What every true American citizen should believe

Every true American citizen believes in securing to every man freedom of the mind and conscience in the matter of religion: and will ever stand ready to protect him in his right to worship God according to the dictates of his conscience. We do not inquire into the truth or falsity of his religion. We accord to him the right to determine this for himself; and be answerable only to his God. It is not its religion that we call into question when we arraign the Roman Catholic Church. We only fight it in its political aspirations; and because it is the desperate and deadly foe to civil liberty. It is, moreover, an active and aggressive foe; a foe that can never be conciliated, never trusted; for when it professes friendship for our institutions its only purposed is to throw us off of our guard that it may the more surely undermine and destroy them. We know that should it ever gain political control in our land it would deprive us of the rights that we now accord it. It is an organized despotism, and the sworn and implacable foe of liberty. It hates the symbol of the policy, power, and authority of our government, the flag of our country; and places over it the Papal rag. It gives to the highest officer of our government, the president of the United States, the second place at its festal board, reserving the place of honor to the ablegate of the Pope. This insult it has recently perpetrated upon us in the open light of day; and in the most conspicuous and offensive manner–an insult that causes the blood of every American patriot to tingle with resentment.

It is but too evident that no matter what may be its professions, it is, at heart, disloyal to our government; and only loyal to the pope of Rome. This alien power is the implacable foe of popular education, and is constantly laboring for the destruction of our system of free schools. Her real motive for this opposition lies in the fact that the mental training which her children would get in our free schools, would unfit them for being loyal, obedient and servile children of the church. Here they would be trained to think, to reason and to investigate; to take nothing on trust, but to form their opinions upon all subjects from convictions resulting from a free and rational investigation. The whole atmosphere of the free school, and all of its associations, would beget in them a love of liberty. This system of education is the exact counterpart of the system of the parochial schools, and is destructive to that blind faith and servile obedience, that vie to the Roman Catholic Church its power. Our free school system tends to make its beneficiaries good, intelligent, loyal, American citizens; whilst the parochial schools only aim to make their pupils to be loyal subjects of the Papacy. Under the protection of our flag, they are raising up a force to be used for the destruction of our government.

In this contention over the question of education, Rome is continuallv making efforts to unite the church and the State, by securing the aid of the State in supporting her schools; as also of what she calls her charitable institutions. By thus attacking the fundamental principles of our government at every point, she makes manifest her disloyalty, and her purpose to undermine and overthrow our institutions. Our civil and religious institutions had their origin in the protest of Luther and his coadjutors against the despotism and corruption of the Roman Catholic Church, that brought about the Reformation of the 16th century. Against this Reformation she has never ceased to fight, and never will, until her power shall have been overthrown.

She has always been the sworn enemy of our Protestant institutions; and is today, as she ever has been, bent on their destruction. She has never lost an opportunity to give them a stab in the dark. In our dissensions over the questions of slavery, she thought she saw a chance to destroy our government and taking the side of slavery, used her whole influence in the South, to stimulate and encourage secession and rebellion, and in the North to discredit and weaken the cause of the Union. It was G. T. Beauregard, a rabid Roman Catholic, who first fired on the flag of our country at Fort Sumter; and let loose the dogs of war. It was the Pope of Rome, and he alone, of all the European potentates that gave his recognition and his blessing to the Confederate government: and by the very terms of his kind letter to its president, made it manifest that he expected, through his kind offices, to secure its recognition of his claims; and win it for the church.

It was the Pope of Rome, and his faithful lieutenant, Louis Napoleon, who, taking advantage of our civil war, undertook to establish a Roman Catholic empire in Mexico, and for this purpose sent Maximilian, a Roman Catholic prince, under the protection of a French army, to usurp dominion, and take possession of the country. All of this was done in the hope that the Union cause would be lost; and that through the strife that she had fomented, two Roman Catholic empires would be established on the American continent, viz. that of Mexico under Maximilian and that of the Confederacy under Jefferson Davis; thus making it possible to make a conquest of the entire continent. This letter of the Pope to Jefferson Davis, couched in such courteous and loving terms, and showing so clearly that his sympathy was with the Southern cause, was well understood by his loyal and faithful subjects all over the North. Roman Catholic officers began to resign and the rank and file began to desert, from the time of the publication of that letter in 1863 to the close of the war.

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