisdom and philosophy” as to separate Church and State— he evidently regards as a duty, not only incumbent upon himself, but upon all who accept his teachings as infallibly true. To enforce this obligation, therefore, to make the pope, and not the people, the sovereign source of civil power in all that pertains to faith—as the restoration of the temporal power does—he maintains the proposition that Roman Catholics everywhere owe their first duty to the Church, and, after that, allegiance to the State; that is, they are not bound to obey any law of a State which requires them to do anything prejudicial to the Church. Consequently, his pontifical teachings concentrate in this: that when he shall officially declare that any law of a State conflicts with the divine law, their primary duty is to obey him, although, by so doing, they shall violate the law of the State. And, in order to assure this, he requires them to obey their bishops, and the bishops to obey him, While he recognizes the right of States to regulate such merely secular affairs as concern the common and ordinary interests of society, the spiritual authority he claims over them is sufficient to enable him to interfere with and regulate at his own discretion such matters as are within his spiritual jurisdiction, as he shall define it, because “the Church is the mistress of all nations.” From this sovereignty—which breaks over the geographical boundaries of nations, as if none existed—he derives the right of the Church to “concern herself about the laws formulated in the State;” that is, to interfere with political questions which involve the interests of the Church. And this interference is justified upon the ground, not only that it is promotive of the welfare of the State, but because, in the absence of it, the States sometimes transcend their just powers by encroaching upon the rights of the Church—as they do by separating Church and State, and prescribing an independent sphere for each. This last offense is, with him, unpardonable, because they who commit it—as the people of the United States have done— tear asunder civil and sacred polity, bound together as they are in their very essence.” These religious doctrines are not alone the official utterances of Leo XII. They are inherent in both the papal and Jesuit systems, neither of which can exist without them. The Jesuit theory is that no legitimate rights can be acquired under any constitution or law which violates the divine law as the pope shall interpret it; and that the violation of such constitution or law is neither treason nor rebellion, because, being null and void, they can impose no just obligation of obedience. The authoritative utterance of these doctrines now, and the requirement of obedience to them, constitute a grave and serious fact, which should arrest universal attention. For obvious reasons they demand this attention from the people of the United States more than from any other peoples, because the freedom and tolerance of our Government allow their promulgation, notwithstanding their manifest and direct tendency to encourage traitorous plottings against our popular institutions. Looking only to our own time—the pontificates of Pius IX and Leo XIII, to say nothing of such popes as Gregory VII, Innocent II, and Boniface VIII —we find the well-defined papal policy to condemn as violative of the divine law these fundamental principles of our institutions: The separation of Church and State; the freedom of conscience and religious belief; the liberty of speech and press; the subjection of ecclesiastics to obedience to the laws like other citizens; the people as the exclusive depositories of political power; the refusal to concede to the pope the potential power of conferring upon bishops and clergy the prerogative right to manage church property in contravention of the Jaws; and last, but far from being least, our common-school system as it prevails in every part of the country. A man, therefore, must be stupid if he can not, and willful if he will not, see that, according to the religious doctrines announced by Pius IX and Leo XIII[—omitting other popes—all these great, fundamental principles of our Government, and all the laws enacted to preserve them, are held to be impious, and so in violation of the divine law that they may be rightfully resisted whensoever the pope shall find it expedient so to command. What question of greater magnitude and importance could command the attention of both Protestant and Roman Catholic citizens of the United States? It is a direct blow aimed by a foreign and alien power at the very foundation of our civil institutions. If it has been incited by the indifference of Protestants, they, being apprised of this, are bound by the obligation of patriotism to rebuke it. If the pope has acted only upon the Jesuit theory that the laity of the Church are only animals, and fit only for passive obedience to their superiors, who assume to be their masters, they will prove themselves unworthy of American citizenship if they do not assert their manhood sufficiently to teach the pope that it would be a higher offense against divine justice to plot treason against a Government they have sworn to support and defend, than to disobey one from whose head their own religious brethren plucked a temporal crown, and who is now endeavoring to stir them up to a war against those same brethren in order that his lost crown may be restored. They who ask this, and all their aiders and abettors, have doubtless been encouraged by a knowledge of American and Protestant tolerance, as well as by the desire to reduce our Roman Catholic population to the humiliating condition of professing allegiance to the Government, while, at the same time, they cherish the hope of its ultimate overthrow by some mysterious providences not yet revealed. “To indicate the ground upon which this hope may rest, the country is every now and then reminded of the estimated number of Roman Catholics it contains—varying from 8,000,000 to 12,000,000—as if all these could be rightfully counted upon the papal side in a war upon the most cherished principles of the Government, just as plantation-slaves were formerly counted before being put to work in the fields. How far they. are destined to disappointment in this remains to be seen, But it is confidently believed—with assurance, indeed, somewhat exceeding belief—that they have been misled by the false and delusive hope of converting the multitude of Roman Catholics in this country into mere unthinking machines, subject, as if they were all Jesuits, to passive and uninquiring obedience to an alien authority which assumes the spiritual and prerogative right to turn ““ back to the old paths” all the modern progressive nations, as if God had deputed to him alone this extraordinary and plenary power over the interests and happiness of the whole human family. While we are waiting patiently to see what the future shall reveal with reference to these matters, the Protestants of the United States can not be released from the obligation of preparing for whatsoever exigency the future shall present. Every avenue of approach to the citadel which has thus far guarded their constitutional and popular rights, must be carefully guarded. They should not be indifferent to the slow and insidious methods of approaching that citadel which Jesuit ingenuity has contrived and is still contriving. Nor should the popular eye be turned too far away from Leo XIII; for if he, too, has no sinister object in view with regard to our cherished national principles, why, “in the name of all the gods at once,” does he not leave the United States and the other modern nations to conduct their own affairs without his perpetual interference? Why do he and his ecclesiastical representatives so unceasingly thunder in our ears the awful penalties that await us for the infidelity of Protestantism, for the separation of Church and State, for the toleration of diversities of religious belief, and for our “godless” common schools? It requires but limited intelligence to see that the Jesuits _alone—and not the Church—would gain if the principles and policy of Leo XITI should become established. They would see in such a result cause for rejoicing that the work of their society had been so well done when the youthful and plastic mind of Joachim Pecci had their doctrines so indelibly stamped upon it that now, when he has become pope in his old age, he seems to keep himself alive by the stimulating hope of successfully employing them to arrest modern progress and civilization, and turn the nations back “to the old paths.” The Jesuits already exhibit signs of exultation, arising, manifestly, out of the belief that the pontifical favor and patronage bestowed upon them has caused the world to forget their history; how they endeavored to fix disrepute upon the Church by their conduct in India, China, Paraguay, and elsewhere; how they disobeyed the peremptory commands of some popes, and endeavored to degrade and humiliate others; how they were compelled to obedience only by the severest methods of reproof; how they were expelled from every Roman Catholic country in Europe, and from Rome by Pius IX, during the last years of his pontificate; how they were suppressed and abolished by one of the best of the popes for crimes that could not be condoned; how they abused and vilified his name and memory in order to justify their refusal to obey the authoritative commands of the Church; and how their revival was excused alone upon the ground that they were better fitted than any other body of men in the world, by habit, education, and training, to become warriors in the cause of political absolutism.

But a still more flattering cause of Jesuit satisfaction is doubtless found in the fact that Leo XIII—faithful to his early impressions—has assigned to the members of that society the special duty of becoming the educators of the young, and is sending them into all the countries of the world, and especially those where Protestantism prevails, for that particular purpose, well instructed, beforehand, in the obligation to maintain such a system of education as he established in Perugia, so that every mind seduced by its influence may be brought to the religious belief that Church and State must be so united that the State shall be subordinate to the Church; that there is but one form of true religion in the world, and all else is heresy; and that no Government can have the divine approval which does not recognize the pope as possessing the sovereign power to dictate its policy in so far as all matters touching faith, morals, and discipline are involved. Evidences of this settled purpose are constantly crowding upon us. Scarcely a day passes without some fresh attack upon our system of common schools—a method of education which has the popular approval in a far greater degree than any other part of our public polity. These are called ” godless” schools because they are not permitted by law to teach that the Roman Catholic religion is absolutely true, and all other forms of religious belief false and heretical. It is alleged that they are the nurseries of vice and immorality, and that they send out young men and women into the world to propagate error and libertinism, and sow the seed of moral and social decay. Every now and then some fanatical priest—unable to keep his passions within reasonable bounds—threatens the members of his congregation with excommunication for send-. ing their children to the public schools, and allowing them to become contaminated by false teaching and association with Protestant children, The American people, consequently, are required to decide whether their system of common schools shall live or die, whether the,competent and distinguished corps of American teachers shall be expelled, and the doors of our school-houses be thrown wide open to the Jesuits. Why should the Protestant part of our population remain indifferent when these insults are so impudently flung in their faces? They have deemed it wise and better for themselves, and out of kindly deference to their assailants, to prohibit the teaching of any system of religious belief in their public schools, or the levy of any tax for that object; and, in order that Church and State shall remain perpetually separated, they haye provided for this inhibition by constitutional provisions—both National and State. To the Jesuit, therefore, all this is ” godless,” and the Government is “godless” for separating Church and State, and the Protestant people are “godless,” rapidly hastening to inevitable ruin in this life and to fearful punishment hereafter!

There ought to come a time when this controversy, forced upon the people against their will, shall cease. Our public schools are designed for training and educating American citizens—those who are to perpetuate our institutions when existing generations have passed away—and it is no special wonder that those who do not come up to the full measure of American citizenship themselves, and desire that others shall not do so, are seeking to destroy them. Notwithstanding they are fully protected in the right of maintaining and conducting their own private schools in their own way, without the least interference from any quarter, they have presumptuously, if not insolently, inaugurated a relentless warfare upon our whole system of public education, because our common schools are nurseries of patriotism, and keep alive in the minds of our children the obligation of obedience to the Constitution and Government as they are. If the system we have so long cherished were weakened materially by this malignant warfare, it would be the just cause of serious alarm. But everything occurring creates a contrary belief, by giving assurance that it continues to disseminate influences fast reaching the most remote and obscure places in the country, causing the popular heart to rejoice at the victories it has already won over ignorance and vice, and manifesting that it possesses established power sufficient to assure continued growth and complete triumph. Nevertheless, it is well and important for us all to know what attitude Leo XIIT occupies toward our common schools, and what kind of education he proposes to establish here in preference to that we have cherished so highly. In this way it will be plainly seen that his first and highest object is the extermination of Protestantism, by putting out of the power of those who obey him implicitly to become American citizens in the sense and meaning of the Constitution of the United States. He knows nothing of the nature of this citizenship or of the obligations it imposes. As a foreigner and alien, ignorant of our language, Constitution, and wants, his chief object is to create here a politico-religious party, held in unity by the desire to restore to him his lost crown as a religious duty, so that when he shall have succeeded in that he may bring us all within his spiritual jurisdiction, and deal with usaccordingly. This accomplished, the history of the papacy for more than a thousand years proves that the next step would be to treat our nationality as a fiction and our boundary-lines as merely imaginary, so that instead of our present independence we should be reduced to an inferior and submissive department in a vast and universal “Holy Empire,” with its crown resting upon his own’ head, and, after him, upon the heads of his successors.

Not very long ago Leo XIII sent to the United States an official representative in the person of Mgr. Satolli, nominally Archbishop of Lepanto, in Greece. He is called a “delegate,” but in view of the fact that he fully represents the pope, as his other self, and that his powers are so complete and plenary that no appeal can be taken from his decisions, it is more appropriate to call him a vice-pope. He is said to be a learned and discreet man, and it is doubtless true that he deserves all the compliments otherwise bestowed upon him. He had not, however, been long in this country before he found that there were divisions of sentiment among the Roman Catholics with reference to our common schools, some sending their children to them, notwithstanding the instructions of their priests not to do so, and others refusing because they considered them “ godless;” that is, infidel. This.devolved upon him the duty and necessity of deciding a question which had hitherto baffled the most ingenious minds—a question made more difficult by the fact that it involved either the approval or disapproval of well established and popular measures of public polity. His decision is entitled to consideration, and should be closely scrutinized, inasmuch as it is claimed for it that it is the final solution of a great and puzzling problem. The statement of it which follows, is taken substantially from that made by himself to the archbishops at a meeting held by them in New York.

He claims for “the Catholic Church” both “the duty and divine right” of teaching religion to “all nations,” and of “instructing the young;” that is, “she holds for herself the right of teaching the truths of faith and law of morals in order to bring up youth in the habits of Christian life.” Nevertheless, “there is no repugnance in their learning the first elements and the higher branches of the arts and natural sciences in public schools controlled by the State,” which protects them in their persons and property. “But,” he continues, “the Catholic Church shrinks from those features of public schools which are opposed to the truth of Christianity and to morality;” wherefore he insists that every effort shall be made, both by the bishops and others, to remove these “objectionable features.” And he recommends that the bishops and the civil authorities shall agree “to conduct the schools with mutual attention and due consideration for their respective rights;” that is, that the schools shall be under their joint control, so that teachers “ for the secular branches” shall be “inhibited from offending Catholic religion and morality,” and the Church be permitted to shed her “ light” by “teaching the children catechism, in order to remove danger to their faith and morals from any quarter whatsoever.” This was adroit, but not satisfactory. Although it was understood that Mgr. Satolli’s decisions were to be final, this created such dissaffection that it was found necessary to submit the matter to the pope, against whose opinion, when officially promulgated, there could be no protest. Leo XIII deliberated upon the matter for some time, and received from the American prelates arguments upon both sides. He, however, reached a conclusion which he communicated to Cardinal Gibbons in an encyclical dated May 31, 1893, which constitutes one of the latest papal utterances. Besides its numerous recitals, some of which do not bear directly upon the subject, he distinctly approves the decision of Mgr. Satolli, because it had been approved and recommended to him by the archbishops at their meeting in New York. He expresses great admiration for the people of the United States—especially the Roman Catholic portion of them—and says that he had sent Mgr. Satolli here in order that his “presence might be made, as it were, perpetual among the faithful by the permanent establishment of an apostolic delegation at Washington.” his he probably considers a precautionary step; for, as Mgr. Satolli can not have any official relations with our Government—Italy being represented by a minister appointed by the king—he can remain as a “ permanent establishment” at the Capital of the nation, so that he may not only watch the course of events, but be in readiness to become an apostolic minister plenipotentiary whensoever, by the aid of the faithful outside of Italy, he shall be able to snatch the crown from the head upon which the Italian people have placed it, and put it upon his own!

The approval of Mgr. Satolli’s decision, however, has this important condition attached to it by Leo XIII: “That Catholic schools are to be most sedulously promoted, and that it is to be left to the judgment and conscience of the ordinary to decide, according to the circumstances, when it is lawful and when unlawful to attend public schools.” This is a most significant condition. In the first place, it takes away from the parents the right to direct the education of their children, and places it in the hands of the ordinary, who officially represents the papal power. In the second place, it leaves the papal condemnation and censure still resting upon our system of common schools, and only removes it, here and there, from such local and particular schools as the ordinaries of the Church may find acceptable to them. And in the third place, it is a positive and unqualified affirmance of what multitudes of priests have said, that our schools are ““ godless,” and that, in order to counteract their irreligious influences, “Catholic schools are to be most sedulously promoted.”

But there is another condition attached by Leo XIII which is equally significant as that just named. It is due to him that this should be stated in his own words. He says: “As we have already declared in our letter of the 23d of May of Jast year, to our venerable brethren, the archbishop and bishop of the province of New York, so we again, as far as need be, declare that the decrees which the Baltimore Councils, agreeably to the directions of the Holy See, have enacted concerning parochial schools, and whatsoever else has been preseribed by the Roman pontif’s, whether directly or through the sacred congregations, concerning the same matter, are to be steadfastly observed.”

Whatsoever powers the pope may have intended to confer upon Mgr. Satolli—whether those of a vice-pope or of a mere legate—it is certain that he did not intend to lessen his own. These are plenary, and therefore his pontifical decisions are absolutely binding, because he is infallible! In order, therefore, to ascertain the relation to be hereafter borne to our common-school system by the Roman Catholics of the United States, we are required to look to the decision of Mgr. Satolli as qualified by the conditions attached to it by Leo XIII. Taking the whole together, it amounts to this: That God has specially appointed the Roman Catholic Church the educator of the young; that where another system of education is set up against that prescribed by the Church, it is necessarily sinful and heretical, and may be rightfully overthrown and destroyed; that the Church system of education requires that the pupils shall be taught religion, and, first and always, that there is no other true religion besides that which the Roman Catholic Church teaches; that notwithstanding this, a Roman Catholic child may, as a matter of either necessity or expediency, be sent to the public schools of the States, merely to learn “the first elements,” reading, writing, and ciphering, and “the higher branches of the arts and natural sciences,” mathematics, chemistry, engineering, etc.; that the Roman Catholic Church shrinks from the idea that the intermediate branches should be taught the children, for fear they should discover that the Protestant nations are more prosperous and happy than the Roman Catholic; that when Roman Catholic children are sent to the public schools, efforts shall be made to procure the appointment of Roman Catholic teachers to instruct them in their religious obligations and duties, and specially to the effect that Protestantism is heresy and diversities of religious belief offensive to God, and consequently has his curse resting upon it; that the “ objectionable features” of our school system must be removed by plottings within the schools necessary to that end, so that instead of being free they shall be made Church schools; that so long as the children are not taught the “catechism” they will remain “godless” and heretical; and that if in any of the schools the children shall be taught that the State ought to continue separated from the Church, or that differences of religious belief should be tolerated, or that our Protestant institutions must be preserved as they are—all or either of these things must be considered as “offending Catholic religion and morality.” Thus far Mgr. Satolli; but the pope adds the peremptory injunction that Roman Catholic schools must be “most sedulously promoted;” that is, they must be set up in rivalry to our common-school system, so that the antidote may root out the bane; that the ordinary, and not the parents, shall decide what children shall be permitted to enter the schools; and that, in interpreting the decision of Mgr. Satolli, it must be done in accordance with the decrees of the Baltimore Councils and the rules “prescribed by the Roman pontiffs.”

This settles nothing, and leaves the whole question ambiguous. It is Jesuitical, because it “palters with us in a double sense,” by keeping “the word of promise to our ear,” while breaking “it to our hope.” In referring to the Baltimore Councils as their guide, the faithful find themselves instructed to omit nothing within their power to pull down the common schools, and build up Church schools in their places, for the reason that the former are irreligious, and the latter alone have the divine approval. And they find also that they are instructed by the second Council of Baltimore that their children are to be taught, as an essential part of their religion, that the State is not independent of the Church, and that “all power is of God,” so that whatsoever the State prescribes not obedient to the law of God is not binding upon the citizen, and that the Roman Catholic has such “a guide in the Church;” that if the State shall require of him anything inhibited by the Church, he must obey the latter, and not the former. But independently of this, the pope commands that these same faithful shall interpret the decision of Mgr. Satolli in the light-of ” whatsoever else has been prescribed by the Roman pontiffs.”

This is indefinite. There have been over two hundred and fifty popes. Many of these have been good, some bad, but these latter forfeit none of their infallible ecclesiastical authority by being bad. To whom, among all these, shall the inquirer defer, when he investigates what they have commanded with reference to education? Many of them have asserted, ex cathedra, that the exclusive right to educate the young has been divinely conferred upon the Roman Catholic Church, and Leo XIII, in his recent letter to the American Cardinal, makes that assertion unequivocally. It is not believed that any pope ever asserted the contrary. Therefore, this general and sweeping qualification of Mgr. Satolli’s decision either destroys its effect absolutely, or leaves it to uncertain rules of interpretation. Thus viewed it leaves the school question just as it stood before Mgr. Satolli came to this country.

But Mgr. Satolli himself provides for two school systems, which, as he regards them, are the rivals of each other, because he, like Leo XIII, considers the Roman Catholic Church as having had divinely conferred upon it the right of educating and training the young. But Leo XII makes this idea of more prominence when he commands “that Catholic schools are to be most sedulously promoted.” It all, therefore, amounts to this: that wheresoever there is a Roman Catholic who can not avoid it, he may send his children to the common schools for the sole purpose of haying them taught “the first elements, and the higher branches of the arts and natural sciences;” but in all the intermediate departments of education, they must be under the exclusive charge of those appointed by the Church to be their instructors in religion. Hence, not only is there to be a continued rivalry between the schools, but between the systems as well. In the common schools the pupils are taught that our popular form of government is calculated to promote and preserve the general welfare; that our fathers acted wisely and well when they separated the State from the Church; that laws which require universal conformity to any particular form of religious faith, are not only unwise but violative of natural right; that those people who govern themselves by laws of their own making are happier and more prosperous than those who suffer themselves to be governed by monarchs and princes; and that the regulation of public affairs by constitutional governments is better for society than where they are regulated at the will of any one man. In the papal schools—perhaps within a stone’s-throw of the common schools—the pupils are taught that each one of these propositions is heresy, and that both those who teach and those who accept them as true are under Divine condemnation. In the common schools the teacher enforces what he says by the example of the United States, gives instruction in our Revolutionary history, explains the provisions of our National and State constitutions which make the people the only source of public law, and stimulates the patriotism of his pupils by urging upon them the necessity of perpetuating our institutions in their present form for the benefit of their posterity. In the papal schools the teacher is required, when he denounces all these provisions of our institutions as heresy, to enforce what he says by instructing his pupils that innumerable infallible popes have so declared, and that they will offend God if they do not accept what they have announced as absolutely true, and in order that they may not be suspected of error by their youthful pupils, they need go no further back among the popes than to Pius IX and his “Syllabus” of 1864, wherein, after pointing out seventy-nine modern errors which he condemned—including “public schools” where teaching is “freed from all ecclesiastical authority ”—he adds still another by declaring that it is impossible that “the Roman pontiff can and ought to reconcile himself to, and agree with progress, liberalism, and civilization as lately introduced.” Or, if it shall be found necessary to go further back than Pius IX, he need but refer to the celebrated encyclical of his immediate predecessor, Gregory XVI, issued July 15, 1832, wherein he declared that those who maintained that God could be rightly served by men of different religious faiths, “will perish eternally without any doubt,” if they do not repent and “hold to the Catholic faith;” that it is “false and absurd” to pretend “that liberty of conscience should be established and guaranteed to each man;” that “the liberty of the press” is “the most fatal liberty, an execrable liberty, for which there never can be sufficient horror;” that writings which are “destructive of the fidelity and submission due to princes” are to be condemned, because they enkindle “the firebrands of sedition;” that “divine and human rights then rise in condemnation against those who, by the blackest machinations of revolt and sedition, endeavor to destroy the fidelity due to princes, and to hurl them from their thrones;” that “constant submission to princes” necessarily has its source “in the holiest principles of the Christian religion;” that they are criminal in the sight of God who “demand the separation of Church and State and the rupture of concord between the priesthood and the empire,” that is, the State; and that the union of Church and State is feared and opposed by the advocates of liberty, because it “has always been so salutary and so happy for Church and State.”

If, however, the pupils in these papal schools should indicate the suspicion that these official proclamations of doctrine by Pius IX and Leo XIII had not the sanction of earlier popes, their teachers, especially if Jesuits, will take delight in instructing them that these two last popes, at the foot of the list, are following strictly in the footsteps of some of the most conspicuous of their predecessors. And then they will dwell eloquently upon the magnificent pontificates of Gregory VII, Alexander II, Innocent II, Boniface VIII, and others equally ambitious, but of less strength of will. The task will be an easy one to explain the history of these great popes and the politico-religious principles they succeeded in grafting upon the dogmas of the Church. They will instruct them how Gregory VII plucked crowns from the heads of disobedient kings, released their subjects from their allegiance, and placed other and obedient kings in their places; how he claimed the right as pope to dispose of kingdoms, because “the spiritual is above the temporal power” to so great an extent that all people “should murder their princes, fathers, and children if he commands it;” and how he made monarchs, princes, and peoples tremble before him, as if he, by virtue alone of his pontifical power, were master of the world. And they will show them how Alexander III released the German people from their allegiance to Frederick Barbarossa, and compelled that proud emperor to kiss his foot, lead his horse by the bridle, and submit to having the papal heel planted upon his neck; and how Innocent II declared, by solemn pontifical decree, that the English Magna Charta was null and void, because it laid the foundation of popular liberty, and excommunicated all who were concerned in the patriotic work of obtaining it; and how Boniface VIII decreed, in his bull “Clericis laicos,” that lay governments “have no power over the persons or the property of ecclesiastics,” and that those who shall impose tithes, taxes, and burdens upon them, without the authority of the pope, “shall incur excommunication;” and how he also decreed, by his bull “Unam Sanctam,” that the Church—that is, the pope—holds in her hands both the spiritual and the temporal swords, with the power to compel the latter to be used for and in the interest of the former; that the temporal sword is, therefore, “subject to the spiritual power,” and that it is “an article of necessary faith” that “every human being should be subject to the Roman pontiff.”

It requires but little intelligence to see wherein the difference consists between these two systems of education—the one expanding, the other dwarfing the intellect. If, howeyer, each improved the intellect alike, the public schools are entitled to the preference for the reason that they instill “into the minds of the pupils the great fundamental principles upon which our Government is founded; whereas those who attend the papal schools are instructed that the most essential of these principles are the fruitful source of heresies, and, consequently, of ills to the human family. The two systems, therefore, remain in conflict—just as they have hitherto been—and the greatest question the present generation is called upon to decide is, Which shall triumph? With those of us who desire to maintain our popular form of government, this question does not involve religious faith. But with the defenders of the papacy and followers of the pope it does. And, consequently, those who are willing to form a politico-religious party, pledged to restore temporal power to the pope, even at the possible hazard of a war with Italy, and entangling alliances with other European powers, are promised a crown of eternal glory; while those who are seeking to maintain our institutions as our fathers framed them are anathematized for the sin of rebellion against papal authority.

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